Chronoframe
You’ll need a Mac running macOS 14 or later, the photos and videos you want to sort, and free space for the copies in a separate destination folder.
1. Gather your sources
Phone backups, camera cards and old drives: bring them together in one place to start. Chronoframe reads from a source folder and writes to a separate destination, so the destination is where your dated library will grow.
2. Start with one folder
If a big library makes you nervous, pick a small, low-stakes folder first. One run is enough to see how the dated folders look and how Chronoframe reports what it did, before you trust it with years of photos.
3. Preview the dated plan
Choose Preview Plan and check the proposed folders and dates before anything copies. The default layout is YYYY/MM/DD; dates come from photo or video metadata first, then the filename, then file dates. Open Review to look at uncertain dates, and rebuild the preview after any change. Preview copies nothing.
4. Approve the verified copies
When the plan looks right, choose Start Transfer. Chronoframe copies each file to its dated folder and, with verification on (the default), checks each copy against the original. Existing files in the destination are never overwritten, and your originals stay where they were.
5. Check History
Open Organize → History to see what each run copied, skipped or could not copy. If a copy looks wrong, Revert This Run… removes the copies that run made, as long as they still match its receipt. It never touches your originals or files you added afterward.
What this doesn’t do
Organize copies files into new folders. It does not move or rewrite your source originals, so the source library stays as it was, in its original scattered layout, unless you clean it up yourself. Plan for enough free space to hold both while you check the new library.
What Chronoframe does, in plain terms
- Preview-first organization into dated folders.
- Source originals untouched; copies verified by default.
- Duplicate and similar photo review, plus opt-in similar-video review. Files move to Trash only after you approve them, and History can put them back while they are still in Trash.
- No uploads, no Chronoframe account, no subscription. Processing happens on your Mac, on macOS 14 or later.
- Free allowance: 500 files organized plus 100 duplicates moved to Trash, per Apple Account per Mac.
- $14.99 once for the lifetime unlock, with Family Sharing included.
How Chronoframe protects your files →
Organize · Export from Photos · Find duplicates — all in Chronoframe for Mac: Organize photos into dated folders · Export Apple Photos originals · Find duplicate photos · Compare the alternatives