Sorting into folders
File lots of photos at once: your folders on the left, your photos on the right, and drag between them.
The sorting view is the quickest way to put a big backlog into folders. Your folders are on one side and your photos on the other. Drag photos onto folders until none are left over.
Open it
In the sidebar, under Folders, click Sort photos. The page is called Sort into folders. Click How sorting works to come back to this page.
What you see
The sorting view works in the library chosen in the switcher, personal or family. Switch libraries and the folder tree, the albums and the photos change to that library’s. See Switch libraries.
- On the left, your folder tree. Click an arrow to open or close a folder. A folder opens by itself if you hold photos over it for half a second.
- On the right, a grid of photos. Under Photos from, choose which photos to show: Timeline (all of them), A folder, or Not in any folder. The last one is the easiest way to see what’s left to sort.
- Above the folder tree, the last thing you did, for example “Added 12 to 2019 › Disney”, with the photos you moved.
Select photos in the grid as described in Drag and drop, then drag them onto a folder.
A drag always adds
In the sorting view, dropping photos on a folder adds them. It never takes a photo out of another folder, because a photo can be in as many folders as you like. If a photo was already in the folder, it stays there once.
The folders those photos are already in are highlighted in the tree, so you can see where they have been filed.
Photos you file from Not in any folder stay in the grid until you choose the source again, so you can still see what you just did.
Undo and redo
Every drag is one step. Click Undo or press ⌘Z (Ctrl+Z) to take back the last drag. Click Redo or press ⌘⇧Z (Ctrl+Shift+Z) to bring it back. A new drag clears what you could redo.
Undo takes out only what that drag added. A photo that was in the folder before stays. If the folder has been deleted since, the step is skipped and you’re told. The history lasts until you leave the page.
See and change a photo’s folders
Select a photo, in the sorting view or in the information under it when you open it full screen, and the In folders list shows every folder it is in, by full path, such as 2019 › Disney. Click Remove from and a path to take the photo out of that folder. You can undo it.
With several photos selected, the list shows every folder any of them is in, with how many: 7 of 12. Remove takes all of them out of that folder.
Move a folder
Drag a folder onto another to make it a subfolder, or onto the Folders heading to put it at the top level. It takes its subfolders and photos with it. You can’t drop a folder on itself or on one of its own subfolders, and folders can only go 10 levels deep; those places stay plain. Undo and Redo cover a move.
If the other folder already has a subfolder with the same name, you’re asked what to do:
- Merge folders puts the photos and subfolders into the one that’s already there. Subfolders with the same name are merged too. A merge can’t be undone.
- Rename and move lets you pick a new name (it suggests one, for example “Beach 2”) and moves the folder with that name.
Folders you can’t change are plain for you. Viewers can use the view to look, but nothing lights up and nothing can be dropped.
Related: Folders.