photree

A CLI tool to import, organize, verify, and export iOS photo albums as plain directories — preserving originals, edits, and sidecars without any proprietary database.

Main Use Cases

• Import iOS photos into organized album directories, preserving originals, edits, and AAE sidecars from macOS Image Capture
• Browse and curate using the main-img/, main-jpg/, and main-vid/ directories — the best version of each photo/video, ready to view
• Share albums by exporting JPEG-compatible versions to cloud sync folders (MEGAsync, Syncthing, etc.) or external drives
• Back up to external volumes with full album structure (originals + edits + sidecars) using symlinks or hardlinks to save disk space
• Verify album integrity with checksums and structural validation, with actionable fix suggestions

Non-Goals

• Not a photo viewer or editor. photree organizes files on disk — use your favorite viewer (Finder, feh, etc.) to browse main-img/ or main-jpg/.
• Not a photo management database. There is no catalog, index, or metadata database. Albums are plain directories, readable by any tool.
• Not a cloud service. photree exports to directories — pair it with your own sync tool (MEGAsync, Syncthing, rsync, etc.).
• Not cross-platform for import. The import pipeline requires macOS (sips for HEIC-to-JPEG conversion). Exported albums are portable.

Known Limitations

• macOS required for import. The sips tool (included with macOS) is used for HEIC/DNG-to-JPEG conversion. Import is not supported on Linux. Exported albums work everywhere.
• iOS-only import source. The import pipeline is built around macOS Image Capture conventions (IMG_* naming, AAE sidecars, IMG_E* edits). Other camera sources are not currently supported.
• No EXIF-based organization. Album names and dates are derived from directory names (YYYY-MM-DD convention), not from EXIF metadata.

Philosophy

• Plain directories, no lock-in. Albums are standard filesystem directories. No database, no proprietary format. You can always ls, cp, rsync, or browse with any tool.
• Preserve everything, organize intelligently. Originals, edits, and sidecars are archived under ios/. The main-* directories provide a clean, browsable view without losing source material.
• Explicit over magic. Every operation has a dry-run mode. Destructive fixes require explicit flags. The tool tells you what it would do before doing it.
• Composable with existing tools. photree handles album structure — pair it with rsync for backups, MEGAsync for cloud sync, or any viewer for browsing.

Related Projects

• Apple Photos — Apple's built-in photo manager. Great for editing, but uses a proprietary database. photree is for people who want plain directories.
• Immich / PhotoPrism — Self-hosted photo management with a web UI. A good complement if you want a browsable gallery on top of your photree albums.
• immich-go — CLI tool to bulk-upload photos to Immich. Can be used to upload photree albums.
• rsync / Syncthing / MEGAsync — File sync tools. photree exports to directories that these tools can sync.
• ExifTool — Metadata extraction and editing. Useful alongside photree for EXIF-based workflows.

Installation

See docs/installation.md.

Usage

See docs/usage.md.

Development

See docs/setup-development-environment.md.

Contribute

Practical information:

• docs/setup-development-environment.md — development setup
• docs/building-and-testing.md — running tests and checks
• docs/releasing-and-publishing.md — releases and PyPI publishing
• docs/guidelines.md — project-specific guidelines
• common-guidelines — shared coding guidelines

Conceptual information:

• docs/internals.md — runtime behavior, design decisions, and external commands
• docs/architecture.md — module dependency graph