SeekframeHow to find all photos and videos on your Mac
To list every photo on your Mac, open a Finder window, press ⌘F, choose This Mac and set Kind to Image; set it to Movie to list every video. Pictures you imported into the Photos app are kept inside its library in the Pictures folder, so browse and search those in Photos. To search all the others by what they show, not by name, add their folders to Seekframe.
Updated
List every photo or video in Finder
- Open a Finder window and press ⌘F.
- Next to Search, click This Mac.
- In the row below, set Kind to Image for photos, or to Movie for videos.
- Switch to list view (⌘2) and click a column heading, such as Size or Date Modified, to sort by it. If the column isn't there, Control-click any heading and choose it.
You can also type kind:image or kind:movie into the search field of a Finder window.
Where photos and videos usually are
- The Photos library: Pictures › Photos Library. It's a single package (it looks like one file) that Photos manages; don't move files inside it by hand. With iCloud Photos and Optimize Mac Storage turned on, many full-size originals are kept only in iCloud.
- Downloads: pictures saved from the web and from chats, and files received over AirDrop.
- The desktop: screenshots and screen recordings, unless you changed where they go.
- Movies, Documents and your own folders: exported projects, photos and videos copied off a camera.
- External drives: backups, copies of camera cards, old archives.
Search all of them by what they show
Finder lists files by name, kind, date and size. When you're looking for one picture, such as the photo of the whiteboard with the project plan, a list of 20,000 images doesn't help. Seekframe analyses every photo, and every scene of every video, in the folders you add, so you can find them by describing them.
- Open Seekframe and drop a folder on its window. With the free version, pick one folder that holds the others, such as your home folder; every folder inside it is included.
- Seekframe does the photos first, starting with the newest, then the videos. You can start searching within the first minute.
- Type what you're looking for:
a map spread on a table
,passport photo
,dog in the snow
.
Seekframe skips the Photos library and app packages. It never moves, changes or uploads your files.
Questions
Where are photos stored on a Mac?
Anything you imported into the Photos app is in Pictures › Photos Library. Everything else is wherever it was saved: Downloads, the desktop, Documents, your own folders or an external drive.
How do I find the videos that take up the most space?
Search This Mac in Finder with Kind set to Movie, switch to list view and sort by Size. System Settings › General › Storage also shows what's taking up space.
Can Seekframe search pictures that are in Photos?
Not inside the library itself. Export the ones you want with File › Export into a folder, and add that folder to Seekframe.
How much can the free version search?
One folder on your Mac, with every folder inside it: all its photos and up to 10 hours of video. Seekframe Pro, a one-time $19.99 purchase, adds more folders, external and network drives, and all your video.