chronocatalog-desktop 0.1.0

Desktop app for ChronoCatalog photo and video archives

ChronoCatalog Desktop

Desktop app for ChronoCatalog photo and video archives.

The design premise: the CLI already plans everything before touching anything, so the app is a renderer of those plans and reports — every view is a dry run, and Apply goes through the same validated, journaled engine. Views are named after the commands they wrap (Verify, Rename, History), and the exact terminal equivalent of every action is one click away.

Status

Early development.

Install

macOS (Apple Silicon): download ChronoCatalog-<version>-arm64.dmg from Releases and drag the app to Applications. The build is not yet signed with an Apple Developer ID, so the first launch is blocked: open System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll to Security and click Open Anyway. This is needed once.

Any platform (Python 3.11+):

$ uv tool install chronocatalog-desktop

or pipx install chronocatalog-desktop. Either way you also need ExifTool on PATH (macOS: brew install exiftool).

Run

$ chronocatalog-desktop [archive.toml]

Without an argument the app asks for an archive configuration and remembers it. Everything is a dry run until Apply, which confirms first; every applied change lands in History with Undo (and Resume, for interrupted runs).

Demo archive

Builds a small throwaway archive under demo/archive (macOS: uses sips), imports it through the real engine, then plants a date edit, an unnamed file and an orphan sidecar so every view has something to show:

$ python demo/make_demo.py
$ chronocatalog-desktop demo/demo.toml

Requirements

• Python 3.11+
• ExifTool on PATH

License

MIT