osxphotos 0.72.1

Export photos from Apple's macOS Photos app and query the Photos library database to access metadata about images.

What is osxphotos?

OSXPhotos provides both the ability to interact with and query Apple’s Photos.app library on macOS directly from your python code as well as a very flexible command line interface (CLI) app for exporting photos. You can query the Photos library database – for example, file name, file path, and metadata such as keywords/tags, persons/faces, albums, etc. You can also easily export both the original and edited photos.

Supported operating systems

Only works on macOS (aka Mac OS X). Tested on macOS Sierra (10.12.6) through macOS Monterey (12.3).

This package will read Photos databases for any supported version on any supported macOS version. E.g. you can read a database created with Photos 5.0 on MacOS 10.15 on a machine running macOS 10.12 and vice versa.

Requires python >= 3.10.

Installation

The recommended way to install osxphotos is via the uv python package manager tool.

Installation using uv

• Open Terminal (search for Terminal in Spotlight or look in Applications/Utilities)

• Install uv by running the following command in Terminal:

curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh

If you previously installed uv, upgrade to the latest version:

uv self update

• Type the following into Terminal:

uv tool install --python 3.12 osxphotos

• Now you should be able to run osxphotos by typing: osxphotos

Once you’ve installed osxphotos with uv, to upgrade to the latest version:

uv tool upgrade osxphotos

If you want to try osxphotos without installing it, you can run uv tool run --python 3.12 osxphotos or uvx --python 3.12 osxphotos.

Note: If installing on an older version of macOS and you encounter issues installing with uv, try installing python 3.12 from python.org then running uv to install osxphotos.

Installation using pip

You can install osxphotos directly from pypi:

python3 -m pip install osxphotos

Once you’ve installed osxphotos with pip, to upgrade to the latest version:

python3 -m pip install --upgrade osxphotos

Installation via MacPorts

If you use the MacPorts package manager on a Mac:

sudo port install osxphotos

Installation on Linux

At least one of the Linux-specific python packages normally installed on Linux may cause an error during installation with pip or pipx. If you encounter an error similar to: pip._vendor.packaging.version.InvalidVersion: Invalid version: '6.5.0-1022-generic, you should still be able to install osxphotos by creating and activating a virtual environment:

python3 -m venv .venv-osxphotos
source .venv-osxphotos/bin/activate
python3 -m pip install osxphotos

To use osxphotos you will need to ensure the venv is activated using source .venv-osxphotos/bin/activate.

You may name the virtual environment anything you want; .venv-osxphotos is used in this example to make it clear the virtual environment is used by osxphotos and to avoid conflict with other virtual environments which, by convention, are often named .venv or venv.

Command Line Usage

This package will install a command line utility called osxphotos that allows you to query the Photos database and export photos. Alternatively, you can also run the command line utility like this: python3 -m osxphotos

Usage: osxphotos [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...

  OSXPhotos: the multi-tool for your Photos library.

  To get help on a specific command, use "osxphotos COMMAND --help" or
  "osxphotos help COMMAND"; for example, "osxphotos help export".

  To search help for a specific topic within a command, run "osxphotos help
  COMMAND TOPIC"; for example, "osxphotos help export keyword" to get help
  related to keywords when using the export command.

  To see the full documentation in your browser, run "osxphotos docs".

  Some advanced commands are hidden by default. To see all commands, run
  "OSXPHOTOS_SHOW_HIDDEN=1 osxphotos help". Some commands also have hidden
  options. These can be seen by running "OSXPHOTOS_SHOW_HIDDEN=1 osxphotos
  help COMMAND".

Options:
  -v, --version  Show the version and exit.
  -h, --help     Show this message and exit.

Commands:
  about          Print information about osxphotos including license.
  add-locations  Add missing location data to photos in Photos.app using...
  albums         Print out albums found in the Photos library.
  batch-edit     Batch edit photo metadata such as title, description,...
  compare        Compare two Photos libraries to find differences
  docs           Open osxphotos documentation in your browser.
  dump           Print list of all photos & associated info from the...
  exiftool       Run exiftool on previously exported files to update...
  export         Export photos from the Photos database.
  exportdb       Utilities for working with the osxphotos export database
  help           Print help; for help on commands: help <command>.
  import         Import photos and videos into Photos.
  info           Print out descriptive info of the Photos library database.
  inspect        Interactively inspect photos selected in Photos.
  install        Install Python packages into the same environment as...
  keywords       Print out keywords found in the Photos library.
  labels         Print out image classification labels found in the...
  list           Print list of Photos libraries found on the system.
  orphans        Find orphaned photos in a Photos library
  persons        Print out persons (faces) found in the Photos library.
  places         Print out places found in the Photos library.
  push-exif      Write photo metadata to original files in the Photos...
  query          Query the Photos database using 1 or more search...
  repl           Run interactive osxphotos REPL shell (useful for...
  run            Run a python file using same environment as osxphotos.
  show           Show photo, album, or folder in Photos from UUID_OR_NAME
  sync           Sync metadata and albums between Photos libraries.
  template       Interactively render templates for selected photo.
  theme          Manage osxphotos color themes.
  timewarp       Adjust date/time/timezone of photos in Apple Photos.
  tutorial       Display osxphotos tutorial.
  uninstall      Uninstall Python packages from the osxphotos environment
  uuid           Print out unique IDs (UUID) of photos selected in Photos
  version        Check for new version of osxphotos.

To get help on a specific command, use ``osxphotos help <command_name>``

Command line examples

export all photos to ~/Desktop/export group in folders by date created

osxphotos export --export-by-date ~/Pictures/Photos\ Library.photoslibrary ~/Desktop/export

Note: Photos library/database path can also be specified using --db option:

osxphotos export --export-by-date --db ~/Pictures/Photos\ Library.photoslibrary ~/Desktop/export

find all photos with keyword “Kids” and output results to json file named results.json:

osxphotos query --keyword Kids --json ~/Pictures/Photos\ Library.photoslibrary >results.json

export photos to file structure based on 4-digit year and full name of month of photo’s creation date:

osxphotos export ~/Desktop/export --directory "{created.year}/{created.month}"

(by default, it will attempt to use the system library)

export photos to file structure based on 4-digit year of photo’s creation date and add keywords for media type and labels (labels are only awailable on Photos 5 and higher):

osxphotos export ~/Desktop/export --directory "{created.year}" --keyword-template "{label}" --keyword-template "{media_type}"

export default library using ‘country name/year’ as output directory (but use “NoCountry/year” if country not specified), add persons, album names, and year as keywords, write exif metadata to files when exporting, update only changed files, print verbose ouput

osxphotos export ~/Desktop/export --directory "{place.name.country,NoCountry}/{created.year}" --person-keyword --album-keyword --keyword-template "{created.year}" --exiftool --update --verbose

find all videos larger than 200MB and add them to Photos album “Big Videos” creating the album if necessary

osxphotos query --only-movies --min-size 200MB --add-to-album "Big Videos"

Example uses of the package

""" Simple usage of the package """
import osxphotos

def main():
    photosdb = osxphotos.PhotosDB()
    print(photosdb.keywords)
    print(photosdb.persons)
    print(photosdb.album_names)

    print(photosdb.keywords_as_dict)
    print(photosdb.persons_as_dict)
    print(photosdb.albums_as_dict)

    # find all photos with Keyword = Foo and containing John Smith
    photos = photosdb.photos(keywords=["Foo"],persons=["John Smith"])

    # find all photos that include Alice Smith but do not contain the keyword Bar
    photos = [p for p in photosdb.photos(persons=["Alice Smith"])
                if p not in photosdb.photos(keywords=["Bar"]) ]
    for p in photos:
        print(
            p.uuid,
            p.filename,
            p.original_filename,
            p.date,
            p.description,
            p.title,
            p.keywords,
            p.albums,
            p.persons,
            p.path,
        )

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

""" Export all photos to specified directory using album names as folders
    If file has been edited, also export the edited version,
    otherwise, export the original version
    This will result in duplicate photos if photo is in more than album """

import os.path
import pathlib
import sys

import click
from pathvalidate import is_valid_filepath, sanitize_filepath

import osxphotos


@click.command()
@click.argument("export_path", type=click.Path(exists=True))
@click.option(
    "--default-album",
    help="Default folder for photos with no album. Defaults to 'unfiled'",
    default="unfiled",
)
@click.option(
    "--library-path",
    help="Path to Photos library, default to last used library",
    default=None,
)
def export(export_path, default_album, library_path):
    export_path = os.path.expanduser(export_path)
    library_path = os.path.expanduser(library_path) if library_path else None

    if library_path is not None:
        photosdb = osxphotos.PhotosDB(library_path)
    else:
        photosdb = osxphotos.PhotosDB()

    photos = photosdb.photos()

    for p in photos:
        if not p.ismissing:
            albums = p.albums
            if not albums:
                albums = [default_album]
            for album in albums:
                click.echo(f"exporting {p.filename} in album {album}")

                # make sure no invalid characters in destination path (could be in album name)
                album_name = sanitize_filepath(album, platform="auto")

                # create destination folder, if necessary, based on album name
                dest_dir = os.path.join(export_path, album_name)

                # verify path is a valid path
                if not is_valid_filepath(dest_dir, platform="auto"):
                    sys.exit(f"Invalid filepath {dest_dir}")

                # create destination dir if needed
                if not os.path.isdir(dest_dir):
                    os.makedirs(dest_dir)

                # export the photo
                if p.hasadjustments:
                    # export edited version
                    exported = p.export(dest_dir, edited=True)
                    edited_name = pathlib.Path(p.path_edited).name
                    click.echo(f"Exported {edited_name} to {exported}")
                # export unedited version
                exported = p.export(dest_dir)
                click.echo(f"Exported {p.filename} to {exported}")
        else:
            click.echo(f"Skipping missing photo: {p.filename}")


if __name__ == "__main__":
    export()  # pylint: disable=no-value-for-parameter

Package Interface

Reference full documentation on GitHub