Photos in Apple Photos are shown in different sorting order than in Apple Finder (Sonoma 14.7.1). Apple Finder shows them in chronologically correct order, not Apple Photos.

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Photos in Apple Photos are shown in different sorting order than in Apple Finder (Sonoma 14.7.1). Apple Finder shows them in chronologically correct order, not Apple Photos.

All photos contain the correct DateTimeOriginal according to EXIFTOOL and creation date according to Apple Finder and Windows Explorer. Photos in Apple Finder are sorted by file name, which corresponds to creation date. Photos in Apple Photos are sorted by title.

Sorting is correct in Apple Finder and consistent with Windows Explorer, but not in Apple Photos.

I have read many contributions in the community. Some write that this is a known problem and has not been fixed by Apple for a long time. Other contributors suggest solutions, but these do not offer any results. See screenshots.

Question: is there a solution to this problem?

Mac Studio

Posted on Nov 17, 2024 6:59 AM

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Answer 1

Nov 17, 2024 7:51 AM in response to dumbenis

dumbenis wrote :… Photos in Apple Photos are sorted by title.

It seems like you're sorting by title, and yet you expect them to be in date order?

But your title has nothing to do with the date!

I, too, sort by title, but my title

starts with the date and and index number. (I started doing this so I can quickly change the order of scanned [dateless] family pictures.) But if pictures are sorted by title with random (or identical) titles, then they sorting by title won't be by date. If the titles are all the same, then they might come out in order of import date rather than created date. But the second level of ordering is not guaranteed to be consistent with changing OSs.

If it's important to you to sort by title, then you need to start the title with the date, year-month-day-index. I use the 3rd Party app Photos Workbench($30) to add titles. It gives options like this:

For the horse picture above, I had taken 1500 pictures at the even, so Photos Workbench let me include a 4 digit index number.

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Answer 2

dumbenis Author

Level 1

13 points

Nov 18, 2024 10:33 AM in response to Richard.Taylor

Thanks for the tip about the absence of a title in photos in Mac Photos app. I had not seen this photo title.

I added to photo "2017-08-27_123243.jpg" in Mac Photos app the title "2017-08-27_123243.jpg". When I sort by title in Mac Photos correct sorting takes place. When I sort by creation date, incorrect sorting still takes place. I think adding a title and sorting by the titles gets around the original problem.

Somewhere in the EXIF metadata in the photo there is an incorrect date and time that is being sorted by. I have tried many viewers under macOS and Windows. ACDSee Photo Studio 8 is the only one that shows "Date/Time: 05-09-2017" in the EXIF data, which differs from "02-09-2017" in other photos. The discrepancy is caused by editing this photo in the Photo Ninja app. Photos edited with different programs may have metadata issues.

After much searching with different tools, I found "ModifyDate: "2017:09:05 17:38:27" in the EXIF information. The XMP metadata also shows MetadataDate and ModifyDate incorrectly. I used the following command to set the ModifyDate equal to the DateTimeOriginal:

EXIFTOOL "-ModifyDate<DateTimeOriginal" /path/to/photo.jpg.

This fixed the original problem and my blaming Mac Photos app was wrong.

The search for the non-chronological order started by the iPhone Photos app. It does not show this order and does not allow adjustment in the iPhone app. When I noticed that Mac Finder and Mac Photos showed the same problem, I started working with those first. The problem with the iPhone Photos app was solved by syncing the modified photos between my Mac with my iPhone.

Thanks for the help.

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