how to display picture info under all picture frames in gallery

I am trying to have file information, such as file name, date, under each picture frame in the macos gallery, the same way to do in windows, and I cannot find how to do it, please help.


At this point, windows appears to be far superior for displaying photos, Macos is a real mess.

Posted on Nov 9, 2025 8:11 AM

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Posted on Nov 9, 2025 8:32 AM

JeanPierreDucharme wrote:

I am trying to have file information, such as file name, date, under each picture frame in the macos gallery, the same way to do in windows, and I cannot find how to do it, please help.

In the top menu bar, click View > Metadata > Titles to show the filename. You can't show the exact date under the thumbnail, but an approximate date range is shown in the upper left of the gallery view. Alternatively, change the view from 'All Photos' to 'Days' to sort them by day taken. To see the full metadata for a photo, select it and press [ ⌘ + I ].


You can give Apple feedback here - Feedback - Photos - Apple

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Nov 9, 2025 8:32 AM in response to JeanPierreDucharme

JeanPierreDucharme wrote:

I am trying to have file information, such as file name, date, under each picture frame in the macos gallery, the same way to do in windows, and I cannot find how to do it, please help.

In the top menu bar, click View > Metadata > Titles to show the filename. You can't show the exact date under the thumbnail, but an approximate date range is shown in the upper left of the gallery view. Alternatively, change the view from 'All Photos' to 'Days' to sort them by day taken. To see the full metadata for a photo, select it and press [ ⌘ + I ].


You can give Apple feedback here - Feedback - Photos - Apple

Nov 9, 2025 10:55 AM in response to JeanPierreDucharme

JeanPierreDucharme wrote: …At this point, windows appears to be far superior for displaying photos, Macos is a real mess.

Perhaps you've misunderstood Photos. Photos is not interested in files or file information. Photos remembers some file information like the filename, and you can use it in searches, but file information is just an artifact from the way the picture was handled before it got to Photos. File names are not very descriptive, for instance, and there's likely to be three different pictures named IMG_0022.jpg, or whatever. File dates, too, are irrelevant with images-- the important date is when the picture was created, not the file.


An image is a particular form of information. Photos is an Image Management System (not a file management system,) and it works because all its items are images, and so they have lots of characteristics in common which are more useful than file data. And when you edit or crop a picture, that image is not a file, but rather it is information combined in a database. So an edited image doesn't even have a file name or a file date. An image is not a file. If you have something that shows file names and file dates below the picture, then you're not really seeing information about the picture.


how to display picture info under all picture frames in gallery

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