PowerPhotos 3.4.8 — macOS

PowerPhotos runs on macOS 14 or later, so any recent Mac with an Intel or Apple Silicon chip is fine. It works with Apple’s built-in Photos app, not as a replacement, but as a companion for managing multiple libraries and finding duplicate photos.

Keeps personal, work, and family libraries separate

• Keeping several Photos libraries separate — personal, work, family
• Finding duplicate photos, with side-by-side comparison
• Moving or copying photos between libraries

Requires macOS 14 and is English only

• It is a separate product from iPhoto Library Manager
• Interface is in English only
• Requires macOS 14 or later

Sits alongside Apple Photos, not replacing it

PowerPhotos sits alongside Apple Photos rather than replacing it. After you set up separate libraries, you can still open any of them in the regular Photos app when you need the familiar interface. The reverse works too: changes you make in PowerPhotos, like merging or splitting libraries, show up when you open that library in Photos later. No sync troubles, no format conversions.

It also plays well with the macOS file system. You can point it at libraries stored on external drives, network volumes, or cloud-synced folders. So a photographer who keeps an archive drive for older work and a smaller library on a laptop for recent edits can manage both from one window. The duplicate finder scans across those drives without you having to move anything first.

For anyone who uses iCloud Photos, splitting libraries helps control what gets synced. Keep a main library for recent photos that needs cloud access, and move older or completed projects into a separate library that stays local only. PowerPhotos handles the sorting, and iCloud only sees what you decide to keep in the active library.

Splits one giant library into manageable parts

People with one giant Photos library that has grown over years — say, ten years of family photos mixed with work screenshots and vacation bursts — benefit most. Instead of scrolling through thousands of thumbnails in Photos, you split by year or by topic into smaller libraries. Each one opens faster in Photos, and searching is less cluttered.

Mac users who shoot with multiple cameras or phones also find it useful. Photos tends to import everything from a card or phone into one library. With PowerPhotos you can route imports to different libraries based on date or camera model, or clean up later by moving batches. That saves time compared to exporting from Photos and re-importing.

Freelance photographers who keep client work separate from personal photos will appreciate the library switching. You flip between a client library and a personal one without signing out of anything. Duplicate checking across all libraries at once means you do not accidentally charge a client for a photo you already edited last month.

Workflow: splitting one large library by year

Here is a typical task for someone who has one Photos library with photos from 2018 through 2024 and wants separate libraries per year.

1. Open PowerPhotos and let it scan your current Photos library. It builds a list of all photos with their dates.
2. Use the filter or search to show only photos from 2018. Select them all.
3. Choose the export or copy option to create a new library. Name it Photos 2018 and pick where to save it — an external drive, a folder on your Mac, wherever you want.
4. PowerPhotos copies those photos into the new library. The original library still has them, so nothing is lost yet.
5. Repeat for 2019, 2020, and so on until each year is in its own library.
6. Go back to the original library and delete the photos you moved. Confirm the deletion only after you verify the new libraries open correctly in Photos. Or keep the original as a master archive and use the yearly ones for everyday browsing.
7. Switch between the new libraries in PowerPhotos to browse each year without opening Photos each time.

This approach keeps your main Photos app less crowded. If you ever need to search across all years at once, PowerPhotos can search the whole set of libraries. You do not lose the ability to find a photo quickly just because you split things up.

• macOS 14 or later
• Intel or Apple Silicon