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Organize captures with folders, collections and tags

The gallery gives you three ways to organize, and they work independently. Folders decide where a file lives on disk. Collections are labels that don’t move anything. Tags are words attached to an item, many of them added automatically.

Folders Collections Tags
Changes the file on disk Yes, the file moves No No
How many per item One (a file lives in exactly one folder) Any number Any number
Can nest Yes (New Subfolder…) Yes No
Created by You You You, and the app

Folders

Section titled “Folders”

Folders are real directories inside your save folder, listed under FOLDERS in the sidebar. Create one with New Folder… and nest folders with New Subfolder…. You can open them in Finder like any other folder.

Dragging items onto a folder moves the files. Their sidecar data (annotations, layers, thumbnails) moves with them, and their tags and collection memberships stay attached. To copy instead, hold ⌥ while you drag. The original stays put and the folder gets a copy.

Collections

Section titled “Collections”

Collections are listed under COLLECTIONS. They are labels: an item can be in several, and the file stays where it is on disk. Collections can nest. By default, opening a collection also shows the items in its subcollections. To change that, use Collections include sub items in Settings → Gallery. To turn a collection into an on-disk folder, use Convert to Folder (on-disk)… from its menu.

Dropping items onto a collection adds them to it. If you dragged them out of another collection you were browsing, they’re removed from that one, so a plain drag works like a move. Hold ⌥ to keep them in both.

Filing by drag

Section titled “Filing by drag”
Gesture Result
Drag Move into the folder or collection, and out of the one you’re browsing
⌥ drag Keep it where it is too: a copy in a folder, a second label in a collection
⌘ drag File it, but keep it in the Inbox
⇧ drag Compose the dragged image onto a thumbnail

Once you’ve filed something, press F to file the selection into the same folder or collection again.

The Inbox

Section titled “The Inbox”

Inbox is the view the gallery opens to by default. It shows items that sit at the top of the save folder and aren’t in any collection, so filing an item takes it off the pile. You can override this per item:

  • Add to Inbox pins a filed item back into the Inbox without moving or unfiling it.
  • Remove from Inbox clears an unfiled item from the Inbox and leaves it exactly where it is.

If you’d rather open to everything, turn off Open the gallery in Inbox at startup in Settings → Gallery, and the gallery opens in All instead.

Tags

Section titled “Tags”

Tags are indexed for search. Click a tag in the details panel to search the whole library for it. To add your own, use the tag field in the details panel or Edit Tags… in the editor.

Automatic tags come from background processing on your Mac:

  • Image classification with Apple Vision and a bundled MobileNetV2 model. Labels need at least 30% confidence.
  • Capture context: the app name, the window title and the capture mode (Window, Region, Fullscreen, Auto-scroll, Import or Paste). Slideshows get slides, slideshow, deck and slidedeck.
  • Semantic tags from the on-device Apple Intelligence model on macOS 26 and later, up to eight per item. When the model can see images (macOS 27 and later), it describes screenshots itself, and the photo classifiers are skipped for those images.

New automatic tags are merged into an item’s existing tags. They never replace tags you added.

Hidden and Trash

Section titled “Hidden and Trash”

Press H to hide or unhide an item. Hidden items only show in the Hidden view. ⌫ moves items to Trash, where their files stay on disk until you empty it with ⇧⌘⌫.

Section titled “Related”