How to Batch Change Titles and Descriptions in Photos for macOS
Have you ever wondered how to batch change the name and even the caption of multiple photos at a time in Photos for macOS to the same information for all of them?
For example, you would want to do this if you had a group of photos all taken on the same day, during the same event, and you want to label them in a very similar way — if not the exact same way.
This is a very common need, and knowing how to do this in Photos is not as easy as it was in its predecessor, iPhoto.
How “Batch Change” Worked in iPhoto
In iPhoto, there was an easy-to-find menu item with a clear name called “Batch Change.”
After selecting the group of photos you wanted to modify, you went to “Photos” in the top menu bar and clicked on “Batch Change” from the list of options. From the new window that slid down, you had a wonderful choice of changes you could make to all of your selected photos.
The choices were:
As you're probably aware, Apple discontinued iPhoto and replaced it with Photos for macOS. And even though Photos is destined to improve with every version that comes out, years after its initial release, Photos still lacks some of the important features iPhoto already had — including “Batch Change.”
However, this doesn't mean there aren't some workarounds to produce at least some of the missing capabilities.
How “Batch Change” Currently Works in Photos for macOS
Okay, so at the time I'm finishing up this article, in the current version of Photos, there actually is a way to batch change your names (Titles) and captions (Descriptions).
It's not as obvious, nor does it offer as many choices as iPhotos did. But, at least it's actually quite easy to do once you're familiar with how it works.
Instructions:
Bring up the Info window that shows you the information (metadata) for each photo.
Select two or more photos in Photos by selecting the first photo
And then hold down the command ⌘ key and click one or more additional photos.
If multiple photos are all next to each other, a faster way is to click on the first photo, and then hold down shift and then click the last photo of the group which “bookends” all of the photos together.
Now all photos you want to select are highlighted with a blue border.
In the Info window, click in the title or description field (or both), and enter in the information you want to be attributed to all of the selected images.
All of the information you entered should now be the same for all of the photos you selected.
In the case of this example, if I click through each of the three photos, I will now see the Title and Descriptions are all the same in the Info window.
If you have “View > Metadata > Titles” selected, you will also now see the same Titles below each of your selected photos.
The Title Limitations of This Workaround
If your only objective was to “batch change” all Titles and/or Descriptions for a group of photos to the same information, then this solution more than likely solves your problem. However, if you were most interested in giving a group of photos a similar yet unique Title, then you're still going to have to take the process one step further.
iPhoto also gave you the option to append a number to the end of each photo's title, such as:
Even though you didn't have any control over how this number was generated, and how many digits it was made up of, it still was a simple solution to create similarly identified yet unique names (Titles) for each of your photos.
Currently in Photos for macOS, if you also want the index number added at the end as well after performing this batch change process, you will have to manually have to go in and enter the identifying number at the end of each Title.
Hopefully, Apple is working on a major upgrade that will include all of the “Batch Change” options previously available in iPhoto. In the meantime, we will just have to hang in there and be optimistic this will happen sooner than later. In the meantime, maybe this trick will get you by.
I want to thank Deb from Connecticut for suggesting this post idea. And if you have an idea as well for an upcoming post, please let me know!
Curtis, I discovered your site years ago that thankfully helped me to label all my photos within iPhoto in such a way that the name I assigned remained with each photo when I backed it up to an external hard drive. This was the procedure you outlined: changing batch name, exporting the file to include “titles and keywords” and selecting “use title” for the file name to ensure the name of the photo was used outside of iPhoto.
I just updated my Mac to macOS Sierra version 10.12.3 and – IT DOESN'T OFFER THE BATCH CHANGE!!!! I'm devastated.
Each month I take all photos off my phone and label them and save them to external drive….they're all pics of my kids that I want to label in detail so I can look back years from now and the details of the pic.
Can you offer a way to do this with the new “Photos” on Mac? TIA!
Deb – CT
Thanks it was helpful.
How do you do this and rename all photos with the capture date?
Question about altering the ?metadata that states a photo’s date on a MacOS Big Sur, Photos app…
I think I took a whole bunch of images on a digital camera that had the date wrong by a year.. (eg. data says taken eg. July 2011 when it was July 2012.
Is there a way to batch change the date on multiple images by adding on a year, but not allocating them all with the exact same modified dates?!?!
Thanks!! Tom
I have 46,000+ photos in Photos – I had no idea that when I saved them to a folder outside of photos, I would lose the captions, order numbers, etc. I’m beyond devastated. If anyone thinks I’m opening the info box for over 46,000 photos, one at a time, they are crazy. I’m 70. I haven’t got enough years left in my life for this and I chose photos precisely because I wanted to leave these as a legacy for my children and others in my extended family – I’m the curator of my deceased parents, my sister who is dying of Alzheimer’s as I type this, and our grandparents and extended family. I’m the family genealogist. I hold it all. I should have known. It’s google. I hate google. I always have. I have no idea where to turn. I’ve already lost all the info for about 38 albums and 10,000 pictures. I hope the company blows itself up.
Deb, I’m sorry to read that you had a bad experience with Apple’s Photos app. In your situation, it’s likely that when you brought your 46,000+ photos out of the Apple Photos application, you did in a manner that didn’t “request” the application to include the captions and other metadata. (I’m not sure what you mean by order numbers — where you typed those in that would be shown/used in another program)
How did you move your photos out? The correct method is to highlight the photos you want to “copy” (move out in this case) and choose File > Export from the top menu. Then make sure in the “Info” options, you have “Title, Keywords and Caption” checked so that this information is saved inside of your new versions that are saved to your computer in your designated folder of choice.
Once your photos are outside of Apple Photos, it’s then up to you to use an application to view and work with your photos that is capable of displaying this (EXIF/IPTC) metadata that was saved in your photos by Apple Photos. If you aren’t using a program that displays this metadata, then you won’t see it — even if it’s still there in your photos.
Let me know if this helps you, if you try and re-export out all of your photographs.
This is a known issue that Photos is stripping the data on export. Apple have told me an operating system update is required to fix it. Two updates so far and no fix. Poor service.
Apple doesn’t really care. Amazing how they make things worse and tout changes as improvements.
Thank you so much!! This really helped me with labeling photos for a group dropbox!!!
Great, Susan! You’re so welcome. 🙂
Thank You!!! For me, this was the most important feature in the old iPhoto. It was so frustrating that Apple deleted that function, and apparently still hasn’t really brought it back.
You’re welcome Annie. Hopefully what Photos is currently able to do as defined by this tutorial, will get you mostly through what you need to accomplish.
Batch change in Photos does not allow consolidating of many different dates into a single date (or year) which it does in iPhotos.
Its great for changing 100 photos all with 2015 to 2017, but it will not change 100 photos with different years to say 2017. That sucks
please clarify this