The shortcut included below works as a quick action or service and saves the exif data of files selected in a Finder window to a text file in the source folders. After installing the shortcut, a checkmark has to be set before “Finder” (see screenshot), or, as an alternative, the shortcut can be run as a service. The -G exiftool option identifies and sorts exif tags by group name.
Save Exif Data.shortcut (22.5 KB)
#Peavine,
I feel that I failed to thank you for your message on the thread I started re the problem jpeg and an Automator workflow. So thanks!
I have not used the Shortcuts app so your posts are illuminating with regards to what it can achieve. I had a brief look this morning and was slightly baffled by how the app stores its data : its all rather ipadish in that it seems to want to hide where the shortcut files are stored.
I shall try and work though the examples that you have published above.
best wishes
Simon
Simon,
You’re very welcome.
All shortcuts are stored in a database, much like the macOS Notes app. This concerned me at first, but then I wrote a shortcut that creates a backup copy of every individual shortcut (about 28 KB each). These have to be restored one at a time which is a bit tedious–fortunately the only time I’ve had to do this was when I did a clean install of Sequoia.
Peavine
The properties of an Image in a shortcut include the basic metadata one would expect. However, one of these properties is Metadata Dictionary, which returns significantly more information. The following is a demonstration of how this data can be obtained.
Get Image Metadata.shortcut (22.0 KB)
This shortcut displays in the Maps app the location where a photo was taken. The location is based on the photo’s GPS metadata, and an error is reported if this metadata is not available or is in a different format than my test photos.
I successfully tested this shortcut with photos taken with a Samsung S25+ phone and several Google Pixel phones but not with a recent iPhone. In my testing, photos taken with older iPhone and Canon cameras do not have GPS metadata.
Show Photo Location.shortcut (25.0 KB)
BTW, a photo location can be displayed by way of the Preview app and by other approaches. This is something I do frequently, and a shortcut solution is useful for me.
This shortcut is the same as the above, except that the location is shown in Google maps in Safari (thanks dbrewood). One advantage of this is the possible availability of Street View. The following screenshot only shows a portion of the shortcut.
Earlier in this thread, I posted a shortcut that uses the ExifTool app to get metadata from a file selected in a Finder window. I rewrote this shortcut as follows:
The prior shortcut ran as a Quick Action. The new shortcut is intended to be run by way of Spotlight, a Finder window toolbar icon, or a Dock icon.
The new shortcut will process any file selected in a Finder window. An error is reported if ExifTool cannot get metadata from the selected file.
The metadata is displayed in a markdown table using the open source swiftDialog utility (here).
Display Metadata ExifTool.shortcut (23.6 KB)
I also wrote a version of the above shortcut that gets Spotlight metadata by way of the mdls utility. For the most part, this shortcut returns the same data as the Finder Get Info window, although there are some notable exceptions (e.g. altitude and image direction). The shortcut removes attributes that return an empty string or null as a value, and all dates and times are GMT.
I encountered one file that broke this shortcut, and the reason was that an attribute value was not an expected type. Otherwise, I tested this on my macOS 26.5 computer without issue.
Display Spotlight.shortcut (24.5 KB)
