PowerPhotos 2.5 supports macOS Sonoma and adds interactive merge/duplicate reports

PowerPhotos 2.5 is now available, with official support for macOS Sonoma, as well as new interactive reports that help you explore the results of merging, copying, and duplicate search operations.

macOS Sonoma

Only a few minor changes were required for macOS Sonoma, but I recommend anybody upgrading to macOS Sonoma update to PowerPhotos 2.5 as well. Version 2.5 adds better handling for new permission prompts in macOS Sonoma when PowerPhotos reads Photos’ preferences files, as well as fixing some issues with doing duplicate searches on libraries where PowerPhotos had saved cached duplicate analysis data from older versions of macOS.

New Interactive Reports

The most prominent addition to PowerPhotos 2.5 is a new interactive report that can be accessed after completing a merge, a photo/album copy, or a duplicate search. Previously, PowerPhotos would keep a log file with details of what happened during long operations like this, to help troubleshoot any problems that might happen. However, digging through the logs was difficult and often required contacting tech support for assistance. My goal with these reports is to let people more easily see an overview of what happened during a long operation. The report is similar to the preview report added in PowerPhotos 2.4, but they are saved to disk to be accessed later on, and have a bunch more functionality.

After completing a merge or other operation, you can access the merge report via the Reports button in the toolbar, or by selecting the Window > Show Reports menu item. Each report will give an overview of how many photos were in each library before the merge, how many photos were successfully copied, how many photos failed to copy, how many duplicates were skipped, and several other categories. If you are curious why certain photos did or didn’t copy during a merge, you can view each group of photos and browse through them, or take action on them, such as deleting, exporting, or collecting the photos into an album. You can read more about using reports in the PowerPhotos manual.

Updating

PowerPhotos 2.5 is a free update, and requires macOS 12 Monterey or later (no change from previous versions). Users already running 2.x can use the “Check For Updates” menu item within the app to download and install the new version, or grab the latest version from the PowerPhotos web page.