Pict-o-view Help

Getting started

• Add folders

  Click + in the sidebar (or press ⌘O), or drag a folder in from Finder. Pict-o-view only ever sees folders you add — it never scans the rest of your Mac.

• Folder trees & subfolders

  Folders containing subfolders expand into a tree in the sidebar. Turn on Include Subfolders in the View menu to pool a whole tree into one grid.

• Make it your default viewer

  In Finder, select a photo, press ⌘I, choose Pict-o-view under “Open with”, and click Change All. Repeat once for a video to cover movies too.

Browsing

• The photo grid

  Double-click a thumbnail (or press Return) to open it. Sort by name, date, or size with the Sort button in the toolbar, and group by type or pool subfolders from the View menu; search by filename in the toolbar.

• Select & organise

  Click, ⇧-click, and ⌘-click to select photos (⌘A for all). Right-click for actions: rename, move to another folder, move to Trash, reveal in Finder — or drag files straight out to any app.

• Copy & paste files

  ⌘C copies selected photos; ⌘V pastes them into whichever folder you're viewing. Dropping files from Finder onto the grid copies them in, too.

• Drag between folders

  Drag photos from the grid onto any folder in the sidebar to copy them there. Hover over a collapsed folder for a moment and it springs open, so you can drop into subfolders.

• Favorites

  Right-click a photo or folder and choose Add to Favorites. Starred photos from every folder gather in the “Favorite Photos” view in the sidebar. To start over, right-click the Favorite Photos view to clear every favorite photo, or a starred folder to clear every favorite folder.

• Share

  Select photos and use the Share button in the toolbar — or right-click anywhere a photo lives — to send via AirDrop, Messages, Mail, and more.

Viewing photos

• Instant paging

  Move between photos with ← / →, the on-screen arrows, or a two-finger swipe. Neighbours are pre-loaded, so holding an arrow key flies through a folder.

• Zoom & pan

  Hold ⌃ and scroll to zoom smoothly (or use + / − / 0). When zoomed in, drag the photo to pan. Double-click to snap back to fit.

• Distraction-free viewing

  Single-click the photo to hide every control; click again to bring them back (also View ▸ Show / Hide Controls, ⌥⌘T).

• Slideshow

  Press Space to start a slideshow. Set the pace with the slider (1–10 s) — controls and cursor fade out while it plays. ⌃⌘F for full screen.

• Filmstrip & info

  Press F for a thumbnail strip to jump around the folder, and I for the info panel: dimensions, file size, camera, and date taken — with the full EXIF and metadata tree below that. The grid's Info button opens the same inspector.

Editing

• Rotate & crop — safely

  Press E (or the wand button) to rotate and crop. Edits never touch the original file: they're stored separately and applied on the fly.

• Export a copy

  Want a real file with the edits baked in? Export Copy… in the editor saves one wherever you choose, originals untouched.

Culling

A review pass for going through a shoot quickly, with the marks saved on your Mac.

• Cull mode

  Click Cull ▸ Start Culling (⌘K, or the checklist button in the viewer) to go through a shoot fast. The culling keys are armed only in this mode, so casual viewing is never affected — leave with Done or Esc.

• Keep, reject, unmark

  While culling, press P to keep, X to reject, and U to clear a mark. Keep and reject jump to the next photo automatically, and a running count shows how many are left. The three actions on the HUD are clickable too, if you'd rather work with the mouse — and the bar itself can be dragged anywhere.

• Mark from the grid

  You don't have to be in cull mode: right-click any photo — or a whole selection — and choose Keep, Reject, or Unmark. Each entry greys out when it would change nothing, so the menu also tells you where the photos already stand.

• Filter & clean up

  Back in the grid, the Cull menu filters to Kept, Rejected, or Unmarked, and can sweep every reject into a “Rejected” subfolder or the Trash in one step. Clear Marks in This Folder starts a folder over, with eight seconds to undo it; the Cull menu’s Clear All Marks resets every folder at once.

• Hand off the keepers

  Cull ▸ Move Kept to… sends every photo you flagged into a folder you choose, and the marks travel with the files. Right-click any selection for a plain Move to… when you'd rather pick the photos by hand.

• Export your decisions

  Cull ▸ Export Cull List writes a CSV of the whole folder in its current sort order — kept, rejected and untouched alike — for a spreadsheet or a client.

• Your keys, your way

  P, X and U are only the defaults. Rebind any of them in Settings ▸ Culling (⌘,), where you can also let videos play while you cull and choose whether marks show on thumbnails and in the folder tree.

Video

• Playback

  MOV, MP4, and M4V play in the viewer with a scrubbing preview thumbnail. Press [ or ] for slower / faster playback; volume and mute are remembered.

• MKV, straight away

  MKV files open and play immediately — no conversion step, no temporary copy, and your original is never touched. 4K HEVC and H.264 are decoded by your Mac's own hardware, so playback stays smooth and cool.

• Audio tracks & volume

  Multi-language films list every track in the Video menu’s Audio Track submenu, labelled with language, format and channels, so you can tell two English tracks apart. 5.1 surround (AC-3, E-AC-3) plays as well. ⇧⌘M mutes; ⌘↑ and ⌘↓ step the volume.

• Mini player & autoplay

  Pop a video out into picture-in-picture with the PiP button. Turn on Autoplay (the ∞ button, the Video menu, or Settings) to roll straight into the next video.

• When a file won't play

  Formats macOS can't decode (WebM/VP9, OGV and friends) are still listed so you can see them, and open to a plain explanation with a button to reveal the file in Finder.

Privacy & settings

• Everything stays on your Mac

  No accounts, no analytics, no network. Files in iCloud Drive show a placeholder and download only when you open them. The full privacy policy says the same thing at length.

• Settings (⌘,)

  Reopen your last folder at launch, set the slideshow pace, control video autoplay, and rebind the culling keys.

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