Native macOS · Apple silicon
SyncMyLibs opens every Apple Photos library you own — side by side. Browse, compare, and move photos between them with faces, people, keywords, albums, GPS, dates and edits intact.
macOS 26+ · Apple silicon · one-time purchase
Apple Photos manages exactly one library at a time — switching means quitting, reopening, and losing your place. Anyone with an archive drive, a family library, or years of exported projects knows the dance. SyncMyLibs removes the dance. Every library opens at once, and photos move between them without losing what makes them yours.
transfers preserve → faces & people · keywords · albums & folders · GPS · dates · edits · RAW+JPEG pairs
re-encoding of your originals → never
snapshot before a merge, move or bulk edit → on by default
One window, every library — and the tools Photos never grew.
Move photos between libraries with faces, people, keywords, albums, GPS, dates and edits carried over — not stripped.
Content hash, visual similarity, Apple's own hash, or plain filename. The default groups by content, so a library you already merged once still recognises its own photos.
Rename, merge, hide and repair People in your secondary libraries, and rename them in the system one. Photos gives you this for a single library at a time.
Mark screenshots and screen recordings in bulk so they filter properly — synced across your devices.
Recover real capture dates from filenames: Unix timestamps, ISO 8601, screenshots, Snowflake IDs and WhatsApp exports, among forty patterns in all.
Your originals are never re-encoded. Metadata writes go through exiftool — the archival standard — or don't happen.
Cmd+Z reverses the granular edits, and a snapshot taken before a merge, move or bulk edit rolls the whole library back.
Writes to your iCloud system library go through Apple's own PhotoKit, so Photos sees them and syncs them the way it syncs its own.
Merges read and write the library databases directly rather than driving Photos from the outside, and a duplicate scan sizes files before it ever hashes a byte.
PowerPhotos is a fine app — here's exactly where we differ.
| Capability | SyncMyLibs | PowerPhotos |
|---|---|---|
| Faces & People survive transfer 1 | ✓ | — |
| Duplicate detection methods | 4 | 1 |
| People management (rename, merge, hide) | ✓ | — |
| Screenshot tagging with cross-device sync | ✓ | — |
| Date extraction & repair | ✓ | — |
| Direct library engine, not an AppleScript bridge 2 | ✓ | — |
| Mac App Store distribution | — | ✓ |
App Store distribution is a deliberate trade: sandboxed apps can't reach other libraries' databases. SyncMyLibs will ship signed and notarized by Apple instead, which is the same Gatekeeper screening with more capability.
1 Faces and People travel into a secondary library. Apple gives no API for writing face data into the iCloud system library, so a transfer in that direction carries everything else and Photos re-detects the faces itself.
2 The library engines are direct SQLite and PhotoKit. One operation still goes through Photos' own scripting interface: writing keywords to the iCloud system library, which has no other supported vehicle.
Every engineering decision starts from one rule: no data loss, ever.
Yes, that's the design constraint everything else serves. Originals are never re-encoded, writes to your iCloud system library go through Apple's own PhotoKit, and granular edits reverse with Cmd+Z. Secondary libraries are snapshotted before a merge, move or bulk edit; your system library is left to Photos and iCloud, which keep their own copies, and a delete there is final.
Yes. Your system library keeps syncing normally, and changes SyncMyLibs makes through PhotoKit propagate to your other devices the way Photos' own changes do. People edits are the exception: Apple exposes no API for them, so renaming or merging a person in your system library stays on that Mac. Offline libraries on external drives work too.
Photos libraries other than your system library live behind macOS file protections. Full Disk Access lets SyncMyLibs open them directly — it's the same requirement any multi-library tool has, and the app asks once with an explanation.
macOS 26 or later on Apple silicon. It's a native Swift app, no Electron and no web views.
One-time purchase, priced at launch — no subscription. Updates arrive in-app.