01What it is
Sift is a macOS app that allows you to quickly view and bulk edit the photos in your gallery without compromising file quality.
Apple is great at a lot of things; letting macOS users view multiple photos from a folder is not one of those things. The native Preview app opens one photo at a time. At best I can highlight a group of photos, press the space bar, and use the arrow keys to navigate through multiple photos. Why are there so many steps to accomplish a fairly common task?
Anyone who takes a lot of photos knows that most of a shoot gets thrown away. Yet Preview offers no quick way to do that. No quick way to skim through photos and delete them or favorite them. No quick way to bulk rotate images. And the ability to do basic edits like brightness, highlights, shadows, etc. is hidden deep in the Tools menu.
Windows’ native photo viewer app is fairly good at photo previewing, but it’s not available on macOS. ApolloOne is a good third-party app for macOS, but it has bugs that I literally can no longer wait for its developers to fix (Why do videos autoplay? Why can’t I navigate past them with the arrow keys? Is that a privilege reserved for the paying elite?). Lightroom is bloated and requires a subscription. Thus, Sift.
| Functionality | Sift | Preview (native) | ApolloOne | Lightroom |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delete while you skim | YesJust the D key | NoBack to Finder | YesCmd + D, two keys | YesFlag, then delete |
| Favorite while you skim | YesJust the . key | NoNothing to press | NoOnly a rating | Yes |
| Rotate a batch quickly | Yes | NoRight-click to open menu, select Quick Actions, only left-rotation option exists | Yes | Yes |
| Basic photo editing | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Lightweight on disk | Yes8.1 MB | Yes11.1 MB | Yes50–100 MB | No2–4 GB |
| No subscription | Yes | Yes | YesFree, with paid extras | NoSubscription |
Two passes
02How it's built
This was my first time creating an app for macOS and I was surprisingly delighted to find that Apple offers an entire library of interface icons called SF Symbols. It helped the app look more native and cohesive and lightweight.
More details coming soon!
