Frequently asked questions

Where do my keywords go?

Straight into your Apple Photos library, as the same keyword field Photos itself uses — any app that reads Photos keywords sees them, and they stay in your library if you delete TAG Lens.

Does TAG Lens upload my photos?

Not on its own — a photo file leaves your Mac only when you send it yourself: drag, share, export, or Publish to Flickr, which uploads the frames you picked to your own Flickr account after a confirmation sheet. Every background network feature is off by default behind its own consent switch, and each sends only what’s named: related-keyword enrichment sends only the tag term you typed to a public reference API (Wikidata, and/or Grokipedia — a keyless wiki lookup with its own consent switch); AI keyword suggestions send only that term to the AI provider you choose (xAI, OpenAI, Anthropic, Mistral, Groq, DeepSeek, or your own local/custom endpoint — using your own key); place-name lookup sends a photo’s GPS coordinates to Apple’s geocoder; and place-from-photo-text sends a place name read off a sign in a No-Location photo (never the photo) to Apple’s location search. The only feature that reads a photo’s pixels works solely with a model running on your own Mac (a loopback address) — those pixels never reach an internet endpoint. Details in the privacy policy.

Where do my star ratings live — will I lose them?

Stars and reject marks live in a TAG Lens file on this Mac — TAG Lens is their home. (On macOS 27, Library ▸ Promote Stars to Photos… can write them into Photos itself.) They’re portable two ways: any JPEG you drag, share, or export carries its stars as IPTC StarRating — Lightroom, Bridge, and Photos all read that field — and Settings ▸ Ratings Backup exports every rating and reject mark as JSON. Do that export before migrating or rebuilding your Photos library: a rebuild can change the photo identifiers your stars are keyed to, and importing the backup reattaches them.

Can I undo a change?

Every metadata write records its reverse on ⌘Z — up to 50 actions in a session, and a multi-photo batch undoes as one action. Deleting is the exception: deleted photos go to Photos’ own Recently Deleted album, recoverable for about 30 days.

Can TAG Lens delete my photos without asking?

No. The app never deletes on its own. Both delete paths — culling rejected photos and the inspector Delete button — go through Apple’s standard system confirmation dialog, after which items land in Photos’ Recently Deleted, recoverable for about 30 days.

Does TAG Lens edit my photos?

Never. It is not a photo editor: it writes metadata — keywords, titles, captions, favorites, album membership, capture dates, locations — and never modifies image pixels.

Does it work with iCloud Photos?

Yes. Metadata TAG Lens writes syncs to your other devices the same way any edit made in Photos itself does — on iPhone and iPad, search finds your titles and captions. Keywords are real Photos keywords and travel with your library, but iOS gives them no screen of their own and iPhone search does not surface them — keyword search is a Photos-on-Mac power. If an original lives only in iCloud, TAG Lens can fetch it automatically for viewing (Settings ▸ General ▸ Download originals automatically); metadata edits work either way.

I shoot film — does it help with scanned negatives?

Yes, it’s built for exactly that. Assign your scans to a roll and every frame wears an honest Shot on line you set — “Canon AE-1 · Tri-X 400” — kept in TAG Lens, never forged into the file’s EXIF. When your scanner’s name lands in the camera field (Perfection, CanoScan, Noritsu…), TAG Lens calls the frame a Scanner, treats the file date as a scan date, and offers to repair a whole roll to the year you actually shot it. It can read a roll for the recurring dust that sits in the same spot across frames, too — but it never retouches; the fix is yours, in your editor.

Can I add my own keywords or categories?

Yes. Type any keyword and it’s yours. Beyond that, import a taxonomy pack — a plain file of your terms and their broader words — and they suggest like the built-ins: tag a Copepod and “Zooplankton, Plankton” come along, so a search for the general word still finds the specific shot. Import as many as you like, and hand one to a colleague — a plankton biologist can pass along their plankton pack and it drops right in. It all stays on your Mac.

Is TAG Lens available in Japanese?

Yes — the whole app is localized in Japanese, consent and permission screens first, down to the names of the taxonomy packs. Only the app’s own text is translated: your keywords, titles, and captions are your words and are never touched. Set your Mac to Japanese in System Settings ▸ General ▸ Language & Region and TAG Lens follows.

TAG Lens can’t see my photos, or says Photos control is not authorized

TAG Lens needs two macOS permissions: Photos library access (System Settings ▸ Privacy & Security ▸ Photos) and automation control of Photos (System Settings ▸ Privacy & Security ▸ Automation) to write keywords, titles, and captions. Step-by-step fixes on the support page.

What does it need to run?

macOS 14 or later, and your Apple Photos library. No account or sign-in for tagging, and no subscription — culling and rating are free forever, keywording your first few hundred photos is free, and the optional one-time unlock for unlimited keywording is a standard App Store purchase with your Apple Account.

How large a library does it handle?

Comfortably past 100,000 photos — measured, not guessed. TAG Lens’s own overhead grows linearly: browsing, searching, filtering, and tagging stay quick, and its index footprint is modest (about 0.7 MB per thousand photos), benchmarked to 200,000 with no wall. The honest caveat is that this is only TAG Lens’s half — Apple Photos does its own heavy work on a giant library (face scanning, Memories, iCloud sync) that no third-party app controls, and on a very large library that is usually what you feel first. TAG Lens won’t be your bottleneck; Photos might be.

Something else? Get in touch.