Tips, shortcuts, and answers for Visuals on macOS.
| Shortcut | Does |
|---|---|
| ⌘1 / ⌘2 / ⌘₃ | Grid / List / Map |
| ⌘⌃S | Show or hide the sidebar |
| ⌘I | Show or hide the Inspector |
| ⌘F | Jump to the search field |
| ⌘+ / ⌘− | Bigger or smaller thumbnails |
| Shortcut | Does |
|---|---|
| Arrow keys | Move through the grid |
| ⇧ + arrows | Extend the selection |
| ⌘↩ | Open the selected item in the lightbox |
| ↩ | Rename the selected item |
| Esc | Close the lightbox, or clear an active filter |
| Shortcut | Does |
|---|---|
| ← → ↑ ↓ | Previous / next item |
| Space | Play or pause a video |
| ⌘+ / ⌘− | Zoom in / out |
| ⌘[ / ⌘] | Rotate left / right |
| F | Toggle Faces mode (images only) |
| Esc | Leave Faces mode, then close the lightbox |
| Shortcut | Does |
|---|---|
| . (period) | Favourite / unfavourite the selection |
| ⌘⌫ | Move the selection to the Trash |
| ⌘⌥R | Reveal the selected item in Finder |
| ⌘⇧N | New folder (in the sidebar) |
| ⌘X / ⌘C / ⌘V | Cut, copy and paste folders in the sidebar |
| Shortcut | Does |
|---|---|
| ⌘⇧N | New library (from the File menu) |
| ⌘⇧O | Open an existing library |
| ⌘⇧R | Rescan all watched folders |
| ⌥⇧D | Open the Diagnostics panel |
The View menu is where the grid lives. Aspect Preserved, Square Cropped and Masonry are all there, along with Show Filenames, Show Item Counts and the Status Bar.
Move the filmstrip, or turn it off. View ▸ Strip Position gives you Left, Bottom or None. “None” turns the lightbox into just the picture.
Scroll to zoom is optional. By default, scrolling in the lightbox moves to the next item. View ▸ Scroll to Zoom in Lightbox flips it.
Search searches the whole library by default. Switch the scope next to the search field if you want results limited to where you are.
Save any view as an album. Filter, sort and search until the grid shows what you want, then use the “save as album” button in the toolbar.
The Inspector edits many items at once. Select a batch and the Inspector will apply tags, colours, comments or a date to all of them.
Colour tags are Finder-style. Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Purple and Gray — useful as a fast triage pass before you commit to real tags.
The index-status checkmark tells you what the AI has finished. Turn on View ▸ Show Index Status Checkmark to see at a glance which items have been fully analysed.
Smart albums update themselves. Build them from tags, colour tags, file name, media type, favourite status, date taken or date added.
Photo Trails on the Map. Map view can join photos taken close together in time and place into a trail, and ← → walk you along it.
Insights is a real browsing surface. It breaks your library down by when you shoot, what you shoot with, and where you’ve been — the rows are clickable.
Batch rename. Select a group, rename them in one pass, and undo the whole batch if it goes wrong.
“Find Similar to This” on any item opens the Similar & Duplicates workspace already pointed at that photo.
Visuals browses your folders — it doesn’t import your photos
You point Visuals at folders you already have. Your files stay exactly where they are, in the structure you built, with the names you gave them. Visuals never copies them into a hidden store.
That also means Visuals is safe to try and safe to leave. Delete the app and your photos are untouched. Editing works the other way too: renaming, moving or trashing something in Visuals really does rename, move or trash the file on disk.
Where your library lives
A Visuals library is a single .visualslibrary package holding the index, your thumbnails, and the tags, people and albums you’ve created. Your media is not inside it.
You can have as many libraries as you like and switch between them from the library name above the sidebar.
Caption vs comment
Caption is a portable description. It’s read from the image file’s own IPTC/XMP metadata and is meant to travel with the file.
Comment is a private working note. It lives in your Visuals library and is never written into the file.
What syncs between your devices
If you use Visuals on more than one device, iCloud syncs the work you’ve done: tags, colour tags, favourites, comments, captions, albums, smart albums and the people you’ve named.
It does not sync your media files or the AI index. Photos stay where you put them, and each device does its own analysis locally. Sync is always on — there’s no switch to find. The status indicator sits beside the library name.
If you name the same person independently on two devices, Visuals asks whether they’re the same person and shows you both faces. It never merges silently.
iCloud is usually the bottleneck, not Visuals
This is the single most common cause of “Visuals is slow” — and it’s worth understanding, because it also tells you how to check.
Visuals has no private line to iCloud. It doesn’t have its own downloader, its own network connection, or its own copy of your files. When it needs a file that lives in iCloud but isn’t on this Mac, it asks macOS for it — exactly the same request Finder makes when you double-click that file. The same is true of thumbnails: Visuals uses QuickLook, the macOS service that draws the previews in Finder’s icon and gallery views.
There’s a simple test. Find the file in Finder and try to preview it — press Space, or switch to Gallery view. If Finder can show it quickly, Visuals should too. If Finder is also sitting on a spinner or an empty grey box, that’s iCloud being slow, and no photo app on your Mac will do better until it does.
Why it can take so long. iCloud Drive doesn’t stream. It fetches the entire file and only then makes it usable. A 150 MB video took 13–29 seconds; a 255 MB one took 48 seconds; a 603 MB one took 71 seconds — with nothing playable at all until the last byte landed.
What Visuals does about it:
Cloud files appear in the grid with a cloud badge so your library is complete even when the files aren’t on this Mac.
Opening one shows real byte counts — “412 MB of 1.2 GB” — so you can see it moving.
The “is this stalled?” timer measures progress, not elapsed time. A slow four-gigabyte fetch is left alone; a genuinely silent one is called out and offered a Retry.
It fetches missing thumbnails a few at a time in the background, keeps the thumbnail once it has one, and removes the file again afterwards.
It backs off automatically when iCloud stops responding, and pauses on connections that cost money.
The AI features are local, and optional
Similar & Duplicates, Semantic Search and People all run on your Mac. Nothing is uploaded, and there’s no account or API key.
They do need models, which Visuals downloads once from Settings ▸ AI. Until you download them, the rest of the app works normally. Indexing happens in the background and picks up where it left off if interrupted.
Getting started
Do I have to import my photos?
No. You point Visuals at folders you already have and it indexes them in place. Your files never move and nothing is copied.
Will Visuals change my files?
Not on its own. It writes only when you ask it to — renaming, moving, trashing, or saving a caption. Everything else lives in the Visuals library, not in your files.
Which file types does Visuals show?
JPEG, PNG, HEIC and MP4/MOV. Anything else in the folder is ignored — it isn’t deleted or altered, it just doesn’t appear in the grid.
How do I add or remove folders?
Use the folder button in the toolbar, or drag a folder onto the sidebar. To stop watching one, right-click it in the sidebar. Removing a watched folder never deletes anything on disk.
Can I have more than one library?
Yes. File ▸ New Library, and switch between them by clicking the library name above the sidebar.
Things not showing up
I added photos in Finder and they’re not in Visuals.
Visuals watches your folders and normally notices within seconds. If it hasn’t:
Some photos have a cloud icon and look blank.
Those are in iCloud but not downloaded to this Mac. Visuals shows them so your library is complete, and pulls the full file down when you open one.
Cloud thumbnails are taking forever to appear.
Check the same folder in Finder — switch it to Gallery view, or select a file and press Space. Visuals uses QuickLook for thumbnails, the same service Finder uses. If Finder is slow on those files too, it’s iCloud being slow rather than anything Visuals can speed up. If Finder is quick and Visuals isn’t, that’s a bug and we’d like to hear about it.
A cloud video takes a minute to start playing.
iCloud Drive doesn’t stream — it fetches the whole file before any of it is playable. A 255 MB video took about 48 seconds; a 603 MB one about 71 seconds — with nothing to see until the last byte arrived. Visuals shows real byte counts while it waits. It’s worth downloading the ones you watch often — they open instantly once local.
I opened a big cloud file by mistake. Can I cancel the download?
Not once macOS has started it — that’s true of Finder too, not just Visuals. It will finish quietly in the background. Nothing is wasted; the file will be local next time you want it.
A folder shows up empty.
Usually it’s still downloading from iCloud, or macOS hasn’t granted access yet. Try re-adding it from the sidebar — macOS will ask for permission if that’s the problem.
Some items are marked as missing.
The files moved or were deleted outside Visuals. A full rescan (⌘⇧R) will match anything that merely moved back to its record, tags and all.
Speed and storage
The first scan of a big library is slow.
The first pass has to read every file and build a thumbnail for each one. After that Visuals only looks at what changed, and start-up is fast. Leave it running once and it won’t ask again.
Visuals is using a lot of disk space.
Thumbnails and the AI index, both inside the library package. AI models can be removed at any time from Settings ▸ AI. You can also drop every embedding from the same place — your photos, tags and people are untouched.
Can I stop it downloading my cloud files while it indexes?
Yes. Settings ▸ AI has a cloud-sync control for exactly this. Visuals also backs off on its own if iCloud stops responding, and pauses on expensive connections.
AI features
Does anything leave my Mac?
No. All analysis runs locally. The only network requests are the one-time model download, and metadata sync to your own iCloud account if you use more than one device.
What’s the difference between Exact, Near and Semantic?
Exact finds byte-identical copies. Near finds photos that look nearly the same — bursts, the same frame saved at different sizes. Semantic finds photos of the same subject or scene even when they look nothing alike.
Semantic search returns nothing.
Either the text model isn’t installed (Settings ▸ AI will say so) or the library hasn’t finished indexing yet. Coverage is shown on the same screen.
Some files show as “can’t be read”.
They’re damaged, or they aren’t really the kind of file the extension claims. They stay in your library and stay searchable by name — only the picture analysis skips them.
Visuals found a face that isn’t a face.
Select it in Faces mode and delete it — ⌫, or right-click ▸ Delete face permanently. It won’t come back.
Licence and purchase
How does the trial work?
Ten days, everything unlocked, no card. The paywall tells you the exact date it ends rather than counting down at you.
What am I buying?
One payment, no subscription and no renewal.
I bought from the Mac App Store. Do I have to buy again for iPhone or iPad?
No — it’s a Universal Purchase. Buy once and it’s unlocked on Mac, iPhone and iPad under the same Apple Account.
I bought directly from Bloo Software. What about my iPhone and iPad?
Your direct licence unlocks the iOS and iPadOS apps too.
How do I activate a direct licence?
Settings ▸ License, enter the email you bought with, then the code that’s sent to you.
I reinstalled and it’s asking me to activate again.
Re-enter the same email. Your licence isn’t consumed by reinstalling.
How do I update?
The direct version checks for updates itself — Visuals ▸ Check for Updates. The App Store version updates through the App Store.
Something’s wrong
How do I send you useful information about a problem?
Press ⌥⇧D to open Diagnostics. It shows what Visuals is doing and where it thinks everything lives — send that along with what you were doing at the time.
Can I reset my settings without losing my library?
Yes. Settings ▸ Advanced ▸ Restore Defaults resets preferences only. Your library, tags, people and albums are untouched.
Can I get my tags and comments out?
Yes. File ▸ Export Library Data writes them out, and Import Library Data brings them back in — into another library, or after rebuilding one. You choose which fields to bring across and how to handle conflicts.
