Photo Organizer

Point PhotoTray at the folders your photos actually live in and it will rename them by the date they were taken, file them into date folders, or find duplicates for you to review.

This is the one utility that never runs unattended — duplicate review is a human decision, so Photo Organizer can never be used in a Watch Folders rule.

The shared folder list

All three modes work over the same list.

• Add folder opens a folder picker. Add as many as you like; remove one with its ✕.
• Include subfolders walks everything inside the folders above. On by default.

Your folder list, pattern and destination are remembered between sessions.

Rename

Renames photos in place from the date the camera recorded.

• Type a Filename pattern. The default is {YYYY}-{MM}-{DD} {HH}{mm}{ss}.
• A reference table under the field lists every token:

• A pattern must contain at least one date token, and cannot contain characters Windows rejects in a filename.
• Photos keep their extension. Names that would collide get -1, -2 appended.

File by date

Moves photos into dated folders.

• Type a Destination. The default is \Photos\{Year}\{Month}.
• A destination starting with \ uses the same drive as each photo — so \Photos\2026\08 keeps everything on the drive it was already on.

The live preview

Both modes show a running dry-run as you type, listing up to 20 from → to rows plus an "…and N more" summary, and a skipped count you can expand to see why each file was left out. Nothing happens until you press the button — and the button stays disabled until the preview finds something to do.

Find duplicates

Scans your folders and compares photos by content.

1. Press Scan for duplicates. A progress bar and a Cancel button appear while it runs.
2. When it finishes you get a headline — "N duplicate sets · X reclaimable" — plus counts of how many photos were scanned, newly hashed, reused from cache, and skipped.
3. Each duplicate set is a card of thumbnails. One file per set is marked Keep — largest and has no checkbox at all — it cannot be deleted from this screen. Every other copy has a Recycle Bin checkbox, and a Reveal link to open it in File Explorer.
4. Per set, Select all but the kept file ticks the rest; Clear unticks them.

Nothing is pre-selected, and there is no "clean everything" button. Deleting takes two explicit clicks: press Move N files (X) to the Recycle Bin, then Confirm — move N files to the Recycle Bin. Changing your selection at any point re-disarms the confirmation.

Files go to the Windows Recycle Bin — never a permanent delete. You can restore them from there.

Output

Rename and File by date work on your photos where they are. The duplicate scan writes its report into the Photo Organizer subfolder.

If something goes wrong here

• The Rename button is disabled. Either the pattern is invalid (the error is printed beneath it), no folders are added, or the preview found nothing to rename.
• "That scan report is no longer on disk — run the scan again." Duplicate results live in a report file. If it has been deleted, or the app has been restarted since a very old scan, the panel says so rather than showing you a reassuring empty result. Re-run the scan.
• Some photos are missing from the preview. Expand the skipped count — each entry names the file and the reason, usually a missing capture date.
• HEIC and RAW thumbnails show a plain extension label. That is intentional: decoding those formats per thumbnail would be far too slow for a large grid. The filename and folder under each tile are what tell the copies apart.