Why there are so many of them
A phone backup copied to a Mac isn't a camera roll. It's a camera roll mixed with every screenshot you took and every image that arrived in a chat: good-morning pictures, memes, receipts, the same invitation from six relatives. Messaging apps save those automatically, so they pile up without anyone choosing to keep them. Taking them out first leaves you with the photos you actually took.
How do I find screenshots on a Mac?
- Taken on this Mac: type
kMDItemIsScreenCapture:1into Finder's search field. Spotlight marks every screenshot macOS takes, whatever it's called now. - By name: macOS (since Mojave) and Android call them “Screenshot …”, older macOS “Screen Shot …”. Search for
screenshotand pick the suggestion that matches file names rather than contents. On a Mac set to another language the word changes: Bildschirmfoto, Capture d'écran, Captura de pantalla. - From an iPhone: iPhone screenshots arrive with ordinary names like
IMG_1234.PNG. What gives them away is the format: camera photos are HEIC or JPEG, screenshots are PNG. In the folder, choose View → Arrange By → Kind and the PNG images gather together. Skim them before moving anything, because images saved from the web can be PNG too.
To search only the folder you're in rather than the whole Mac, click its name next to “Search:” at the top of the results.
How do I find WhatsApp and Telegram images?
Each app names its files its own way, and the names are consistent enough to search for:
| App | File names look like | Search Finder for |
|---|---|---|
| WhatsApp on Android | IMG-20230101-WA0001.jpg, VID-20230101-WA0002.mp4, in folders called WhatsApp Images and WhatsApp Video | WA0 |
| WhatsApp on iPhone (shared) and WhatsApp Desktop | WhatsApp Image 2023-01-01 at 10.00.00.jpeg | WhatsApp Image |
| Telegram Desktop | photo_2023-01-01_10-00-00.jpg, in a Telegram Desktop folder | photo_20 |
| Signal | signal-2023-01-01-100000.jpg | signal-20 |
| Facebook and Messenger | FB_IMG_1672531200000.jpg, received_1234567890.jpeg | FB_IMG, received_ |
On a backup that went through an iPhone's camera roll, saved WhatsApp images can lose these names and look like any other IMG_ file. Those you'll catch one at a time.
Move them, don't delete them
Select the results, drag them into a screenshots or forwards folder, and stop there. A boarding pass, a receipt you'll need for a return, the only photo of your grandmother that someone forwarded: they all look like clutter to a search. Skim the folder later, when it's the only thing you're looking at, and delete from there.
Or all at once, while you sort
Cullzy checks for all of this when you open a folder: the names above in about twenty languages, the folders the apps make, Spotlight's screenshot flag, and images exactly the size of a phone or screen with no camera details inside. When it finds ten or more, it offers them as one selection. You look it over, press one number, and they're filed into a folder. It never moves them on its own.
After that, what's left is mostly photos someone took, ready to sort into folders, after a pass for duplicates.
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