Script: How to find photos without any keywords

Photos (version 1.0 to 3.0) has no option to search for photos that have not yet have any keywords assigned, like we could in Aperture or iPhoto. There is no search rule "Keyword is none" for the smart albums.

The Apple Script below can be used to look at selected photos in Photos and to add all photos to an album, that do not have any keywords.

See OT's post below for a download link.

(* Find All Photos Without Keywords © Léonie

--------------------------------

This script will scan the photos passed to it for keywords and add all photos without keywords to a standard album called missingKeywordsAlbum.

You can change the default name by adding a different album name in this line of the script: setmissingalbumnameto "missingKeywordsAlbum"

To use this script, select a some photos in Photos to check for missing keyword.

Then press the "Run" button.

The photos can be passed to the script in two ways:

1. Either select photos while viewing the "All Photos" album; this works better than Moments or smart albums

2. Or collect the Photos in a top level defined album with a fixed name. This is safer when your Photos Library is an iCloud Photo Library.

If you want to select the photos without collecting them in an album, set the variable "ReadFromAlbum" to false

If you want to pass the photos in a toplevel album, set ReadFromAlbum to true and change the variable "theAlbumName" to the name of the album you are using.

*)

set ReadFromAlbum to false

-- set this to true, if you want to pass the photos in a toplevel album

set theAlbumName to "PhotoDropBox" -- change this to the name of the album you will use

set imageSel to {}

set saved_delimiter to AppleScript'stext item delimiters--save the delimiter

set missingalbumname to "missingKeywordsAlbum"

tell application "Photos"

activate

if (ReadFromAlbum) then -- the photos will be passed in a toplevel album named "PhotoDropBox"

try

if existscontainertheAlbumName then

set thePhotosBuffer to containertheAlbumName

set imageSel to every media item of thePhotosBuffer

else

error "Album " & theAlbumName & "does not exist"

end if

on error errTexttwonumbererrNumtwo

display dialog "Cannot open album: " & errNumtwo & return & errTexttwo

end try

else -- process the selected photos from the All Photos album

try

set imageSel to (get selection)

on error errTexttwonumbererrNumtwo

display dialog "Cannot get the selection: " & errNumtwo & return & errTexttwo

end try

end if

-- check, if the album or the selected photos do contain images

if imageSel is {} then

error "Please select some images."

else -- create an album for the photos without keywords

try

if existscontainermissingalbumname then

set kwa to containermissingalbumname

else

set kwa to (makenewalbumnamedmissingalbumname)

end if

on error errTexttwonumbererrNumtwo

display dialog "Cannot open album missingKeywordsAlbum: " & errNumtwo & return & errTexttwo

end try

repeat with im in imageSel

try

tell im

--set the text item delimiter

set AppleScript'stext item delimiters to {", "} --use a comma and space as the delimiter

-- retrieve the keywords

set kws to its keywords as string

if (not (exists kws) or (kws is "missing value")) then

add {im} to kwa

end if

end tell

on error errText number errNum

display dialog "Error: " & errNum & return & errText & "Trying again"

try

delay 2 -- wait and try again

tell im

--set the text item delimiter

set AppleScript'stext item delimiters to {", "} --use a comma and space as the delimiter

-- retrieve the keywords

set kws to its keywords as string

if (not (exists kws) or (kws is "missing value")) then

add {im} to kwa

end if

end tell

on error errTexttwonumbererrNumtwo

display dialog "Skipping image due to repeated error: " & errNumtwo & return & errTexttwo

end try

end try

end repeat

end if

end tell

-- display dialog "Done"

set AppleScript'stext item delimiters to saved_delimiter--restore the delimiter

return "Done"