Finder no longer showing image info in preview pane/file browser after upgrade from High Sierra to Catalina.

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Level 2

156 points

Finder no longer showing image info in preview pane/file browser after upgrade from High Sierra to Catalina.

Hi!

I recently replaced my 2011 iMac running High Sierra with a 2020 iMac that was shipped with Catalina.

All other headaches aside (and there are plenty), one of the bigger issues is that finder's preview/info panel no longer shows me any information about my images (well, they do if the image is on the internal HD, but I'm a photographer so they all live on an external HD). This has NEVER been an issue with any other version of Mac OS up to High Sierra (not sure about anything in between).

How can I get this functionality back? And I've tried EVERYTHING suggested from long, deep Google searches and nothing works. The drive in question is a Western Digital, formatted as "Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled)".

This is my full time, daily job, and I NEED to be able to see photo info quickly and at a glance. Especially since Catalina decided to do away with all third party image preview apps (I was using RawRightAway, but that went into the dead zone as well with upgrading).

Even opening up a full "show info" window shows me NOTHING except for dates :(

Any thoughts?

27" iMac (2020), iMac 27″

Posted on Sep 22, 2020 3:07 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Luis Sequeira1

Level 9

64,928 points

Sep 22, 2020 3:23 PM in response to jinniferb

There does appear to be a bug that results in some metadata not being read from external drives (or perhaps from non-system drives). It’s not specifically a Finder problem. The underlying system call that should return the desired metadata fails to do so correctly. If you try to access it via the Terminal you face the same problem. The only thing we users can do is report this using the feedback page.

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Answer 2

jinniferb Author

Level 2

156 points

Sep 22, 2020 3:26 PM in response to Luis Sequeira1

Is there some kind of workaround that can be implemented until this is fixed? Unfortunately, the new machine shipped with Catalina so I can't even roll back to OS to something that didn't completely destroy my entire workflow :(

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Answer 3

Sep 22, 2020 3:35 PM in response to jinniferb

I have not been able to determine the cause exactly. This could be an unfortunate side effect of the increased security restrictions in Catalina, requiring one to grant additional permissions in System Preferences->Security & Privacy->Privacy (though I can’t see how), or - more likely- is actually a bug.

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Answer 4

jinniferb Author

Level 2

156 points

Sep 22, 2020 5:53 PM in response to jinniferb

Update: I chatted with an Apple csr, who escalated the issue up another one, who escalated it up to another one via phone call. We ran a comprehensive set of diagnostics and testing that we sent to Apple engineers for further investigation.

I'm told this process will likely take a few days, and I will definitely be reporting their findings here; good, bad, or ugly haha.

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Answer 5

jinniferb Author

Level 2

156 points

Oct 8, 2020 12:00 PM in response to jinniferb

After spending MANY hours on the phone with Apple support, they were able to duplicate the issue on their end and the engineers have been sent a diagnostic report. They called me back to inform that a) this IS a known bug with Catalina (not just me, or my machine), and that b) it would be patched in the next software update!

So, let's see if that actually happens haha!

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