Finder Preview Panel - "Where from" feature

Apple has a great feature in Finder under the preview panel that shows information about documents & videos such as "where from" which tells you where the document or video was downloaded from.


Trouble is, it doesn't work with images. I really need this feature for images so I'm wondering if there is a way to be able to add this to images to recall where they were downloaded from? Is there somewhere I can add this in?



Posted on May 15, 2021 4:27 AM

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12 replies

May 15, 2021 5:51 AM in response to thevans

I have downloaded .svg, .png, .pdf, and .jpg images, or received them as Mail attachments and the Where from Spotlight metadata attribute was automatically placed on them. I also have the Spotlight Search Result category for Images set, though I am uncertain if that does or does not matter when the image is downloaded.


In the Terminal, you can assign a URL or any other string to a file's Where from metadata attribute:


xattr -w com.apple.metadata:kMDItemWhereFroms "https://www.apple.com" ./foo.png


This now displays in the Finder Get Info panel with the Apple URL.

May 15, 2021 8:40 PM in response to thevans

Thanks Barney, I can see that it does show there (sometimes) but I was wondering if it were possible to somehow get it to also list on the preview pane as this what I have as a default view and easier than opening the info for every file.

You posted the capabilities for image files. I don't know why that doesn't seem to be enough information for you to understand that what you want is not possible.

May 15, 2021 6:39 PM in response to VikingOSX

Thanks VikingOSX, I understand the arbitrary selection of the apple url but I didn't understand why you needed to specify a URL. I mean I am asking it to show me where the image came from ie. it's original URL so I don't understand why I need to specify a URL. Pardon my ignorance here .. it sounds really helpful I just don't understand it.

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Finder Preview Panel - "Where from" feature

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