Using Shortcuts in Photos app to Add Selected Photos to Album

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Using Shortcuts in Photos app to Add Selected Photos to Album

In the Photos app, since selecting photos and adding them to an album is really clunky, I am trying to create a Shortcut to do this, however, I am having trouble getting Shortcuts to acknowledge the photos that I have selected as input. I can see that you can create a Shortcut to select photos and then add them, but the photo selector has very small thumbnails so it is hard to use. Is it possible to have Shortcuts use the selected photos in the Photos app as the input for an action- in this case adding them to a specific album?

MacBook Pro (2017 – 2020)

Posted on Sep 9, 2023 11:12 AM

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Answer 1

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Barney-15E

Level 10

123,308 points

Sep 9, 2023 12:57 PM in response to hinder90

Automator has a Get selected Photos Items action.

Set it up as a Quick Action that receives no input in Photos.

Drag in the Get selected Photos Items action and the Add to Album action.

Set all the options as you'd like and save it.

Open Keyboard System Settings > Keyboard Shortcuts… > App Shortcuts and add a shortcut to the Quick Action.

In the past you had to run the Quick Action one time from the Services menu before you could use the shortcut. I don't know if that is swill a problem.

While I was trying things, I found that there is an Add To contextual menu. Seems a bit simpler to ctrl-click on the selection, select Add to, arrow over or hover over an album, then start typing the name of the album.

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Using Shortcuts in Photos app to Add Selected Photos to Album

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