Find out what your Flickr library is missing.
Library health scans your whole Flickr library once and counts what is missing from it: photos with no real title, no tags, nothing written about them, no location, and photos that are in no album. Opening any count shows those photos, so you can select a batch and fix it on the spot by adding tags, setting a location on a map, adding them to an album or submitting them to a group. A camera filename like IMG_4821 counts as having no title, because it is not a title anyone chose. It is part of the one-time Pro Unlock.
One scan, and a straight count of the photos with no title, no tags, no location or no album. Open any number and you get the photos behind it, ready to fix in a batch.
Flickr will never mention any of this
Photos arrive from a camera or a phone with a filename instead of a title, and unless you stopped to write something at the time, that is how they stay. Flickr shows IMG_4821 as though it were a title, has no way to list what is untagged, and will not tell you how much of your library never got a location or an album. The mess is real but invisible, so it never gets dealt with.
- A count per problem, over the whole library rather than the page you happen to be looking at.
- Camera filenames such as IMG_4821, DSC00123 or P1010101 are counted as missing a title, not as titled.
- Every count opens into the photos themselves, with selection, so a number turns into work you can do.
- Fix from the same screen: add tags, set a location on a map, add to albums, submit to groups.
- Says when it could not read the whole library, rather than reporting a partial scan as a complete one.
How a scan works
Step 1
Open Library health and start the scan. It reads your library once, which on a large account is a few minutes and several hundred requests to Flickr, so it runs when you ask rather than on its own.
Step 2
Read the counts, largest first: no real title, no tags, no description, no location, in no album.
Step 3
Open the one you want to work on, and select photos from the grid underneath it.
Step 4
Apply the fix that matches: tags, a location picked on a map, an album, or a group submission.
Step 5
Scan again whenever you want to see where it stands.
Library Health screenshots
These screens show how the workflow looks inside Photo Stream Assistant on macOS.
Frequently asked questions
What counts as a photo with no title?
An empty title, or a camera filename left in its place: IMG_4821, DSC00123, dscn0042, P1010101, GOPR0102 and the like. Flickr displays those as titles, so a check that took them at face value would report a library full of untitled photos as fully titled.
Does the scan change anything?
No. It only reads. Nothing is written to Flickr until you select photos and apply a fix yourself.
How long does the scan take?
It reads your library in pages of 500, so a library of 10,000 photos is 20 requests and a moment, while one of 100,000 is 200 requests and a few minutes. It is deliberately not automatic, because those requests share a rate limit with everything else the app does.
Why is my score zero?
The headline counts photos with nothing missing at all, so on a large library of camera-named photos it is close to zero and stays there for a while. The per-problem counts are the ones to work from, and each shows its share of the library so you can see progress where it actually happens.
Is a photo in no album a problem?
Only if you use albums. It is reported because a photo in no album is reachable only by search or by scrolling your whole photostream, which for most libraries means it is never seen again. If you do not sort into albums, ignore that line.
Does it check private photos too?
Yes. The scan covers the library as your account sees it, private photos included. Privacy is a choice rather than a problem, so it is never reported as one.
Is Library health part of Pro Unlock?
Yes. Reading a hundred thousand photos and turning them into five counts is the most expensive thing the app does, and nothing on flickr.com does it, so it sits with Insights and Places behind the one-time unlock rather than the subscription there is not.
Related workflows
Flickr Metadata Editor
Edit Flickr titles, descriptions and tags across a whole selection on Mac, with a choice of adding tags or replacing them. One dialog, many photos.
Flickr Tag Manager
Rename a Flickr tag across your entire library, merge one tag into another, or remove it everywhere, from a Mac app. Flickr's site cannot do this.
Flickr Geotagging
Geotag Flickr photos in bulk on Mac: pick a point on a map and apply it to a whole selection, or browse Places for the photos still missing one.
At a glance
- Platform
- macOS 12.0 or later, Apple silicon or Intel
- Price
- Free to download. Pro Unlock is a one-time purchase of 12.99 EUR, not a subscription.
- Requires
- A Flickr account. Some features need Flickr Pro, which is Flickr’s own subscription.
- Languages
- English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Chinese
- Version
- 1.3.5, on the Mac App Store
How-to guides for this
- How to geotag Flickr photos, one or hundreds at a time: A geotag on Flickr is a latitude and longitude stored with the photo, and it is what puts a photo on your map.