How to Browse a Folder of Photos Uncropped, as a Mosaic, on a Mac

In the Finder's icon view, every file gets the same square. A landscape photo fills the width of its square and leaves a band empty above and below; a photo taken upright is narrow; a panorama becomes a thin strip. Make the icons bigger and the window holds only a handful of photos, each still surrounded by empty space. Nothing is cropped, but half of the screen shows nothing.

The short answer: open the folder in Folia Files and switch the pane to the Mosaic view, with its button in the pane's header or View › Mosaic (⌘9). Every picture is shown whole, at its own shape, edge to edge, in rows of the same height that fill the width, or in columns. The photos stay where they are: nothing is imported, copied or moved.

Why photos look small in the Finder

Icon view: one square per file

In icon view (View › as Icons, ⌘1), the Finder draws each photo's thumbnail inside a square whose side is the Icon size set in View › Show View Options (⌘J). A regular grid suits documents and folders. For photos, each thumbnail is scaled to fit its square: a 3:2 landscape uses two thirds of the square's height, a 4:1 panorama a quarter of it, and a portrait leaves both sides empty. The bigger the icons, the bigger the empty bands.

Gallery view: one photo at a time

View › as Gallery (⌘4) shows the selected photo large, at its shape, above a row of small thumbnails. It is good for stepping through a shoot one photo at a time with the arrow keys. It is not made to see forty photos at once and pick the best ones.

The Photos app

Photos shows its library, not your folders. To see the pictures of a memory card, an external drive or a shared folder there, you import them first, which by default copies every file into the library. The article on seeing your photos on a map without importing them explains what that costs.

Show a folder as a mosaic in Folia Files

1. Open the folder in a pane: a folder of your Pictures, a card's DCIM folder, a Dropbox folder, a folder on an external drive.
2. Click Mosaic among the views in the pane's header, or choose View › Mosaic (⌘9).
3. To make the photos bigger or smaller, drag the slider at the bottom right of the pane, or press ⌘+ and ⌘− (View › Zoom In and Zoom Out).

Each pane has its own view, so a mosaic can sit next to a list of the same folder, or next to the folder you are sorting the photos into. The panes page shows the nine views and the ways to split a window.

What the mosaic does with each photo

• Rows that fill the width. Photos are added to a row until it is full, then the row is brought exactly to the width of the pane, at about the height you chose. A panorama that would flatten a row moves to the next one. The last row keeps the height instead of being stretched.
• The sort order, left to right. The photos follow the pane's sort (View › Sort By), read line by line.
• The shape as shown. A photo taken with the phone held upright stands upright, even when the file stores it on its side with an orientation tag.
• Whole, except the extremes. A strip more than five times wider than tall, or four times taller than wide, is shown at that limit and trimmed at its ends. Every other photo is whole.
• Names when you need them. A photo's name appears on it when you point at it or select it; a selected photo is ringed in the accent color.

Rows or columns

The gear at the right of the pane's header (Folder and Pane Settings) has a Layout item with two choices, also found in View › Mosaic Options:

• Rows, the default: rows of the same height that fill the width. The sort reads from left to right. Best for landscapes and panoramas.
• Columns: columns of the same width, each photo placed under the shortest column so far, like a pinboard. The order goes from one column to the next. Best for portraits: a folder of phone photos taken upright fills the screen without empty bands.

In columns, the slider sets the width of the columns instead of the height of the rows.

Only the pictures, unless you ask

A photo folder often holds more than photos: a few videos, a PDF, a subfolder of rejects. The mosaic shows the pictures alone at first: JPEG, HEIC, PNG, camera raw files and any other format macOS recognizes as an image. The bar at the bottom of the pane says how many folders and other files it leaves out.

Two items under the same gear, and in View › Mosaic Options, bring them back:

• Show Folders: the subfolders, among the pictures, as square tiles with their icon and name. Double-click one to go in.
• Show Other Files: videos, PDFs and documents. Videos and PDFs are placed at their shape too, a video with a play badge in its corner and a PDF at the shape of its first page. Other files get a square tile with their icon.

A folder with no picture at all says so in the middle of the pane, with a button that shows what is there.

With folders hidden, you still move around as usual: with the left sidebar, the folder path at the top of the pane, or ⌘↑ (Go › Enclosing Folder) to go up a level.

Look, pick, open

The mosaic works like the other views:

• Click to select a photo; ⌘-click or ⇧-click to select several.
• Space shows the selection with Quick Look; a double-click opens a photo in its app.
• ← and → follow the sort order; ↑ and ↓ go to the photo just above or below on screen. Hold ⇧ to extend the selection.
• Drag photos to another pane, a folder or another app.
• View › Group By (Kind, Date Modified, Date Created…) puts a title above each block of photos.
• Names aren't edited on the photos: F2 or File › Rename opens a small sheet with the name.

Keep the mosaic for that folder

A pane keeps its view from folder to folder. To make a folder always open as a mosaic, whichever pane opens it, choose Save for This Folder in the gear, or Save for This Folder and Its Subfolders for a whole tree of photos. The layout and the two Show options are saved with it. Use as Default View, in the same menu, makes what the pane shows the starting point of new panes.

Large folders, iCloud and servers

• Shapes first, read in the background. Folia Files reads each photo's dimensions from the top of its file, the photos on screen first. Until a shape is known, its tile is square. When the shapes arrive, the rows are laid out again, and the photo at the top of the view stays where it was, so you don't lose your place.
• Files kept online only (iCloud Drive, or a cloud folder that keeps files online): Folia Files never opens such a file to learn its shape. It asks Spotlight instead. A PDF kept online stays square.
• Servers (a NAS share, an SFTP connection…): nothing is read there for shapes or thumbnails, and the pictures are square tiles with their icon. Copy them to your Mac or to an external drive to see them as a mosaic.

If your photos are still on a memory card, import them into dated folders without the Photos app, then open one of those folders as a mosaic.