What’s New

What changed for you in each release. Newest first.

2026.0.34 (2026-10-20)

Fixed

• The Unrated filter now reads ratings saved by Lightroom and other apps in every folder it shows, including subfolders you haven't opened, so rated photos are never listed as unrated.

2026.0.33 (2026-10-20)

New

• The Rating filter can show only unrated photos.
• Group Similar Shots is now called Group Bursts & Similar Shots, so it is easier to find.

Fixed

• After clicking the preview, the left and right arrow keys step through the photos again.

2026.0.32 (2026-10-20)

Changed

• In confirmation dialogs such as Move to Trash, the button Enter presses is now highlighted in blue.
• Deleting in full screen moves on to the next item, photo or video, and videos can now be deleted from full screen too.

Fixed

• After deleting or moving a photo, the preview now shows the photo that is selected next, instead of a different one.
• Renaming a photo or video without typing its extension no longer makes it disappear: Cullstack adds the original extension back. The Rename box now selects just the name, so the extension stays put.
• A custom crop size such as 256 × 256 now opens the crop box at exactly that size instead of as large as the photo.

2026.0.31 (2026-10-19)

New

• Compare now shows up to 8 photos at once, in two rows of four, so you can pick the best frame of a burst in one view.

Fixed

• Click an empty part of a grid, or press Escape, to deselect everything in it. Handy with two grids, where Compare uses the photos selected in both.
• In Compare, photos now sit in the middle of their panels instead of the top-left corner.
• Pressing Q to blank the screen did not hide anything when the Modena theme was selected. It now covers every Cullstack window in every theme.
• Q now works from any Cullstack window, including dialogs, and also covers Compare, the duplicate finder, Photo Information and the file info window.

Changed

• Build Cache, and filling in thumbnails for the rest of a folder while Cullstack sits idle, are now part of Standard and Pro. The free version still prepares the next thumbnails as you scroll.
• Writing ratings, labels and other details into XMP sidecars or into your JPEG files is part of Standard and Pro, as the plans always listed. The free version still reads sidecars from other apps.
• Renaming photos from their AI prompt, Adjust Date, Fix File Dates and Export CSV Metadata are part of Standard and Pro. Editing Photo Information is part of Pro; the free version can still view it.
• Saving thumbnails between sessions is part of Standard and Pro. The free version makes them as you browse.
• Live Ingest is part of Pro, as the plans list.

2026.0.30 (2026-10-12)

New

• The master password for Connection Manager is now optional and off for new users, so you can add your NAS or server straight away. Your saved passwords stay encrypted either way. Turn it on or off under Settings ▸ General.
• Cullstack now starts in the dark theme, like most photo editors, so photos are easier to judge. You can switch back to light under Settings or the View menu.
• The photo viewer's buttons are rearranged: previous, next, rotate and crop sit together in the middle under the photo, with full screen and close in the corner.
• The video player has a full-width seek bar, with previous, play, next and the video tools in the middle below it, like the photo viewer.

Fixed

• After starting the free trial, Manage License said the trial had ended while it was waiting for you to confirm your email. It now says it is waiting, the status bar says "Confirm your email", and once you click the link in the email Pro switches on within a minute, without restarting.
• With the Modena theme style, the buttons at the bottom of the photo and video viewers showed as blank white squares. They are visible again.
• The light theme is finished: grids, thumbnails, the preview and the status bars are light too, with dark text throughout, instead of a light frame around dark grids.
• "Color" was spelled "Colour" in two places in the English text.

2026.0.29 (2026-10-10)

New

• Tools ▸ Maintenance ▸ Adjust Date & Time (also on the right-click menu) fixes a camera clock that was wrong: shift the selected photos by any amount, set one photo's time and move the rest with it, or give them all one exact date (handy for scans). Two cameras on one shoot? Pick each camera in turn under "Apply to". The new date can be written into JPEGs and RAW sidecars, on your computer or a network drive, and ⌘Z puts it back.
• Sort by Date taken: the order the photos were shot in, which also mixes two cameras' photos correctly.
• Your rating, Pick/Reject flag and color label now show on the photo in full screen, culling and the preview pane, and a large symbol briefly confirms each change as you press the key.
• AI scan results are now kept. Find Blurry, Find Closed Eyes and the other scans tag what they find ("Scan: Blurry" and so on, under Scan results in the sidebar), so clicking a photo no longer loses them and they are still there next time. Remove the tag from a photo to correct a wrong result. These tags stay inside Cullstack and are never written to your files or exports.
• Two Scan filters in the filter bar replace the Faces, Eyes, People and Explicit filters. Pick any two results, such as "People" and "No closed eyes", including Blurry, Badly exposed and Out-of-focus eyes.
• The sidebar's Tags list shows the tags in the folder you are looking at (turn on Subfolders to include the folders below it). Click a tag to show only its photos; click it again to show them all.
• View ▸ Thumbnail Badges hides the stars, labels, tags and other badges on grid thumbnails when you want to see just the photos.
• Thumbnail badges sit on the photo itself, a scan's findings show as small icons, and hovering over any badge says what it means.

Fixed

• Pressing a color label key (6 to 9) again now removes the label, in the grid, culling and full screen.
• Find Blurry Photos and Find Badly Exposed Photos run several times faster on folders on your computer.
• Tags no longer disappear from grid thumbnails when AI detection is off.
• P (pick) and X (reject) now work the same everywhere: pressing them again keeps the flag, and U clears it. Before, the grid and full screen removed the flag on a second press, and in the grid a Pick could vanish from a whole selection at once.
• RAW photos shot in portrait (Nikon NEF, Sony ARW and others) now show upright everywhere: thumbnails, preview, culling and full screen, on your computer and on network drives.
• Rotating or cropping a RAW photo now works. The RAW file is never changed: the result is saved as a copy next to it, in the format chosen under Settings, "Convert to": JPG, PNG or the newly added TIFF. JPEG copies now use the Quality setting instead of a lower built-in quality.

2026.0.28 (2026-09-30)

New

• AI ▸ Find Out-of-Focus Eyes selects the photos where focus missed the eyes of the main person in the picture.
• AI ▸ Find Badly Exposed Photos selects the photos that came out too dark or too bright, across a whole folder.
• The Keyboard Shortcuts screen has Print and Copy buttons. Print opens a page laid out for paper in your browser, where you can print it or save it as a PDF; Copy puts the whole list on the clipboard as text.

Fixed

• After deleting or moving photos, the next photo is selected (or the one before, when you removed the last), instead of jumping back to the top of the folder. A copy keeps your selection where it was.
• ⌘Z (Ctrl+Z) while typing in a text box now undoes your typing, not your last action in Cullstack.
• Shift with ← or → extends the grid selection, as Shift with ↑ or ↓ does.
• ⌘← and ⌘→ (Ctrl on Windows and Linux) rotate the photo in the preview, and ⌘Z works in the full-screen viewer too.
• The Keyboard Shortcuts screen (F1) is corrected and lists every key, including the culling screen's histogram, clipping, zoom and video keys and a new section for the full-screen viewer. Windows and Linux show Ctrl where they should.

2026.0.27 (2026-09-29)

New

• Unstack All in This Folder (Tools, Stack Photos) takes every stack in the folder apart in one go, after telling you how many. Right-click Unstack now works on all the stacks you have selected.
• Group Similar Shots (Tools menu, or ⌘G / Ctrl+G): one step stacks every burst and near-identical frame in the folder and puts the best frame on top of each: with AI on (Pro), it checks everyone's eyes and picks the frame with eyes open whose faces are sharpest; without AI, the sharpest. A frame clearly worse exposed than the rest of its burst, such as one where the flash didn't fire or a face is blown out, is never put on top. An original is chosen over its own iPhone edit. A stack where nobody has their eyes open in any frame is marked with an amber "!", and hovering over a stack's top frame tells you why it was chosen. No settings to choose, it works on network drives too, and Undo puts everything back. The stacking tools that let you tune the grouping also put the best frame on top now.

Changed

• The AI menu starts with the checks you use while culling, Find Blurry Photos and Find Closed Eyes, and "Build CLIP search index" is now Prepare AI Search, with This Folder or This Folder and Subfolders.
• The Tools menu is tidier: Group Similar Shots, Find Duplicates, Live Ingest and Build Cache come first, and the rest sits in three submenus, Stack Photos, Privacy and Maintenance. All the stacking options, the AI ones included, are now together under Stack Photos.

Fixed

• iPhone edits (IMG_E1031) now sort right after their original (IMG_1031) instead of after every original in the folder. File names are unchanged.
• Deleting a folder after deleting some of its photos, or putting a folder back where a new one of the same name now is, no longer creates a second folder ending in "_1". The folders are combined, and no photo is ever overwritten.
• An emptied trash no longer leaves a hidden trash folder behind on your drives, and on Windows the trash folder is hidden.

2026.0.26 (2026-09-28)

New

• AI Search indexes the folder you're viewing on its own, in the background, so search is ready when you want it. It pauses while you cull, view full screen or run on battery, and speeds up when you step away. You can turn it off in Settings, under AI.
• Thumbnails are ready before you get to them: the next pages as you scroll, and the rest of the folder while Cullstack sits idle, videos on network drives included.
• Page Up and Page Down move a screenful at a time in the grid. On a keyboard without those keys, use Option (Alt on Windows) with the up and down arrows.
• Building the AI Search index is several times faster for iPhone and Samsung photos, and on a network drive it no longer downloads each original.
• Include Subfolders on a network drive is far faster when the drive is somewhere else: 100,000 photos listed over the internet in about 30 seconds, where it took over 3 minutes, and the window stays smooth while they come in.

Fixed

• Cullstack remembers the window size you left it at, even after the window has been maximized.
• Copying photos out of the second grid no longer sends it back to the top, and a grid showing subfolders keeps showing them after a copy.
• Each grid shows its own loading spinner.
• On Windows, a folder kept offline could miss some newly added photos until it was next refreshed.

2026.0.25 (2026-09-27)

New

• Offline folders. A network folder you keep offline (Build Cache, with the originals) now opens from the sidebar even when the drive is unreachable. Ratings, picks, labels, tags and comments you make there apply to the originals directly. Rotations and crops are saved to the offline copy and sent back when you reconnect; if the original changed meanwhile, your edit is saved beside it instead of overwriting it. Deleting, moving or renaming waits until the drive is back. Once everything has been sent, the Activities panel offers to remove the offline copy in one click.
• Folders you keep offline stay on your computer until you remove them. Cache clean-up no longer clears them, and they don't count toward the cache limit. Settings lists them, with a Remove button.
• Build Cache now prepares thumbnails and culling previews without downloading your originals, tells you how much space it needs before it starts, and stops at the cache limit instead of clearing out older files. It keeps your computer awake while it runs, shows how long is left, and gets out of the way while you browse the same drive.
• RAW photos on network drives show their thumbnails far sooner. A folder of 98 RAW files from 20 camera models now fills in under 3 seconds on a local network, where it took 30. Other photos fill in faster too. Fujifilm, Panasonic and Olympus / OM System files no longer have to be downloaded whole to show a thumbnail.
• Huge network folders stay responsive. Opening 100,000 photos with Include Subfolders no longer freezes the window while the list fills in.
• When your network drops, your network drives grey out in the sidebar instead of disappearing, and reconnect by themselves when it comes back, returning you to the folder you were in. Right-click a drive to reconnect or disconnect it yourself.

Fixed

• Thumbnails on an SFTP drive could spin for half a minute and then fail, most often in folders of Olympus, Panasonic or Fujifilm RAW files.
• After the network came back, an SFTP drive could say it was connected without working.
• A dropped connection showed one warning, not a stack of them to click through, and no longer freezes the window.

2026.0.24 (2026-09-25)

New

• On a Mac, updates can be installed from inside Cullstack too. As on Windows, it asks first, and nothing downloads or installs until you choose Install.
• The culling screen can show a histogram (press H, and again to add separate red, green and blue graphs) and mark clipped areas right on the photo (press J): blown highlights in red, pure black shadows in blue. Both start off, and Cullstack remembers your choice.
• In the culling screen, press L to keep your zoom as you move from photo to photo, so you can compare a burst at 100% on the same spot. Press F to zoom straight to a face, and again for the next face (Pro).

Fixed

• On a laptop screen, the culling screen stays centred again. With large thumbnails, the strip along the bottom used to push the photo off to one side.

2026.0.23 (2026-09-24)

New

• On Windows, updates can be installed from inside Cullstack. It asks first, and nothing downloads or installs until you choose Install.
• Cullstack now checks for updates once a day, and never interrupts your work to tell you.

2026.0.22 (2026-09-24)

New

• Photos keep their thumbnails when you move or copy them in Cullstack, so the grid fills in at once instead of reading each photo again. Most noticeable on network drives. Deleting a photo clears its thumbnail too, unless a copy still uses it.
• Copied files keep their original date, even on servers that stamp uploads with the time they arrived. Sorting by date works on those drives too.
• Copies can be verified. Turn on "Verify copies" in Settings and Cullstack reads each copied file back and compares it with the original, so a bad cable or a failing drive can't quietly leave you a damaged copy.

Fixed

• Ratings, tags and .xmp files now follow photos copied or moved within the same network drive. They used to be left behind at the old location.
• Copying to another folder on a network drive no longer jumps the view to that folder. You stay where you were.
• A file Cullstack can't read now says so in the grid and in the preview, instead of showing an empty tile and a black preview.
• Copies are now always checked for missing data, and a copy that falls short fails with a clear message instead of looking complete.

2026.0.21 (2026-09-23)

New

• The Windows installer and app are now signed by Aviastone LLC, so Windows no longer warns that the publisher is unknown.

Fixed

• The Camera / EXIF panel under the preview now shows camera, lens and exposure details for photos on network drives.
• Some videos, often tall portrait clips, stayed blank or froze instead of playing. Videos your Mac can't decode in hardware also play more smoothly.
• HDR and ICO images now open instead of showing as blank tiles.
• The Windows installer and the Linux package are about half the size. Each was carrying a copy of the portable download inside it.

2026.0.20 (2026-09-21)

New

• Your ratings now follow your photos. Move, copy or rename them in Finder, on a new drive, or with any other app, and Cullstack finds them again.
• Cullstack no longer leaves an .xmp file next to every photo you rate. Write .xmp and .csv files when you want them, from the right-click menu, and they travel with their photo from then on.
• Export can put your ratings inside each exported JPEG, where Lightroom looks for them, and Cullstack can write them into your original JPEGs as you rate.
• Ratings can be kept in sync across identical copies of a photo.
• Photo Information shows every EXIF, IPTC, GPS and XMP field in a photo.
• Backup and Restore saves your ratings, tags, comments and settings to a single file, to keep safe or carry to another computer.
• The grid can show each photo's size, and marks photos that have an .xmp or .csv file beside them.

Fixed

• Portrait photos on network drives no longer show a sideways thumbnail.
• Cleaning up metadata no longer removes the ratings of photos on a drive that is not connected.
• Plus fixes to copying, deleting and the Activities list.

2026.0.19 (2026-09-13)

New

• Export can keep each photo at its original size.
• Copying, moving and duplicating folders show how many files are in them and fill the bar as they go, and anything in the Activities list can be stopped.

Fixed

• Moving files is safer. Nothing leaves the source until every file has arrived and been checked, and cancelling part way through takes back what it wrote.
• Moving, duplicating and deleting folders on SFTP drives work.
• Holding Cmd while dragging moves photos between drives instead of copying them.
• Plus fixes to the crop tool's print sizes, the "File already exists" prompt and the preview.

2026.0.18 (2026-09-13)

New

• Deleting is now recoverable everywhere. Rejected photos go to Cullstack's own Trash and can be put back, on network drives as well as local ones.
• Photos on network drives load a lot faster, especially HEIC photos from iPhone and Samsung phones. Large JPEGs are quicker too.
• The duplicate finder now works on network drives.

Fixed

• Portrait photos on a network drive are the right way up again. Local photos were never affected.
• Plus fixes to the sidebar, the Trash and clearing the cache.

2026.0.17 (2026-09-09)

New

• Connection passwords are now encrypted, and the connection manager can be locked behind a master password.

2026.0.16 (2026-09-09)

New

• Videos on network drives start playing before they finish downloading, and their thumbnails arrive far sooner.
• Cullstack speaks Dutch.
• Starting a trial confirms your email address first.
• Choose whether culling steps through videos as well as photos.

2026.0.15 (2026-09-08)

New

• Your Photos library works like any other drive. Albums are folders, you can copy and move photos in and out, and edits are written back.
• Ratings, color labels and captions already inside your files are read in.

2026.0.14 (2026-09-06)

New

• The thumbnail size slider can be put back on the toolbar.
• Choosing a file or folder now happens inside Cullstack, and each picker reopens where you left it.

Fixed

• Plus seven fixes.

2026.0.13 (2026-09-05)

New

• RAW photos on a server or cloud drive no longer download in full just to be looked at.
• OneDrive thumbnails now come from OneDrive itself.

2026.0.12 (2026-09-04)

New

• A diagnostic log you can turn on from Settings, for when something needs reporting.

2026.0.11 (2026-09-04)

New

• Drives show how full they are, and Cullstack checks there is room before copying.

Fixed

• Plus three fixes.

2026.0.10 (2026-09-02)

New

• Photos open filling the screen, and you can pinch the grid to resize thumbnails.
• Eject a card or drive from the sidebar, and blank the screen instantly.

Fixed

• Rating a photo no longer disturbs edits that other apps saved beside it.

2026.0.9 (2026-08-29)

New

• Duplicate a folder from the sidebar, and delete selected photos with the Delete key.

Fixed

• Plus nine fixes.

2026.0.8 (2026-08-26)

New

• Find similar photos, including versions you have cropped, expanded, recolored or retouched.
• The AI tools now cover HEIC and RAW photos. If you built an index before this release, build it again.

Fixed

• Plus seven fixes.

2026.0.7 (2026-08-22)

New

• Search now does one thing at a time, so it is clear whether you are searching by name or by description.

Fixed

• Finding a person no longer hides the rest of the folder.

2026.0.6 (2026-08-20)

New

• Downloads and installed size are much smaller.

Fixed

• Plus fifteen fixes.

2026.0.5 (2026-08-15)

New

• Four new languages: Japanese, Korean, Traditional Chinese and Polish.
• Rate and tag photos from the keyboard while culling, with AI findings shown as you go.
• True RAW decode when you zoom in, automatically where it helps.

2026.0.4 (2026-08-05)

New

• New AI Plug-Ins tab in Settings. Every model installs with a button, and tells you when a newer version is available.
• Better person detection and a better AI image detector.

2026.0.3 (2026-08-05)

Fixed

• Seven fixes.

2026.0.2 (2026-08-04)

New

• Tags now work across all your folders and drives, with the tag hierarchy visible in the sidebar.
• Drag to reorder Favorites, Tags and Saved Filters.

2026.0.1 (2026-07-31)

Fixed

• HEIC photos now open on Windows and Linux.
• Plus five fixes.

2026.0 (2026-07-27)

• First release.