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Auto detection

Three helpers on your Mac — less time muting fridge hum, chasing faces, or typing IMG_4821. Video mute and center of interest on import. Captions only when you choose Auto Caption — never written by itself.

Everything stays on your Mac. Original files are never rewritten.

Paused photo with the center-of-interest ring

Video sound (auto-mute)

Speech on camera? Keep it. Wind and empty hallway? Quiet them.

When: as each video is imported (Essential and Studio). Stills have no clip audio. Soundtrack tracks are not auto-muted.

First import: MemoryString may ask Allow On-Device Speech Detection?

  • Continue — then macOS’s Speech prompt. Detection is on-device; it does not transcribe or save what was said. The system prompt may mention Apple; MemoryString has no cloud speech path.
  • Use Loudness Only — skip speech. Mute still runs from loudness / tonality.

If you skip or deny speech, later imports keep loudness only (until you reset that preference).

How it decides (whole file, not just the start):

  1. No audio track → muted
  2. Very quiet throughout → muted
  3. If speech is allowed and speech is found anywhere in the clip → stays audible
  4. Else if the energy looks like music, singing, or cries (tonal / periodic) → stays audible
  5. Else steady non-speech ambience / noise → muted

There is no toast. A muted clip shows a speaker-off badge in the Library and Timeline.

Override: right-click Mute Video Sound / Unmute Video Sound, the speaker badge, or the Inspector clip footer. Manual mute is yours. See Library and Music.

Center of interest

Eyes, not shoulder. When: on import, every photo and every video gets a focus point. Cached with the file so reopen keeps the same pick.

How it picks (on-device Vision):

  1. Largest usable face in the frame — aim near the eyes, not the chest
  2. Else the main subject (attention saliency)
  3. Else the middle of the frame

Videos: several frames across the used trim window (not one opening frame). Strongest face / subject wins — a title card or wrong person at the start does not lock focus.

Override: pause and click (Tap photo to set focus). Ring moves; status shows Focus · x%, y%. Drag pans; leaves focus alone. Reset Center of Interest (right-click) drops the override and re-runs detection.

Paused preview: Rotate, Flip, Reset Center of Interest

Ken Burns and punch-in end here; backdrop follows; group cards use it too. Some whole-photo cuts ignore it. Details: Preview.

Auto Caption

Place and date — not camera codes. Run it: Library captions bubble, Edit → Auto Caption N Untitled Slides, Style → Captions, Timeline Generate, or a slide’s Auto Caption. Not on import.

Untitled-only entry points never overwrite what you typed. Auto Caption All Slides… overwrites after confirmation.

How it fills an empty caption, in order:

  1. Place · date — GPS on the file (stills: EXIF; videos: QuickTime) reverse-geocoded with Apple’s geocoder, or IPTC city/country if GPS is missing. Format like Tel Aviv-Yafo · 29 July 2026. Country only when the show has photos from more than one country.
  2. Else capture date — EXIF DateTimeOriginal / video creation date (not the import copy date). Same long-date style.
  3. Else a readable filename with real words (dan_and_mom-beach → Dan and Mom Beach). Embedded calendar dates rewritten as dates; clock times dropped.

Never copied: UUID / hash names, camera codes (IMG_1234, DSC…, Screenshot …), WhatsApp export titles. Stay blank — better empty than IMG_4821 as poetry.

Geocoding uses coordinates already in the media — not your Mac’s location. Offline still writes date / IPTC captions. One ⌘Z undoes the whole Auto Caption pass.

See Intro and captions.