A slideshow is a story — Tuesday’s cake after Saturday’s drive, not before. The Intro stays first when it is on; sorts, shuffles, and drags never mix it into the media thumbs.
Trip diary, night-just-ended reverse, or a deliberate surprise — Library calendar, Edit → Sort by Date Taken, Inspector → Motion → Timeline (Studio), or right-click empty Library space:
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
| Oldest First (Story Order) | Capture date, oldest → newest |
| Newest First | Reverse chronological |
| Import Order | The sequence you brought the files in |
| Shuffle / Shuffle Slides | Random photo order (Motion names it Shuffle Slides). Pauses playback and seeks to the start |
Date sorts use camera capture date (EXIF / recording date); file date only if neither exists. Undated files at the end. Filenames never used. Captions, trims, rotations stay; groups planned fresh. ⌘Z undoes.
Essential: after import, if the Library was empty or already Oldest First, new stills auto-sort Oldest First. Studio does not.
Bulk fill or clear — fifty captions by hand is a long evening. Full settings: Intro and captions.
Happy with photo order, bored with the cuts? Keeps photo order; re-rolls single-slide cuts, group kinds, and where group windows sit. Cadence, which group types are on, and card counts stay.
Library ⋯, Inspector → Motion → Timeline, or right-click empty Library space. If you hand-picked Slide Transitions, it asks before clearing them.
Clicking a Look chip also re-deals transitions (and related Style). See Looks.
When “Grandma next to the kids” beats auto-sort, drag.
Library — drag thumbs in the grid.
Timeline photo lane — drag clips; near either edge the strip auto-scrolls past what’s on screen.
Drag from the Library onto the Timeline:
- Drop in a gap — insert or move
- Drop on a single slide or a group seat until Replace
- Drop on the intro tile — sets the intro background
Music reorders on the music lane, not here. See Music.
Hand-dragging pins group windows to those photos. Sorting, shuffling, resetting, or changing cadence / count returns placement to the planner. See Multi-photo groups.
First click on a group selects the whole window (champagne outline in the Library; one cell on the Timeline). Drag then moves every seat together.
Right-click two or more selected clips → Group Transition. Ungroup / Change Transition on an existing group. See Library.
Blinker out, grin in: click the group again on a member (Library) or a thumb on the Timeline cell (second click) to drill in. Accent ring on one photo — drag that seat alone.
- Drop on another seat in the same window to swap / replace that place in the group
- Drop in a gap to pull it out of the group (extract)
The group badge on a Library thumb re-selects the whole window.
Mistakes are cheap. ⌘Z undoes sort, shuffle, Shuffle Transitions, and drag reorder. Named in the Edit menu (for example Undo Sort by Date Taken, Undo Shuffle).