When you share images with others or post them online, there’s often more info embedded in the file than you realize. As well as the image data, images contain EXIF metadata—details like camera models, capture times, GPS coordinates, and other personal information. Thanks to the new “Remove Image Metadata” action in Dropzone 4, you can now quickly and easily erase these hidden attributes before sharing your images.

What is EXIF Image Metadata?

EXIF (Exchangeable Image File Format) metadata is a set of details automatically recorded by your camera or smartphone whenever you take a photo. This information can range from technical specifications (such as shutter speed, ISO, and focal length) to sensitive data like GPS coordinates. While this info can be useful for keeping track of camera settings and conditions, you often don’t want this info included in images you share with others.

Why Remove EXIF Metadata?

There are several reasons why you might want to remove EXIF metadata from your images:

1. Privacy Concerns: If GPS coordinates are embedded, someone might trace the exact location where a photo was taken. Stripping this data helps protect your privacy when you share images online.

2. Smaller File Sizes: Removing metadata can slightly reduce the file’s overall size, allowing for faster uploads and more efficient storage.

3. Cleaner Public Sharing: Sometimes you would prefer to keep the details of how or where the image was created private. Removing metadata ensures that only the final image is shared, free of any extra information.

Adding the Remove Image Metadata Action to Dropzone

1. Click the + icon in the top-left corner of the Dropzone grid.

2. Select Get More Actions… from the menu.

3. Click Install beside the Remove Image Metadata action.

4. The action will download and install automatically.

5. Click Add to Grid on the dialog that appears.

6. Choose where to save the images with metadata removed and whether to keep the originals.

Using the Remove EXIF Metadata Action

Once the action is installed, using it is straightforward:

Take any image—or multiple images—from Finder and simply drag them onto the “Remove Image Metadata” action in your Dropzone grid.

The image is converted and the output saved to the set output folder:

We hope you find this new action useful. If you have any feedback you can email us at support@aptonic.com

In a recent update we have added a new ‘Convert Images’ action that allows easily converting images between different formats. You can add this action by clicking the white plus in the top-left of the Dropzone grid and choosing ‘Convert Images’ from the Built-in Actions section.

This will bring up the action configuration where you can set the output format and destination folder:

The action will then be added into your Dropzone grid:

You can then drop images onto the action in your grid and they will be converted to the chosen output format.

Convert images is a Dropzone 4 Pro action, although you can still try this out for free in the trial version of Dropzone 4 Pro. The convert images action is available in version 4.80.21 and later.

We hope you enjoy the new action. If you have any feedback you can email us at support@aptonic.com

YouTube has made it increasingly difficult to download H.264 encoded versions of videos. This has caused issues for some Dropzone 4 YouTube Downloader action users, as you can’t directly play the downloaded videos using QuickTime or Quick Look since they are encoded with the VP9 codec, which macOS doesn’t natively support. To play VP9 encoded videos, you need to download a player that supports the VP9 codec, such as VLC. There are other disadvantages to VP9 encoded videos on macOS as well—for example, you can’t directly use the downloaded videos in Mac apps like Final Cut Pro.

We have implemented a solution in Dropzone 4 that allows you to automatically download and convert YouTube videos to the H.264 codec, making them fully compatible with macOS built-in codecs. This option can be easily enabled by right-clicking on the YouTube Downloader action in your Dropzone 4 grid and checking the ‘Convert to H.264 codec after download’ checkbox, as shown below:

The only downside to this is that you have to wait a little longer for the conversion process after the download, although on most modern Macs, this usually doesn’t take too long. We’ve made this an option so that you can decide if the extra wait time for conversion is worth it for your use case. Conversion to H.264 is disabled by default currently.

You will need to make sure you’re running Dropzone 4.80.18 or later and version 3.2 or later of the YouTube Downloader action for this option to be available. You can install the latest version of the YouTube Downloader action from this page. You can check you’re on the latest Dropzone version by going to the Dropzone Settings and then going to the updates tab. The YouTube Downloader action is only available for the non-Mac App Store version of Dropzone 4 downloaded directly from our website or in the Setapp version.

Today after many months of development and weeks of beta testing we’re excited to announce the release of ScreenSnapAI.

ScreenSnapAI is a tool that uses the latest in AI technology to process screenshots and images. The brand new icon for ScreenSnapAI is above and was designed by the talented Matthew Skiles.

It’s easiest to show you how it works, so here’s a 1 minute demo:

The app has already undergone several major updates in response to beta testing feedback and has rapidly evolved into a powerful tool that allows you to have conversations with AI about anything on your screen.

You can trigger the ScreenSnapAI assistant via a hotkey set in the app settings or through the menu, as shown below:

When you activate ScreenSnapAI, it will allow you to select a screen area, and then you can choose an AI task to perform. You can also enter your own custom task.

As an example, let’s say I want to translate some Japanese text in an image to English. I simply drag over the text and choose ‘Translate to English’:

ScreenSnapAI will then work its magic and begin a chat about the screenshot, presenting the result in a message. The image is automatically added to the conversation, and you can continue to ask the AI questions about it. This is a fantastic way to start a conversation with AI about anything you have on your screen.

Whenever you capture images with ScreenSnapAI, it will generate an AI name, keyword, and description for you, making it easy to find screenshots later. You can find these details in the Image tab:

ScreenSnapAI uses the latest AI models provided by OpenAI to process your images. If you want to try out the app, the easiest way to get started is by downloading it from the Mac App Store:

We’ve handled all the integration with OpenAI for you, so you don’t need to worry about API keys or anything like that. You can try out the app for free, and the Pro version is only $10 USD, which includes 50 AI processing credits. You use one AI credit per image processed or per question asked. You can easily add extra AI credits as needed via an in-app purchase. Currently, 100 AI credits cost $5 USD.

If you’re a more advanced user, you can bring your own OpenAI API key by downloading the non-Mac App Store version of ScreenSnapAI from here. The ScreenSnapAI Pro non-Mac App Store version is currently $14 USD. This is a one-time purchase, and you can then manage your own OpenAI costs directly with OpenAI.

You can learn more about ScreenSnapAI on its new website. Please feel free to email us at support@aptonic.com with any questions or feedback. We look forward to hearing what you think of our latest creation. We have big plans for the app, and this is really only the beginning.

For those who aren’t familiar, Short.io is a URL shortening service that allows you to create branded short links using your own domain. Short.io also provides features like link management, detailed analytics, and custom domains.

Now, Dropzone has a Short.io action that allows you to easily shorten links using Short.io from anywhere on your Mac. Here’s a quick demo:

You can install the action from here.

Once you add the action to Dropzone, you will need to configure the API Key and domain you want to use as shown below:

You can create a free API key once logged in from your Short.io dashboard here. The domain should be set to your Short.io domain. You can view all your Short.io domains here.

Once you have configured API Key and domain you can shorten URLs by selecting a URL anywhere on your Mac, right-clicking it and choosing ‘Run Dropzone Action’ from the Services menu. The Dropzone grid will open and then you can click on the Short.io action to shorten the URL. You can also select a URL anywhere on your Mac and press Ctrl+Option+Cmd+D.

We hope you find this action useful. Feel free to email support@aptonic.com if you have any feedback or questions about the action.

After listening to user feedback on Drop Bar we have added some new features to Dropzone 4 that we think you’ll find super useful.

Rename Stacks

You can now name stacks in Drop Bar. Just right-click a stack and choose ‘Name Stack’ from the menu or hover over a stack in Drop Bar and hit enter to assign the items in a stack a name. The name that you assign won’t impact the source files and is purely used as a labelling to help you organise things in Dropzone.

This gives you a fantastic way to group a bunch of files for a specific project. For example, you might have some files that you know you’re going to need to finish a project and those files are scattered around different locations on the web and on your Mac and you need to collect them all into one place. Now you can just drag the files into a Drop Bar stack, assign a name and then when you’re ready either separate the stack to get the files individually or just drag the whole stack to where you need it.

Reorder Stacks

We have also added the ability to reorder items in Drop Bar by dragging them around inside the Dropzone grid. This feature combined with renaming takes Drop Bar to a new level. You can now easily use it as a tool to organise multiple files for multiple projects.

We have made a short video to show you how to use these two new features below:

Renaming is a Dropzone 4 Pro feature, although you can still try this out for free in the trial version of Dropzone 4 Pro.

We hope you enjoy the new features. If you have any feedback you can email us at support@aptonic.com

Dropzone 4 has now been fully updated for macOS Sonoma. You will likely notice a few cosmetic changes that have been happening in the app as well.

When you click the menu item to open the Dropzone grid it will now show a highlight around it like other toggled menu items:

There’s also a right-click menu that has been added into the menu item. It only has Settings for now but we may add further options in here in future updates.

There’s also an often requested feature that has that has finally made it into Dropzone 4. When using the Move or Copy Files actions to move or copy a file that already existed the only options before were to replace the file or stop the operation. Now we have added in a third option to ‘Keep Both’ which will add a numeric suffix to the file. This brings the handling for existing files inline with how you’re used to it working in the Finder.

We’ve also added a new Dropzone 4 Introduction video taking you over a few basics of using Dropzone and showing a few tricks you might not have seen. Check it out below if you haven’t seen it.

We have many new features and improvements planned for the app now that macOS Sonoma is fully supported.

As always, feel free to email support@aptonic.com if you have any questions or feedback. You can also make feature requests and discuss Dropzone on our forums.

Today I want to show you how to setup and use an action for Dropzone 4 that allows you to download videos from YouTube.

First you’re going to need Dropzone 4 Pro. You can download this from the homepage here. This comes with a 14 day trial of Pro so you can test this out for free if you don’t have a license already. Note that you need the non-Mac App Store version of Dropzone 4 for this.

Once you’ve downloaded and run Dropzone you’re going to want to goto the Dropzone add-on actions page and click the ‘Install’ button for the YouTube Downloader action as shown below:

The YouTube Downloader action will then be downloaded and installed.
You will be prompted to add it to the Dropzone grid. Click the ‘Add to Grid’ button:

You will now be prompted to select a folder for the videos to be downloaded into. Choose a folder and click ‘Open’:

That’s the basic setup done. You will now have the YouTube Downloader action in your Dropzone grid. The easiest way to use it is to goto a video you want to download in your favourite browser and then right click on the URL, go into the ‘Services’ submenu and click ‘Run Dropzone Action’ as shown below:

You can also select the URL and use the Ctrl+Option+Command+D keyboard shortcut to trigger the Run Dropzone action service.

Dropzone will now popup and ask you what action you want to use. You can just click on the ‘YouTube Downloader’ action:

The video will be downloaded into the chosen folder, and the progress of the download will be shown in the grid and in the Dropzone menu item:

You’ll also get a notification when the video download is complete:

Also this action doesn’t just work for downloading YouTube videos, but literally hundreds of other video sites as well.
There’s a comprehensive list of supported sites here.

Enjoy. And please consider supporting our work by purchasing a Dropzone 4 Pro license if you find this useful.

Following on from last weeks demo of using Dropzone in a Shortcuts workflow to take a screenshot and upload to an SFTP server, I wanted to show off another handy Shortcuts integration that Dropzone 4 now includes:

In this screencast I first give a basic overview of Drop Bar then show you how to setup a Shortcut to take a screenshot and put it in Drop Bar, ready for dragging into another app or onto a Dropzone action.

This Shortcuts action lets you add files to the Drop Bar area of Dropzone from within a Shortcut. This can be used with any Shortcuts action that outputs files.

I’ve included a screenshot of the Shortcut setup below to help you replicate this yourself:

I hope you find this useful and it inspires you to try out Shortcuts with Dropzone and come up with your own timesaving Shortcuts.
Also note that you need to be on macOS 12 or later as the Shortcuts app in macOS was added in macOS 12.

If you haven’t tried out the new Shortcuts app that ships with macOS 12 and later then it’s well worth checking out. You can quickly build some great timesaving automations to make commonly performed tasks faster and easier.

Below is a video showing how to setup a Shortcut that takes an interactive screenshot and uploads it to an SFTP server and then puts the resulting URL on the clipboard. It also shows you how you can trigger the Shortcut from within Dropzone using the ‘Run Shortcut’ action:

Note that you need the non-Mac App Store version of Dropzone 4 to add the Shortcut into the Dropzone grid due to sandboxing restrictions.

As shown in the video above, the new Dropzone Shortcut actions allow you trigger Dropzone grid actions from within a Shortcut and add some great extra functionality (such as sharing files with services that aren’t natively provided by Shortcuts). You can run any action in your Dropzone grid via Shortcuts and pass along files or text to use when running a Dropzone grid action.

All of the available Dropzone Shortcut actions are shown below:

You can preconfigure different Dropzone actions in your Dropzone grid (such as different SFTP or Amazon S3 servers for example) and then run the appropriate Dropzone action from a Shortcut using the above Shortcut actions.

I’ve also added a screenshot of the Shortcut setup from the above video so you can copy this yourself:

I hope this will inspire you to check out the Shortcuts app and try setting up some Shortcuts of your own.
This is just scratching the surface of what you can do with Shortcuts and Dropzone and I’m looking forward to sharing some more workflows with you soon.