Release
Archyv 1.3.4
Sidecar files can no longer be read onto the wrong photo. When several files
in a folder share the same base name — a RAW and a JPEG straight from the
camera, or two RAW files from different cameras — an .xmp sidecar sitting
beside them is ambiguous. Archyv now works out which file the sidecar actually
belongs to, using the file type and any ownership note the sidecar itself
carries. If it genuinely cannot tell, it declines to use the sidecar for any of
them and says so in the run log, naming the files involved, rather than guessing
and showing one photo’s keywords, captions or location on another.
Two related changes come with it. Archyv will no longer overwrite a neighbouring
file’s sidecar when it writes one of its own; it writes to the longer,
type-qualified name instead (photo.nef.xmp rather than photo.xmp). And
sidecars that Archyv writes now record which file they belong to, so the
question does not arise again later. Existing sidecars are never renamed or
moved.
Files with no usable date now go to an “Unknown Date” folder. File Transfer used to fall back to the file’s modification date, which quietly filed undated photos under whatever month the file happened to be last touched. They are now set aside in one clearly-named folder for you to deal with.
Manual Renaming honours the fallback mode you chose, and there is now a field for the fallback value itself, so a missing piece of metadata no longer forces a decision you did not ask for.
Cancel works during File Transfer’s scanning phases. Pressing Cancel while Archyv is scanning a large selection now actually stops it.
Scan & Select shows the values you can search for. Choosing a field that has a fixed list of possible values — Country, and eighteen others — now shows that list as tick boxes in the card straight away, so you can pick several. Before, the card appeared empty for those fields and the list only arrived after pressing Start. Search values are also now tied to the field they were entered for, so switching fields no longer carries the previous field’s values across.
(Written up on 30 July 2026, after this version shipped.)