Want to avoid writing to sidecars?

Tips
,
1

PhotoStructure stores image metadata changes in sidecars, out of an abundance of caution in preventing any issues with your original assets.

If you find sidecars to be annoying, and have backups of your original assets, set the following environment variables to keep metadata within existing files:

PS_WRITE_METADATA_TO_SIDECARS_IF_SIDECAR_EXISTS=false
PS_WRITE_METADATA_TO_SIDECARS_IF_IMAGE=false
PS_WRITE_METADATA_TO_SIDECARS_IF_VIDEO=false

Here’s the relevant section from the library’s settings.toml, as of today’s v1.0.0-beta.12 build:

# +----------------------------------+
# |  writeMetadataToSidecarsIfImage  |
# +----------------------------------+
#
# If set to true, PhotoStructure will write metadata changes made to images
# into sidecars. If set to false, PhotoStructure will overwrite original
# images with metadata changes.
#
# environment: "PS_WRITE_METADATA_TO_SIDECARS_IF_IMAGE"
#
writeMetadataToSidecarsIfImage = false


# +------------------------------------------+
# |  writeMetadataToSidecarsIfSidecarExists  |
# +------------------------------------------+
#
# If set to true, PhotoStructure will write metadata changes into sidecars if
# the file already has a sidecar.
#
# environment: "PS_WRITE_METADATA_TO_SIDECARS_IF_SIDECAR_EXISTS"
#
writeMetadataToSidecarsIfSidecarExists = false


# +----------------------------------+
# |  writeMetadataToSidecarsIfVideo  |
# +----------------------------------+
#
# If set to true, PhotoStructure will write metadata changes made to videos
# into sidecars. If set to false, PhotoStructure will overwrite original
# videos with metadata changes. This defaults to false, as most software does
# not use sidecars except for images.
#
# environment: "PS_WRITE_METADATA_TO_SIDECARS_IF_VIDEO"
#
writeMetadataToSidecarsIfVideo = false
2

What are the defaults (if I don’t set the env variables or settings file)?

3 
# writeMetadataToSidecarsIfImage = true
# writeMetadataToSidecarsIfSidecarExists = true
# writeMetadataToSidecarsIfVideo = false

(I don’t write to sidecars for videos by default because no other software uses sidecars for videos, afaik)