Frequently Asked Questions

Yes! The free download includes 10 full Wrangles in Demo mode — the complete app, nothing held back. Preview, reports, undo, and Restore from Receipt all work, with no account and no time limit. When your 10 Wrangles are used up, a one-time purchase unlocks unlimited Wrangles. (And even after the demo is spent, undo and restore keep working, so your test footage is never stuck.)

You've got 30 days, and you don't need to give a reason. Email support@mediacardwrangler.com and we'll refund what you paid, including any sales tax, to your original payment method. You can also ask Link, the Stripe service that sells Wrangler for us, and a full refund from Link works the same way. Bought twice by mistake? Tell us which key you're using and we'll refund the other. After a full refund, the license is deactivated, so it stops unlocking unlimited Wrangles, but the app isn't taken away: it returns to free demo mode in the same state it was in before you bought. If you had 6 of your 10 free Wrangles left at purchase, you'll have those 6 again (the ones you'd already used don't come back). Undo and Restore from Receipt keep working either way, so you're never locked out of your own footage or past reports.

Nope! Wrangler doesn't copy, verify, or back up your card. Offload and verify first, then run Wrangler only on a copied, backed-up working folder, never on the original camera card or your only copy.

Drop it in anyway! If your media is already sitting at the top level, Wrangler sees there's nothing to move and treats the folder as a Tidy Up instead: .DS_Store files go to the Trash, empty leftover folders are removed, and your media isn't touched at all. (On your Mac's internal drive it's included automatically, and you can leave it out before you run. On an external drive, Wrangler may leave it out until you choose to include it.) It's handy on archive drives and old project folders that are already sorted the way you like but still carry junk from their card days. You still get the preview, the report, and the undo receipt. And if there's truly nothing to clean up either, Wrangler just tells you so.

Never! Wrangler only moves files, and only renames files when names collide and you choose Add Folder Name (or make that your default in Settings), which adds the folder's name to every file from the folder with the clash. Undo restores the original names. It won't transcode, recompress, or touch the contents of your media. File contents are always bit-for-bit identical before and after.

Yup! Every Wrangle saves an undo receipt, and you can restore from it anytime, even after quitting and reopening the app days later. Just point Wrangler at the saved receipt and it puts your files back, including recreating any empty folders it removed. Two things to know: undo works by remembering each file's exact original and new path at the time of the Wrangle, so it only works if you haven't manually moved or renamed those files afterward. And junk that went to the Trash stays in the Trash rather than being restored, so pull anything you want back out of the Trash yourself before emptying it.

Absolutely! Drop the folder that holds them (a shoot day, a camera's reels, or a whole project) and Wrangler finds each card inside, however deep, and treats each one as its own card in the batch. If you drop several folders at once, they need to share the same parent folder. We recommend Wrangling in small batches or one card at a time, since a batch shares a single report and undo receipt. Wrangle 8 cards together and decide you only want to undo 1, and you're undoing all 8.

They're moved, not deleted, into a folder called Strays, with their original subfolder structure kept intact so you can still find and use them later if needed.

Wrangler treats exactly one kind of file as junk: .DS_Store, the view-settings file Finder writes into folders. Those go to the Trash, so they stay recoverable until you empty it, and empty source folders are removed. Nothing else is touched. On storage with no Trash, most often a NAS share, .DS_Store files are set aside in Ω_WRANGLER/CLEANUP TO DELETE instead, and undo puts them back. They're only deleted permanently if you click Delete Them Now, or tell Wrangler to always do that on that drive.

Wrangler stops the run, moves every file it already relocated back to where it came from, and writes a plain-English failure log (wrangle-FAILED-….txt) in Ω_WRANGLER/REPORTS, next to the report and undo receipt. It never overwrites anything to force a file back. In the rare case something blocks a file from returning, such as a new file now sitting at its original path, Wrangler tells you how many didn't go back, and the undo receipt in that folder lists every file's original and new location so you can use Restore from Receipt.

A locked media file keeps its card out of the Wrangle until you unlock it in Finder and add the card again, so nothing gets skipped silently. Other cards in the batch can still run. Locked metadata or sidecar files are simply left in place and noted in the report.

It recognizes ARRIRAW, Canon Cinema RAW frame sequences (.rmf) and CinemaDNG cards and deliberately leaves them alone. Those formats store footage as one file per frame, with audio and metadata their tools expect in the original layout, so Wrangler won't move, rename, or clean up anything on those cards. Everything else in your batch still Wrangles normally.

Your license covers up to 2 of your Macs at a time. To move it, open Manage License on the Mac you're leaving and click Deactivate This Mac. If that Mac is gone, activate on the new one and click Release next to the old Mac in the License window. Its seat frees up and the new Mac activates, with no need to email us.

Yes. Your purchase includes every 1.x update we release, at no extra charge, delivered in the app. Choose Media Card Wrangler > Check for Updates… anytime. A future version 2 may be sold separately as its own download. It won't install over your copy, and your license keeps working with 1.x.

Only now and then. Wrangling happens entirely on your Mac. A paid license checks in with our license server from time to time, and if it can't reach the server, say out on location, it keeps working for up to 30 days. Once it checks in again, that clock starts over. The free demo doesn't need a connection.

On the Mac you're leaving, open Manage License and click Deactivate This Mac to free its seat, then drag Media Card Wrangler from Applications to the Trash. If that Mac is already gone, activate on the new Mac and click Release next to the old one in the License window. Your footage, reports and undo receipts live beside your cards, not inside the app, so uninstalling doesn't touch them.

Requires macOS 13 or later. Universal binary. Tested on macOS 13, 15 and 26, on Apple Silicon and Intel hardware.

You gotta problem with that, partner? J/k, we tried to be normal. Then "Strays" happened. Then "Wrangle" became a button. At some point, you stop fighting the bit and go full "yeehaw".