Using Media Card Wrangler

Wrangler is a cleanup tool, not an offload tool. It doesn't copy your card, verify checksums, or manage backups. It takes a card you've already copied and safely backed up, and tidies it for editing.

So a healthy order of operations looks like this:

• •Offload the card to your working drive with whatever tool you trust.
• •Verify the copy completed and you have a second backup somewhere else.
• •Point Wrangler at the copy on your working drive.

Wait until your offload app says the transfer is verified and finished. If a card was copied in the last few minutes, Wrangler reminds you before it starts, but it can't see an offload app that has paused to verify. Wrangling moves files, so the checksum records your offload app wrote for this copy (MHL files, .md5 sidecars) won't match it afterward. Keep an unwrangled, verified copy for delivery or archive. If you need to re-verify the working copy, Undo puts it back first.

Want to practice on something disposable first? Grab the free sample cards — realistic camera folder structures full of dummy files, so you can experiment as freely as you like.

• •Download the .dmg and open it.
• •Drag Media Card Wrangler into your Applications folder.
• •Open it from Applications.
• •The first time you open it, macOS may ask you to confirm opening an app downloaded from the internet. Click Open.
• •Wrangler starts with a short Before You Wrangle notice. Tick the agreement to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy, choose whether it should check for updates automatically, then click Continue. Quit closes the app without agreeing. You can read the notice again any time from Help > Before You Wrangle…, and if either document changes later, the app lets you know.

macOS may also ask for permission the first time Wrangler reaches your Desktop, Documents or Downloads folder, an external drive, or a network share. Click Allow. If you clicked Don't Allow, see Cannot be read below.

Every build is signed with a Developer ID and notarized by Apple, so macOS can check it before it opens. Requires macOS 13 or later. Universal binary. Tested on macOS 13, 15 and 26, on Apple Silicon and Intel hardware.

The free download is the complete app in Demo mode: 10 full Wrangles, no account, no time limit. When you buy a license, your key arrives by email.

To activate, choose Media Card Wrangler > Manage License…(it's also in Settings), paste your key, and clickActivate. A license covers up to 2 of your Macs at a time. Moving to a new Mac? On the old one, open Manage License and click Deactivate This Mac. If the old Mac died, was wiped or was sold, just activate on the new one: when both seats are in use, the License window lists the Macs on your license, and clicking Release next to the old Mac frees its seat and finishes activating this one.

Your license checks in online now and then. If you're offline, say out on location, it keeps working for up to 30 days, and checks in again once you're back online.

Lost your key? Recover it here with the email you bought it with.

Add your cards

Drag a copied card folder into the app, or use the button to choose one. You can add several cards at once — see Wrangling several cards below.

Wrangler scans what you dropped and tells you what it found: how many cards, what media is inside, and anything that needs your attention before it will proceed.

Preview before anything moves

Click Preview Wrangle (⌘I) to see a read-only before-and-after of every card: which files move where and what gets set aside. Tick Show cleaned-up items to also see what goes to the Trash and which empty folders disappear. Nothing has touched your disk at this point.

Wrangle

When the preview looks right, close it and clickWrangle (⌘↩). In the Confirm Wrangle sheet, tick the box confirming these are copied, backed-up card folders (it's marked Required before Wrangling), then clickConfirm Wrangle. The first time you tick it, Wrangler offers to remember that; you can turn the reminder back on in Settings. Media rises to the top level of each card, recognized junk goes to the Trash, emptied folders are removed, and anything unrecognized is set aside rather than deleted.

Not every folder needs flattening. If you point Wrangler at a folder whose media is already sitting at the top level, it notices and says so: the card is labeled Media in place · Tidy Up. There is no mode to switch on and no setting to find.

On your Mac's internal drive, a folder like that is 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.

A Tidy Up does exactly two things, and nothing else:

• •.DS_Store files go to the Trash, or to Ω_WRANGLER/CLEANUP TO DELETE on storage with no Trash.
• •Folders that are genuinely empty are removed. A folder with anything at all still inside it is left alone.

This is useful well beyond fresh cards: archive drives, old project folders, anything you sorted by hand years ago that still carries junk and empty folder skeletons from its card days.

And if there is genuinely nothing to do, Wrangler tells you that too: media already at the top level, no junk, no empty folders, nothing to Wrangle. A folder in that state can't be added to a run, because there is no work to be done on it. That is good news, not an error.

Undo works the same way, with one thing worth knowing. Restoring recreates the empty folders that were removed, but junk that went to the Trash stays in the Trash. The app tells you this rather than pretending otherwise. If you want those files back, pull them out of the Trash yourself before you empty it.

After a run, each card holds your media at the top level, and everything else Wrangler creates goes into one Ω_WRANGLER folder beside your cards:

• •Your media, at the top level. No more digging through PRIVATE → M4ROOT → CLIP. File contents are never altered — they're moved, not converted, recompressed, or renamed (unless you chose to add folder names to duplicate filenames).
• •Ω_WRANGLER/STRAYS — everything Wrangler didn't recognize as media, in one folder per card with its original folder structure intact. LUTs, sound notes, XMLs, most sidecars: all still there, just tidied out of the way. Sidecars that carry a clip's recording date (.MOI, .THM) move with their clip instead.
• •Ω_WRANGLER/REPORTS — a plain-English Markdown report of everything that happened, plus a JSON undo receipt.

.DS_Store files go to the Trash rather than being deleted outright, so they stay recoverable until you empty it. Nothing else is cleaned up. On storage with no Trash, such as most NAS shares, they are set aside in Ω_WRANGLER/CLEANUP TO DELETE instead, where undo puts them back. They are only deleted permanently if you click Delete Them Now, or tell Wrangler to always do that on that drive.

Every run writes its undo receipt before a single file moves. That gives you two ways back:

• •Undo Last Wrangle (⌘Z) — right after a Wrangle, while the app is still open.
• •Restore from Receipt… (⇧⌘O) — days later, even after quitting and reopening. Choose the wrangle-undo-receipt-….json file inΩ_WRANGLER/REPORTS and it puts everything back where it was.

If a file can't be moved partway through a run, Wrangler stops, returns everything it already moved, and writes a plain-English failure log (wrangle-FAILED-….txt) in Ω_WRANGLER/REPORTS. It never overwrites anything to put a file back. If something blocks a file from returning, Wrangler tells you how many didn't, and the undo receipt beside the log lists where every file went.

Wrangler flags anything it isn't certain about. Some warnings let you review and opt in; others won't budge until you resolve them.

Locked files

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

Duplicate filenames

Cameras and recorders often reuse filenames across folders (a Zoom can write TRACK03.WAV into several take folders). Nothing is ever overwritten. The review screen tells you how many duplicate filenames it found, and by default, when you clickConfirm Wrangle, a Duplicate Filenames Foundwindow asks what to do before anything moves: Add Folder Name,Leave Them in Place, or Cancel. SeeWhen media files share a name.

Not a recognized camera card

Wrangler looks for the folders cameras make, like DCIM, PRIVATE, CONTENTS and CLIP. A folder of media without them is flagged, so you know it isn't a recognized card. Because it goes by those names, a folder of your own that happens to contain one (say, an exports folder with a Clips subfolder) can look like a card, so check the preview before Wrangling anything that isn't a copied camera card. What happens to a flagged folder depends on what is inside. If a Wrangle would actually move things around, it starts unticked until you review what it found and opt in. If the media is already at the top level and there is only junk and empty folders to clear, it is marked as a Tidy Up: included automatically on your Mac's internal drive, and it may be left out on an external drive until you include it.

Format cautions

Some cards get a heads-up because certain workflows depend on their structure: RED (.R3D files and .RDC folders), AVCHD, spanned or split recordings (GoPro chapters, or files split at about 4 GB), Insta360 multi-file clips, and cards carrying Avid .ale metadata. Read the note, then decide whether the card belongs in the Wrangle.

Protected RAW cards

Cards shot in ARRIRAW (.ari/.arx) or Canon Cinema RAW frame sequences (.rmf), and CinemaDNG, DPX, or TIFF footage recorded as numbered frame sequences, depend on their exact folder layout. Wrangler recognizes them and leaves the whole card untouched: nothing is moved, renamed, or cleaned up, and the card can't be included in a Wrangle. Work with those cards in your camera vendor's or editor's own tools. Single DNG or TIFF stills, bursts, and timelapses are still Wrangled as ordinary photos.

Media already in place

If a card's media is already at the top level, Wrangler says so rather than inventing work, and treats the folder as a Tidy Up instead. See already-sorted folders.

Cannot be read

If macOS won't let Wrangler read folders inside a card, Wrangler refuses the card instead of showing an incomplete plan. This is usually a privacy permission. Open System Settings > Privacy & Security > Files and Folders, allow Media Card Wrangler, then choose Re-scan Folders (⌘R).

Drop the folder that holds your cards, whether that's a shoot day, a camera's reels, or a whole project, and Wrangler finds each card inside it, 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; cards from somewhere else are flagged and left out.

When media files share a name

Wrangler moves files without altering them. Renaming a file is the one exception, and it never happens unless you choose it.Ask me each time (the default) shows the Duplicate Filenames Found window whenever names collide.Rename by adding folder name as a prefix gives every file from a folder with a clash that folder's name, not just the clashing file: ZOOM03/TRACK03.WAV becomesZOOM03_TRACK03.WAV, and the rest of ZOOM03's files follow. Contents never change, and Undo restores the original names. Leave them in place moves the first file with a given name and leaves later duplicates where they are, listed as skipped conflicts, so a card may be left partly organized.

Checking Remember my choice in the window saves that answer here; you can switch back to Ask me each time at any time. Multi-file recording sets are never renamed; if one member's name is taken, the whole set stays in place together.

• •The FAQ covers the most common questions.
• •Practice risk-free with the sample cards.
• •Anything else — get in touch. Include your macOS version, your Mac's chip, and the report or receipt from the run in question, and it'll be a much faster conversation.