Documentation / Reference

Troubleshooting

The things that go wrong most often, and what to do about each.

Files won't load

• Check the format is supported. Unsupported files are skipped silently during a folder load rather than reported as errors — see supported formats.
• Check permissions. A file on a network share, an external drive mounted read-only, or a folder owned by another user may not be readable.
• Check the file opens elsewhere. A truncated download or a partially copied file will fail here too.
• Try a smaller batch. If one folder fails, load a subfolder to narrow down which file is the problem.

Metadata isn't showing

• The file may genuinely have none. Screenshots, exported web images, and files processed by tools that strip metadata often carry almost nothing.
• Check the Advanced section. Tags that don't fit the standard groups are collected there rather than dropped.
• Open the raw JSON view. It shows the complete tag dump, which settles whether a value is absent or just displayed somewhere unexpected.
• Clear the metadata search box. An active filter in the metadata panel hides non-matching fields.

A field won't edit

No pencil on hover means the field isn't editable. Usually one of:

• It describes the data — duration, codec, bitrate, sample rate, dimensions. Read-only by design.
• The container can't store it. Some video and audio formats accept far fewer tags than others.
• It isn't in the editable set. EveryMark ships a defined list of writable fields deliberately. If one you need is missing, that's worth reporting.

A save fails

• Read-only file or volume. Check the file isn't marked read-only and that the drive is mounted writable.
• The file is open elsewhere. Another application holding a lock will block the write — close it and retry.
• Disk space. Writes need room for both the backup copy and the rewritten file.
• The value was rejected. Validation errors name the field; correct the value and save again.

The map is blank

• Check your connection. Map tiles come from OpenStreetMap over the network. Everything else in EveryMark works offline, but the map can't.
• Check a proxy or firewall. Corporate networks sometimes block tile servers.
• Check the coordinates are valid. An out-of-range latitude leaves nothing to display.
• Place search needs the network too, for the same reason.

Backups are eating the disk

Every save copies the whole original file, so a large RAW or lossless-audio session adds up quickly.

• Move the backup folder to a larger volume in Settings → Backup location.
• Prune old backups once you've confirmed a batch came out right — they're ordinary files in an ordinary folder.
• Turn automatic backup off only if you have filesystem snapshots or your own versioning in place.

It feels slow

• Very large folders take a moment on first load while thumbnails and previews are generated. A notification appears for sets above a few hundred files.
• RAW previews are extracted, not decoded, which is much faster — but files with no embedded preview will be slower to display.
• Network drives are the usual culprit. Reading and writing metadata over SMB or NFS is dramatically slower than on a local disk. Copy locally, edit, copy back.

Reporting a problem

The useful details are: the file format, the camera or software that produced the file, what you were doing, and the exact error text. Files that fail to load or save are the most valuable reports — they usually point at a format quirk we can reproduce and fix. Beta emails include the address to reply to.