Wish List for PM FTP Enhancements in 2026, in order of preference:
1) Custom Keyboard Shortcut + FTP Snapshot
Add the ability to assign custom keyboard shortcuts to specific FTP Snapshots. For those of us jumping between photographer, editor and picture desk roles at different outlets, it’s essential to ensure we’re always sending images to the right servers & queues. Manually switching back and forth between one global FTP snapshot, often on a per-file transmission basis, is prone to human error.
Here's a simplified example of what I mean: Contact Sheet, select image(s), CTRL-P transmits the selected file(s) using my "Production" FTP snapshot; CTRL-R transmits using my "Reloads" FTP snapshot, and CTRL-S transmits using my "Stock" FTP snapshot. Note: these shortcut combinations are for illustrative purposes, only: I know that CTRL-P, R and S are already in use for unrelated functions.
2) Display the FTP Snapshot NAME in the FTP transmission status window
Building upon #1 above, I need a quick, visual confirmation that images are going to the right place. The present PM build shows the FTP login name in the window’s title bar. However, this doesn’t help for environments that use the same login name for production, reloads and stock images, but with different transmission requirements for each (sizing, renaming, destination folders, etc.) Adding a banner to the FTP transmission status window with "present Snapshot-name-in-use" would help ensure photos are going to the right place.
I'd also argue that it's a security concern to display two-thirds of the FTP server address/login name/password combination in plain text on the FTP transmission window. Perhaps the intent is to display what I'm talking about (where are my images going?) for users that don't use Snapshots. If this is the case, perhaps these messaging use cases could be user-selectable in Settings (display FTP server name + Password, the Snapshot Name, both, or neither.
3) Global FTP Kill Switch
Add the ability to turn off all FTP transmission functionality via a global kill switch, thus preventing the FTP & Upload buttons from working. I see that something similar is coming soon for Code Replacements. Let's do the same thing for FTP. The “Save & Advance” and “Save, Upload & Advance” buttons on the IPTC Info Screen are very close together, so it's easy for muscle memory to kick in and to start uploading images when the user intent is just captioning & metadata edits.
At present, I use a dummy FTP Snapshot with intentionally-invalid login credentials as my kill switch in these scenarios, but something at the application level would be appreciated.
Photo Mechanic: 2025.10 build 8858 (6d77df7)
Platform: Windows 11 Pro
As always, thank you for considering these ideas.
