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100%Wed 4:14 PM
coffee on a wooden table12,480 indexed
Lives in your menu bar.
A keystroke away. The panel floats above whatever you're doing, then disappears the moment you don't need it.
PhotoSeek for Mac
The photo you’re thinking of.
Describe what you remember. PhotoSeek searches your library for it — in plain English, in seconds.
One-time purchase · macOS 14 Sonoma or later · Apple silicon & Intel
sunset on the beach12,480 indexed
How it works
Type what you remember.
No tags. No folders. No filenames. Just describe what was in the photo — “my dog running in snow,” “view from a plane window,” “birthday cake with candles” — and PhotoSeek ranks every photo in your library by how well it matches.
- 1Indexes your library once. Each photo gets a semantic fingerprint.
- 2You search. Your words become a fingerprint too.
- 3Photos sort by how close their fingerprint is to yours.
my dog running in snow12,480 indexed
Features
Made to feel like part of the Mac.
view from a plane window12,480 indexed
Ranked by how well it matches.
Three green dots means a strong match. One red dot means a stretch. You can switch to exact percentages in Settings if you'd rather see the numbers.
birthday cake with candles12,480 indexed
Multi-select. Favorite, organize, delete.
Click Select, then drag across the photos you want — or click them one at a time. Send the batch to an album, mark them as favorites, or move them to Recently Deleted.
sunset on the beach
Settings×
Gemini API Key
••••••••••••••••••••••••aIzreye
Library
48,210
Total Photos
32,144
Local Available
16,066
iCloud Only
12,480 indexed (39%) · last indexed 2 hours ago
Indexing
Index New PhotosRe-index AllClear Index
General
Show Similarity %
Launch at Login
Indexes only what's new.
Run it once, then forget about it. PhotoSeek picks up new additions to your library and indexes only those — no full re-scans, no busywork.
Privacy
Your photos. Your library. Your key.
PhotoSeek doesn’t run any servers. To turn each photo into something searchable, it sends it to Google’s Gemini API using your own free key — then stores the result locally, on your Mac, in a single SQLite file. After that, every search runs on your machine.
No PhotoSeek account
There’s no sign-up. The app doesn’t phone home and we have nothing to leak.
Your Gemini key, your control
You generate it free at Google AI Studio. You can revoke it any time. We never see it.
Search runs on your Mac
After indexing, queries are answered locally — by Apple's Accelerate framework, against a database on your disk.
Read the full privacy statement.
What people say
“I described a photo from a trip three years ago and it found it before I finished typing.”
— Beta user, March 2026
More quotes go here as reviews come in.
Questions
Good ones, asked early.
Does it work with my Apple Photos library?
Yes. Point PhotoSeek at your Photos library folder (or any folder of images) and it indexes from there. macOS will ask once for permission to read the folder.
What kinds of files can it index?
HEIC, HEIF, JPG/JPEG, PNG, TIFF and WebP. PhotoSeek skips videos.
What does it cost?
PhotoSeek is a one-time purchase: $5 USD or R$25 BRL — pay once, own it. The semantic step uses Google’s Gemini API on your own free key, and Google’s free tier covers most personal libraries. There’s no subscription and no PhotoSeek account.
Can I get a refund?
Yes. If PhotoSeek doesn’t work for you within 30 days of purchase, email hello@photoseek.app with the email you used at checkout and we’ll refund it. No forms, no questions.
What about iCloud Photo Library?
PhotoSeek can only see what’s downloaded to your Mac. It tells you how many photos in your library are local versus iCloud-only, so you know what’s being indexed.
Can it find people or specific places?
It searches by what’s visually in the photo — “a person at a chalkboard,” “a beach at golden hour.” It doesn’t do face recognition or read GPS metadata. For named people, use the Photos app’s built-in faces.
Will it slow down my Mac?
Indexing happens in the background and you can stop it at any time. Once indexed, search is instant — vector math runs through Apple’s Accelerate framework, the same primitives Photos uses for its own search.
Where is my data stored?
In a single SQLite file in your application support directory. Delete it any time from Settings → Clear Index.