01 · LIBRARY

A library that scales with your life.

Index existing folders in place — no copying, no duplication. RAW, JPEG, HEIC, PNG, TIFF, BMP, WebP, GIF, video, Live Photos: all auto-detected and organized.

Multi-library support

Personal, work, archive — keep separate libraries with separate indexes. Switch with one click. Each lives in its own folder.

Watch folders

Drop a photo into any watched folder. PhotoSphere imports it, computes thumbnails, runs AI — all without you opening the app.

Virtualized timeline

Scroll 50,000 photos at 60 FPS. Renders only what's on screen. Day, month, year zoom levels.

Smart albums

Rule-based: "all RAW from 2024 with rating ≥ 4". Albums update automatically when new photos match.

Bulk operations

Select 5,000 photos. Rate them. Tag them. Move them. Re-encode them. Everything is a batch operation.

Trash & recovery

30-day soft delete. Permanently gone only if you confirm. Restores keep original timestamps and album membership.

Burst detection Live Photos RAW + JPEG pairing HEIC support Stack groups Custom views Dupe finder Folder sync Apple Photos import Lightroom catalog import
02 · EDITOR

A real editor. Non-destructive. Always.

Lightroom-class adjustments. Photoshop-class healing. Every edit is a sidecar — your original is never touched. Undo, redo, revert at any point in history.

Curves & tone

RGB and per-channel curves. Histogram with shadow/highlight clipping warnings. Levels, contrast, exposure, blacks, whites.

HSL color grading

Hue / saturation / luminance per color channel. Split toning. Color balance for shadows, midtones, highlights.

Crop, rotate, perspective

Free crop, aspect ratio presets, straighten by horizon line, perspective correction with 4-point warp.

Lens correction

Auto-detect lens from EXIF. Corrects distortion, vignetting, chromatic aberration. Profiles for 200+ lenses.

Local adjustments

Radial filter, gradient mask, brush mask. Adjust exposure, color, sharpness only inside the mask.

RAW development

Demosaic CR2/CR3/NEF/ARW/DNG/RW2/ORF/RAF. White balance, profile, noise reduction, sharpening.

Presets & LUTs Auto-enhance Heal / clone Red eye Skin smoothing Vignette Grain Sharpening Noise reduction Dehaze Clarity B&W mixer Tone curve presets Edit history Compare before/after Sidecar XMP export Copy/paste settings Batch apply
03 · METADATA

Every photo, fully described.

EXIF, IPTC, XMP, geolocation, ratings, flags, color labels, keywords, captions. Search any field. Bulk-edit any field.

Map view

Every geotagged photo on a world map. Cluster by location. Reverse-geocode to city/country. Add or remove GPS data manually.

Stars & flags

5-star rating. Pick / reject flags. Color labels (red, yellow, green, blue, purple). Keyboard shortcuts for everything.

Hierarchical tags

Nature → Landscape → Mountains. Apply parent, get all children searchable. Auto-tagging from AI.

Power search

SQLite FTS5 full-text. Boolean operators. "rating ≥ 4 AND Canon AND 2024". Saved searches as smart albums.

Captions & titles

Per-photo title, caption, copyright, creator. IPTC-compliant. Read/written to embedded metadata or sidecar.

EXIF inspector

Every EXIF/MakerNote field, formatted. Camera, lens, ISO, shutter, aperture, focal length. Search by any value.

XMP read/write IPTC headlines GPS edit Reverse geocoding Date shifts Timezone fixer Camera profiles Lens database Filename templates Keyword sync
04 · ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Nine models. All on-device.

Apple and Google have giant data centers running their AI. PhotoSphere has your CPU. Same features. Zero privacy cost. Explore AI in detail →

Face recognition

RetinaFace + ArcFace. 512-dim embeddings. Cosine clustering. Pet detection included.

Object detection

YOLOv8 with COCO 80 classes. Cars, food, animals, sports, indoor objects.

Scene classification

Beach, mountain, urban, forest, indoor. Auto-tags every photo. Searchable by scene.

OCR

PaddleOCR DBNet + CRNN. 6,000-char dictionary. Find text in receipts, signs, screenshots.

CLIP semantic search

512-dim embeddings, HNSW index, cosine query. Type meaning, not keywords.

Magic eraser

LaMa inpainting. Brush over an object, it disappears. Background remover (U2Net) included.

Aesthetic scoring

NIMA model + heuristic Laplacian. Auto-pick the best shot from a burst.

Photo unblur

DeblurGAN-v2. Recover detail from motion blur. Run on the photos you almost deleted.

Style transfer

Apply a painting style to any photo. Each style is a small ONNX model — pick from a library.

05 · MEDIA & PRINT

From your screen to your wall.

Photo books to PDF. Wall calendars. Print layouts. Slideshows. Memory videos. Everything you'd use a separate app for.

Photo books

Drag photos into a layout grid. Multiple page templates. Export to print-ready PDF (A4, letter, square 8x8, 12x12).

Calendars

Generate a 12-month wall calendar from a photo album. Pick one photo per month. Export to PDF.

Print layouts

4×6, 5×7, 8×10, 11×14. Multiple photos per page. Borderless or with margins. Color-managed.

Slideshows

Pan/zoom Ken-Burns. Music sync. Duration per slide. Export to MP4 with one click.

Memory videos

"This day, 5 years ago." Auto-generated FFmpeg reels with music. Tap a Memory, watch it play.

Video tools

Trim, speed, stabilize, convert. FFmpeg under the hood. H.264, HEVC, ProRes, AV1.

PDF export JPEG/HEIC export PNG/TIFF export Watermarking Color profiles DPI settings Resize on export Strip EXIF on export Live Photo to GIF Burst to GIF
06 · SOURCES, SHARING & IMPORT

Pull from anywhere. Stay on your machine.

Connect cloud accounts and other apps. PhotoSphere copies bytes locally — your library stays on your device, not in someone else's data center. Selective sync, pause/resume, all built in.

LIVE CLOUD SOURCES — NEW

Connect and sync

OAuth-authenticated, delta-synced, pausable, resumable. Bring your own client ID — no shared app credentials, no third-party data brokers in the middle.

OneDrive

Microsoft Graph delta sync. Range-resumable downloads — pause a 200 GB sync and pick up exactly where you left off.

Dropbox

Full-folder live sync via Dropbox API v2 cursor-based deltas. Selective sync to specific top-level folders.

Apple Photos (Mac, live)

Reads your local Photos.app library incrementally. New captures show up in seconds. Albums, favorites, captions all carry over.

Google Photos Picker

One-shot import — Google restricted full-library API in March 2025. The Picker lets you select photos in Google's UI; PhotoSphere imports the originals.

Apple Photos library

Read existing .photoslibrary archives directly. Faces, places, ratings, keywords — all migrated and searchable locally.

Google Takeout

The recommended path for full Google Photos migration. Parses sidecar JSON for EXIF/GPS/captions, recreates albums with full membership.

OAuth 2.0 PKCE Tokens in OS keychain Bring-your-own client ID Pause / resume any sync Per-source bandwidth throttle Selective album sync Delta cursors (incremental) Auto token refresh HTTP Range resume
SHARING & EXPORT

Move photos out

Send photos out without uploading them to anyone's cloud first.

LAN share links

Generate a password-protected URL on your home Wi-Fi. Guests open it in their browser. Link dies when you close the share.

QR-code sharing

One photo, one QR. Phone scans, downloads instantly. Perfect for sharing across the room without exchanging contacts.

Lightroom catalog import

Read .lrcat files. Brings ratings, flags, color labels, keywords, develop history (XMP).

Drag-drop export

Drag photos out to Finder, Explorer, or another app. Originals go out. Edits applied at export time.

SD card direct import Camera tethering Mobile companion sync Email export Cloud-folder export Social-format presets Capture One sidecar Bridge to Photoshop External edit roundtrip
07 · PRIVACY & OS INTEGRATION

Locked down by default.

PIN-locked Hidden album. Encrypted vault. Screen-capture blocking. All optional. All free. Privacy guarantees →

PIN-locked Hidden

Argon2-hashed PIN. Hidden photos never appear in Memories, Search, or thumbnails until you authenticate.

Encrypted vault

AES-256-GCM container for ultra-sensitive shots. Mounted at runtime, sealed when locked. Optional, off by default.

Screen-capture block

WDA_EXCLUDEFROMCAPTURE on Windows. App window is invisible to screenshots and screen-recording, even via OBS.

System tray

Quick-import, recent activity, jump to Memories. Right-click in the tray, never open the full app.

Native shell integration

"Open with PhotoSphere" in Finder/Explorer. Drag a folder onto the dock icon to import.

Battery-aware

AI throttles when on battery. Indexing pauses below 20%. Resumes on AC. You decide the threshold.

Open at login (optional) Notifications Spotlight integration QuickLook plugin No-network mode Update opt-out Activity feed First-run wizard License manager
08 · SYNC & MOBILE

All your devices. One library.

Pair laptop, desktop, phone, tablet over your home Wi-Fi. End-to-end encrypted. Photos move device-to-device, never via a server. How sync works →

QR-code pairing

Scan the QR or type the 6-digit code. Devices generate per-pair keys. No accounts. No servers.

iOS & Android companion

Browse your library. Pair, backup, sync. Works on the same network as your laptop. App Store + Play Store.

Selective sync

All photos / favorites only / last year only / tagged-only. Each device decides what it pulls.

CRDT shared albums

Family album you all edit. Automerge CRDTs. Edit offline, everything reconciles cleanly when you're back online.

Hub mode

Designate one always-on machine as the family hub. Phones back up to it. No NAS, no cloud, no recurring fees.

Bandwidth control

Pauses on metered Wi-Fi. Throttle upload/download speeds. Schedule sync windows.

All this. One app. $99 once.

No subscriptions, no Pro tier, no upsells. Every feature on this page ships in the base license.