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Lap is an open-source, local-first photo manager for browsing family albums, finding old photos quickly, and managing large personal media libraries offline. It is a privacy-focused alternative to cloud photo services: no forced upload, local AI search, folder-first workflow, and free to use.
- Website: https://julyx10.github.io/lap/
- Demo: https://youtu.be/RbKqNKhbVUs
- Privacy: PRIVACY.md
Open the latest release page, then download the file that matches your system:
| Platform | Package | Note |
|---|---|---|
| macOS (Apple Silicon / Intel) | _aarch64.dmg / _x64.dmg |
Notarized by Apple |
| Windows 10/11 (x64 / ARM64) | _x64_en-US.msi / _arm64_en-US.msi |
Unsigned — if SmartScreen blocks the download, click Keep anyway |
| Linux (amd64 / arm64) | _amd64.deb / _arm64.deb |
For Debian-based distros (Ubuntu, Debian, Linux Mint, etc.) |
brew tap julyx10/lap
brew install --cask lap
- Local-first by design: your photos stay on your own disk, with no required cloud account or upload.
- No library lock-in: work directly with your existing folders instead of importing everything into a closed database.
- Private AI tools: search, similarity, smart tags, and face features run locally on your machine.
- Built for large collections: optimized for smooth browsing and organization across libraries with 100k+ files.
- Open source and free: no subscription, no forced ecosystem, and code you can inspect.
- Flexible library browsing with timeline, folder, location, camera, lens, tag, favorite, rating, subject, and face filters.
- Smart Albums save rule-based views with custom grouping, sorting, ordering.
- Collection tray keep ad-hoc collections of files without moving them from their original folders.
- Local AI search for text prompts, visual similarity, subjects, face clustering, and optional multilingual search in 50+ languages.
- Apple Live Photos recognize paired HEIC/MOV Live Photos, play them in the viewer, and keep linked MOV and AAE sidecars together during rename, move, copy, and delete operations.
- RAW + JPEG/HEIC pairs optionally group a RAW file and its same-named JPEG or HEIC companion in the same folder as one item. The originals remain separate files, while rename, move, copy, paste, and delete operations keep the pair together.
- Folder-first workflow with multiple libraries, drag-and-drop import, copy-paste import, filesystem sync, and safe move/copy/delete operations.
- Review and comparison tools including a four-pane image comparison viewer.
- Cleanup tools to find duplicates and batch move unwanted files to trash.
- Built-in editing for crop, rotate, flip, resize, and basic image adjustments.
- Broad format support for 60+ photo, RAW, and video formats.
Lap is folder-first, but not every piece of information shown in Lap is embedded in the original file. This distinction matters when you also manage the same folders in Finder, Explorer, or another photo app.
- Your original photos and videos always remain ordinary files in their existing folders.
- File metadata already embedded in a file, such as EXIF capture date, camera, lens, GPS, and orientation, is read from that file when Lap indexes it.
- Saving a built-in image edit writes the resulting image to the selected destination. This is separate from Lap's library-only display rotation.
- When you rename, move, copy, or delete files in Lap, Lap updates its local catalog at the same time. It also keeps supported grouped assets, such as Apple Live Photo components, AAE sidecars, and enabled RAW + JPEG/HEIC pairs, together.
The following are Lap library data. They are stored in Lap's local database or library configuration, not written into EXIF, IPTC, or XMP sidecars:
- Collections and their membership
- Tags
- Comments
- Favorites, ratings, and review states (including Picks and Rejects)
- Lap's display rotation and other library-only state
- Smart Albums and their rules, grouping, sorting, and ordering
- AI search data, face data, thumbnails, and other index/cache data
This data does not travel with a file when it is copied, exported, or moved outside Lap, and it is not available automatically to other applications.
Lap can rescan folders and detect many filesystem changes. However, when files are renamed, moved, replaced, or copied outside Lap, Lap cannot guarantee that local associations—especially Collection membership and other library-only data—will follow the file.
For a workflow that depends on Collections, Tags, Comments, Favorites, Ratings, review states, or Lap rotation, use Lap for file moves and renames whenever possible. If you work extensively outside Lap, treat those features as local-to-Lap organization and keep a backup of Lap's database and configuration alongside your photo backup. You can view or change the database location, and create a database backup, in Settings → Storage.
Deleting Lap's database or configuration removes this local organization and index data, but does not delete your original media files.
Lap works directly with your existing photo folders. Uninstalling Lap, or deleting its database and cache files, does not delete your original photos.
The standard uninstall steps remove the application. To remove Lap completely, quit Lap first, uninstall the application, then delete its local database, thumbnail cache, and configuration files using the cleanup command for your platform.
If you installed Lap with Homebrew:
brew uninstall --cask lapFor a manual installation, quit Lap and move Lap.app from the Applications folder to the Trash.
To remove all Lap database, cache, and configuration files:
rm -rf "$HOME/Library/Application Support/com.julyx10.lap" \
"$HOME/Library/Caches/com.julyx10.lap" \
"$HOME/Library/WebKit/com.julyx10.lap"
rm -f "$HOME/Library/Preferences/com.julyx10.lap.plist"Open Settings > Apps > Installed apps, find Lap, and select Uninstall.
Then open PowerShell and remove all Lap database, cache, and configuration files:
Remove-Item -Recurse -Force -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\com.julyx10.lap"
Remove-Item -Recurse -Force -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue "$env:APPDATA\com.julyx10.lap"For Debian-based distributions, uninstall the package:
sudo apt remove lapThen remove all Lap database, cache, and configuration files:
rm -rf "$HOME/.local/share/com.julyx10.lap" \
"$HOME/.cache/com.julyx10.lap" \
"$HOME/.config/com.julyx10.lap"If you selected a custom database storage directory in Lap settings, delete that directory separately after confirming that it contains only Lap database files.
Requirements: Node.js 20+, pnpm, Rust stable.
# macOS system deps
xcode-select --install
brew install nasm pkg-config autoconf automake libtool cmake
# Linux system deps
# sudo apt install libwebkit2gtk-4.1-dev libappindicator3-dev librsvg2-dev \
# patchelf nasm clang pkg-config autoconf automake libtool cmake
# Clone and build
git clone --recursive https://github.com/julyx10/lap.git
cd lap
git submodule update --init --recursive
cargo install tauri-cli --version "^2.0.0" --locked
./scripts/download_models.sh # Windows: .\scripts\download_models.ps1
./scripts/download_ffmpeg_sidecar.sh # Windows: .\scripts\download_ffmpeg_sidecar.ps1
cd src-vite && pnpm install && cd ..
cargo tauri devLap supports 60+ photo, RAW, and video formats.
| Type | Formats |
|---|---|
| Images | JPG/JPEG/JFIF, PNG, GIF, BMP, TIFF, WebP, HEIC/HEIF/HIF, AVIF, JXL, PSD, EXR, HDR/RGBE, TGA, JPEG 2000 (JP2/J2K/J2C/JPC/JPF/JPX), DDS, DPX, QOI |
| RAW photos | CR2, CR3, CRW, NEF, NRW, ARW, SRF, SR2, RAF, RW2, ORF, PEF, DNG, SRW, RWL, MRW, 3FR, MOS, DCR, KDC, ERF, MEF, RAW, MDC |
| Videos | MP4, MOV, M4V, MKV, AVI, FLV, TS/M2TS, WMV, WebM, 3GP/3G2, F4V, VOB, MPG/MPEG, ASF, DIVX and more. H.264 playback is supported on all platforms, with automatic compatibility processing when native playback is unavailable. HEVC/H.265 and VP9 are natively supported on macOS. |
On Ubuntu/Debian/Linux Mint, install these packages for better video playback support:
sudo apt install gstreamer1.0-libav gstreamer1.0-plugins-good- Core: Tauri + Rust
- Frontend: Vue + Vite + Tailwind CSS
- Data: SQLite
| Library | Purpose |
|---|---|
| LibRaw | RAW image decoding and thumbnail extraction |
| libheif | HEIC/HEIF/HIF image decoding and preview generation |
| libjpeg-turbo | Fast JPEG decoding and thumbnail generation |
| FFmpeg | Video processing and thumbnail generation |
| Video.js | Cross-platform video playback UI |
| ONNX Runtime | Local AI model inference engine |
| CLIP | Image-text similarity search |
| InsightFace | Face detection and recognition |
| Leaflet | Interactive map for geotagged photos |
| daisyUI | UI component library |
GPL-3.0-or-later. See LICENSE.
