English | Deutsch | Français | Español | Português | Русский | 简体中文 | 日本語 | 한국어

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

Download Lap

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.)

macOS with Homebrew

brew tap julyx10/lap
brew install --cask lap

Screenshots

Why 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.

Features

• 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.
• 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.

Uninstall Lap

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.

macOS

If you installed Lap with Homebrew:

brew uninstall --cask lap

For 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"

Windows

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"

Linux

For Debian-based distributions, uninstall the package:

sudo apt remove lap

Then 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.

Build from Source

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 dev

Supported Formats

Lap supports 60+ photo, RAW, and video formats.

Type	Formats
Images	JPG/JPEG, 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.

Linux Video Playback Notes

On Ubuntu/Debian/Linux Mint, install these packages for better video playback support:

sudo apt install gstreamer1.0-libav gstreamer1.0-plugins-good

Architecture

• Core: Tauri + Rust
• Frontend: Vue + Vite + Tailwind CSS
• Data: SQLite

Key Libraries

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

License

GPL-3.0-or-later. See LICENSE.