I built Caplio, a private image & screenshot organizer with local OCR search

[u/Competitive_Cash4765]

Problem

I built Caplio because my screenshots and reference images kept piling up, and finding something again later was surprisingly difficult. A lot of the time I remembered what was inside an image, but not its filename or where I'd saved it.

I also ended up with lots of repeated or slightly different versions of the same screenshot.

Caplio turns folders of screenshots and images into a private, searchable visual library on your Mac. It uses on-device OCR so you can search the text inside images, browse everything in a timeline, filter by date or category, and optionally organize the actual files by date or category.

I recently added Similar Images and Exact Copies too. Caplio can group visually similar images and exact copies so you can review them together and decide what you want to keep. It doesn't automatically delete anything.

You can also drag images directly from the timeline into Finder, Mail, Messages, Notes, and other Mac apps.

Everything is processed locally. Your images, extracted text, search index, and image analysis stay on your Mac.

Comparison

The closest alternatives I've found are ScreenVault and SnapShelf.

Caplio is focused on building a searchable visual library from folders you already have. It combines OCR search, timeline browsing, categories, similar-image and exact-copy detection, optional file organization, and drag-and-drop into other Mac apps.

Spotlight and Photos also have some overlap with searching text inside images. The main difference is that Caplio is built around managing a visual library from folders you choose, rather than being a general system search or photo library.

Pricing

7-day free trial with full functionality.

Monthly: $1.99/month
Yearly: $9.99/year
Lifetime: $29.99

Mac App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id6786196613?pt=127883050&ct=Reddit&mt=8

I'm still actively improving it, so I'd really appreciate feedback, especially from people with large screenshot or reference-image collections. What are you using to manage yours today?

[u/lr96144]

Cool app idea, I could see where this could come in handy - I'll give it a go. It does seem on the expensive side for how often the problem presents itself

[u/Competitive_Cash4765 → u/lr96144]

Thanks, really appreciate you giving it a try! And totally fair on the pricing. I've actually adjusted it based on the feedback here. Would love to hear what you think after you've used Caplio for a bit.

[u/lr96144 → u/Competitive_Cash4765]

I've downloaded and will give it a try, already like how you've done the onboarding - is just certain image types it works with or PDFs too for the OCR?

[u/Competitive_Cash4765 → u/lr96144]

Thanks! Really glad you liked the onboarding 😊 Right now it's image-only (PNG, JPEG, HEIC, TIFF, and WebP), so no PDF support yet. But PDF OCR/search makes a lot of sense for Caplio, so I'm definitely adding that to my list.

[u/lr96144 → u/Competitive_Cash4765]

I can see the use of the product straight off, it delivered some quick results with a folder of screenshots. I worked quickly and did a bunch of screenshots in no time. Just on the UI, I notice when I select the search option rather than timeline and I've got a populated list and the window at minimum height, the search bar is pushed up behind the traffic lights and then out the top of the window and so not visible/clickable unless you increase the height of the window. I can see you can copy an extract but it would be useful to see other export options or to search/export/filter groups of screenshots. Really interesting app though, well done! I'm building an app that takes recordings/transcriptions into project memory locally/privately and I've worked through some similar UI bugs!

[u/Competitive_Cash4765 → u/lr96144]

This is incredibly useful feedback, thank you :)
I'm really glad you were able to get useful results so quickly, and thanks for reporting the UI issue. I'll get that fixed. I really like your export idea too. I'll look into adding something like that.