KEEP

A desktop app for keeping images you'll definitely use someday.

KEEP is a local-first macOS app for saving, organizing, and browsing visual inspiration. Without the algorithm deciding what you want to see.

What it does

• Drag images in. Or paste them. Or pick files.

• Browse them in a masonry grid that you can resize because a fixed layout can't be trusted.

• Tag and organize into collections, future-you will definitely remember what "vibes 3" means. Drag collections to reorder them.

• AI analysis sends your images to an LLM that returns a title, tags, and description. Eerily accurate. Mildly unsettling.

• Generate prompts and turn your inspiration into a slightly worse version of it.

• Lightbox full-screen view with a frosted glass sidebar and a gradient backdrop extracted from the image's color palette. Aesthetics matter in the tools you use to steal aesthetics.

• OCR extracts text from images. Screenshots, posters, book pages — if there's text in it, you can search for it.

• Copy ⌘C copies the image to your clipboard. For videos it copies the current frame, which is more useful than it sounds.

• Search ⌘K dialog. Keywords, tags, collections, OCR text, AI descriptions.

• Bin soft delete. 90-day auto-purge. It's not gone, it's just resting.

AI: cloud or local

Two options:

OpenRouter paste an API key in Settings, pick a model, done. Fast, accurate, costs fractions of a cent per image. Requires trusting a third party with your mood board of screenshots and you figuring out how to make an API key.

Local models macOS Vision Framework handles silent background tagging (no API key, no internet, no opinions). Moondream2 (~1.3 GB, runs on-device) for richer descriptions. Slower, private, morally superior.

Both can run. Neither is required. The app works fine as an image box if you just want to drag things in.

Install

Download the latest .dmg from Releases, open it, drag KEEP to Applications.

First launch will be blocked by macOS because the app isn't signed by a registered developer because who needs developers. To open it anyway:

System Settings → Privacy & Security → scroll down → "Open Anyway"

You'll only have to do this once.

Shortcuts

Key	Action
⌘K	Search palette
⌘F	Focus search bar
⌘,	Settings
← →	Navigate lightbox
⌘C	Copy to clipboard (lightbox)
⌫	Delete (lightbox)
E	Edit title
A	Analyze
Scroll	Zoom in/out
0	Reset zoom
Drag	Pan when zoomed
Dbl-click	Toggle 2× zoom
Esc	Close
Del	Delete selected (grid)
⌘+click	Multi-select
Shift+click	Range select
?	This list

What it doesn't do

• Cloud sync (synced_at is in the schema, could change)

• Windows

• Make you more creative

Stack

Built with Tauri (Rust backend, learning project), React, TypeScript, Vite, Tailwind CSS, SQLite, and a concerning amount of time spent getting it to not look broken.

Building from source

brew install libheif
bun install
bun run tauri dev

For browser preview (Tauri APIs mocked, seed data):

bun run browser

An OpenRouter API key is needed for richer AI features (titles, descriptions, prompt generation). OCR and basic tagging work without it.

Status

Actively developed. Not stable. Not versioned. Named three different things at various points in its life. Currently KEEP.