Straight answers, in the order people ask them.
No. Solvenar catalogues and searches your library entirely on your Mac. There's no account, no server, and no cloud — there's nowhere for your photos to go. Solvenar touches the internet exactly once, at setup, to download what it needs and check your license. After that you can unplug the router and everything still works.
Your photos, videos, catalogue, searches, and face data: never. A license check: once, at activation. Anonymous error reports: only if you opt in — they're off by default.
Only for the one-time setup. Every search after that runs locally — on a plane, in a dead zone, forever. No subscription required to keep searching.
On your own disk, alongside nothing but itself. Delete Solvenar and the catalogue goes with it; your original photos and videos stay exactly where they were.
No. Point Solvenar at the folders you already have — the tidy ones and the "Camera Uploads" one — and it catalogues them in place. Your originals never move, never get renamed, and never get locked into a library format. Delete Solvenar tomorrow and your files are exactly where you left them.
The first read-through happens once, entirely on your Mac — it's the one patience-heavy part of Solvenar. What it takes depends on three things: whether your Mac has a fan, the level of your Apple Silicon chip (Base, Pro, Max, Ultra), and how big the library is.
The fanless MacBook Air is the slow end — it runs hot under a long job and settles into a steady pace. Either way it's one-time: Solvenar runs in the background on power, steps aside when you need the machine, picks up where it left off after a restart, and you can search everything it has already read while it works — you never wait for the end.
If you use iCloud "Optimize Mac Storage," your originals may not be on the disk — they get downloaded the first time Solvenar reads them, which adds time to the first catalogue (and disk space, since the originals come back down). Solvenar downloads them in parallel to keep things moving, and once they're local everything runs at full speed.
It's built to step aside. Cataloguing runs in the background and yields the moment you need the machine, and it pauses the heavy work while you're on battery, resuming when you're back on power.
Yes. Solvenar watches the folders you've added and picks up new files on its own — no need to re-run anything.
Whatever you'd say out loud. "Silhouettes at sunset on the beach," "the narrow cobblestone street," "June at the lake." Solvenar reads your library the way a librarian reads a collection and matches on meaning, not on filenames.
Yes — search in the language you think in. Solvenar understands your query in many languages and still finds the right photos, all on your Mac. It matches on what your photos mean, so this works even though your library was never labelled in that language.
Yes — this is where Solvenar shines for photographers. Ask for "wide-angle street shots under 35mm," "portraits at f/1.8," "shot wide open," or "iso 100 to 800 landscapes," and for photographic looks like "golden hour," "long exposure," "black and white," or "panorama." It even forgives typos — "telefoto," "goldn hour." The filter and the scene come out of one plain-English sentence; there's nothing to configure.
Yes, and privately. Solvenar learns the people in your library so "June at the lake" just works — and everything it learns about a face stays on your Mac. No cloud face database, no account. It's optional, too: skip it at setup and Solvenar never looks at a face.
Yes. As it reads, Solvenar groups related photos into named collections on its own — so your library gains a sense of order without you tagging a single thing.
It flags photos that look soft next to a sharper frame of the same moment, so you can review and clear them yourself. It won't delete anything on its own.
Yes, on the Studio tier. Search "the moment she blows out the candles" and Solvenar lands on the exact scene inside a long clip, with a timestamp — one click and you're there. No scrubbing, no renaming clips MOV_4213_birthday_GOOD_v2.mov ever again.
Select your shots and export a project file for Final Cut, Premiere, or DaVinci Resolve (plus EDL and CSV). Video moments arrive pre-marked on the timeline, and the project files reference your originals in place. Or copy selects to a folder, RAW+JPG pairs intact, and hand it off.
Yes. RAW and JPEG versions of the same shot are paired automatically and travel together through selects and exports, and Solvenar reads RAW/DNG and HEIC libraries natively.
No. Pay once and search forever. Every tier runs entirely on your Mac — no cloud, no monthly fee.
Photo search for up to 10,000 photos and 2 hours of video, 100% on your Mac, forever, no account needed.
Photo unlocks your whole library — unlimited size — plus faces. Studio adds video search, video moments, and editor export. Both are one-time purchases.
Each license includes a year of updates, and your search keeps working forever either way — updates or not.
Yes — the free tier is the full search experience on up to 10,000 photos and 2 hours of video, for as long as you like.
We'll publish a plain money-back window here before launch. Purchases are handled by Paddle, our merchant of record.
A Mac with Apple Silicon (M1 or later) on macOS 14 or later, 16 GB of memory or more, and about 12 GB of free disk for the models and index (plus room for thumbnails). Intel Macs aren't supported. The setup wizard checks all of this before you commit anything, so you'll know right away whether your Mac is a fit.
The common ones, plus HEIC/HEIF and RAW (including DNG). RAW and JPEG versions of the same shot are recognised and paired automatically.
Anything your Mac plays natively works out of the box. A few older or less common formats (MKV, AVI, WMV, MTS/AVCHD) need ffmpeg installed — Solvenar tells you honestly when a clip needs it, rather than skipping it silently.
Never on its own. Solvenar reads your library and writes its catalogue to its own space. If you choose to remove a shot, it goes to the Trash — its RAW sibling included — and nothing is ever deleted behind your back.
Watch it search a real library →
Download for Apple Silicon