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EmmaiMessage
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Living room · 12 Mar 20160:41
Shotfinder · 24 years
Home_2016 · MARCH
0:41–1:05
For families & memory keepers
Sophie’s first steps.
Found in ten seconds.
Twenty-four years of camcorder tapes and phone videos, on a drive nobody ever opens. Type what you remember — and find the moment before the moment passes. Nothing ever leaves your Mac.
Join the early-access waitlist
Free beta · Apple Silicon Macs · No cloud, no account, no subscription
Search
Type what you remember.
You don’t remember the file name. You remember the paddling pool, the gap-toothed grin, the day she wouldn’t let go of the dog. Type that. Shotfinder has already watched every video you own.
One search bar. Many eyes.
What's in the shot Words on screen Where and when What people said Sounds and music The people in itMoments
The ten seconds. Not the two-hour tape.
The christening video is ninety minutes long and the bit you actually want is forty seconds of it. Shotfinder opens at those forty seconds — so the memory gets watched instead of scrolled past.
Organize
Keep the ones that matter.
See a moment you love? Pin it to a board — Sophie growing up, Christmases, Dad’s stories. And the boards you didn’t make are already waiting: Shotfinder groups your library by what’s in the picture and gathers your trips by where and when. Nothing gets moved. Your files stay exactly where they are.
Storage
Never pay rent on your own memories.
Everything Google Photos and Apple Photos are good at — without the storage bill.
Point Shotfinder at the old drive, the shoebox of SD cards, the phone in your pocket. It all becomes searchable, and it all stays yours.
18 TB searchable · $0 / month
Fully local
Your family stays in your family.
Nobody trains a model on your children. The AI runs on your Mac’s own chip — no cloud, no account, no upload — and your videos never leave your hard drive.
Runs on your chip
Index 15,000 files. Zero of them leave your Mac.
No subscription
Nothing to sign up for. No monthly bill for your own past.
Works offline
A plane, a field, a client's locked-down network.
Questions
Frequently asked questions
How is Shotfinder different from Apple Photos search?
Apple Photos searches photos well, but it can't search inside your videos to a timestamp, and it only sees its own library. Shotfinder indexes any folder or drive you point it at and returns the exact seconds inside a video that match — like 0:14–0:20 — not just the file.
Does my footage get uploaded to the cloud?
No. Shotfinder runs entirely on your Mac — the AI model runs on your Mac’s own chip. Nothing is uploaded, no account is required, and it works with the internet off.
How does searching inside a video actually work?
Shotfinder detects scene changes in each video and reads representative frames with an on-device vision model. Your search is matched against every scene, and results show the video with the matching moment highlighted so you can jump straight to it.
Which devices are supported?
Apple Silicon Macs (M1 or later), Windows PCs, iPhone and Android. The AI runs on whatever chip your device already has, so there's nothing to plug in and nothing to pay for. Intel Macs aren't supported — they have no GPU fast enough to read a whole library.
What formats and drives does it work with?
Common photo and video formats — HEIC, JPEG, PNG, MP4, MOV and more — on internal, external, or network drives. Files are indexed where they already live; nothing is imported or moved.
Can I filter by date, place, or folder?
Yes — Shotfinder reads your files' metadata, so plain-English search combines with filters like year, place, folder, and photo vs. video.
Does Shotfinder copy or move my files?
No. Your originals never move. Shotfinder reads them where they already live — no importing, no renaming, no second copy of a 4 TB drive. All it keeps on the side is a small index and a set of thumbnails so results appear instantly; your files are only ever read, never written to.
What if I move, rename, or unplug my files afterwards?
Nothing breaks. Shotfinder never moves your files, so it expects you to. Next time it looks at your folders it picks up what's new, refreshes what changed, and finds what you moved — it only re-reads what it has to, so it's quick. Your originals are never touched either way.
Can I search a drive that isn't plugged in?
Yes — and this is the part people don't expect. Once a drive is indexed, its shots stay searchable whether or not it's connected. You'll still get the result, the thumbnail, and the exact timecode. Every shot carries a small tag saying which drive it lives on, so an offline one reads “on Samsung T7 — not connected.” Plug that drive back in and it plays instantly. Search a shelf full of archive drives while carrying none of them.
Early access
Don’t lose another one.
Every year the drive gets bigger and the memories get harder to find. The beta ships to the waitlist first, free — tell us what you’d look for on day one.