Download

Lightbrary for macOS · version 1.1

Lightbrary for Mac

Get it on the Mac App Store · free · macOS 27 or later

The simplest way: the App Store installs it and keeps it up to date.

Or download the disk image

The same app, outside the store, for those who prefer it. It has Check for Updates… in the app menu instead of the App Store.

lightbrary-1.1.dmg · 2.8 MB · macOS 27 or later

Signed and notarised by Apple, so it opens like any other app — no warnings, no right-click tricks. Open the disk image and drag Lightbrary to your Applications folder.

After the first launch

The app asks for access to your photo library. That is enough to browse, rate and compare.

For the system measures and search — blur, exposure, closed eyes, screenshots and some thirty others, plus places, people and scenes — also install the Exporter below. Since version 0.1.18 the Mac app gets them from the Exporter through the shared folder, just like the iPhone app; it no longer reads them from the library itself.

Lightbrary for iPhone

Install through TestFlight · iOS 27 or later

Open the link on your iPhone. It installs Apple’s TestFlight app if you do not have it yet, then Lightbrary through it; updates arrive there too. The iPhone app reads your library on its own — to get the measures and search from your Mac, add the Exporter below, and see the manual for setting up the shared folder.

Lightbrary Exporter

lightbrary-exporter-0.1.18.dmg · 0.8 MB · macOS 27 or later

A small menu-bar helper for the Mac that holds your photo library. It reads the measures and search words Photos has already worked out — blur, exposure, faces, places, scenes — and writes them to your shared iCloud Drive folder, so Lightbrary on the Mac and on the iPhone can filter and search by them. It only reads the library; it never changes it. The source is on GitHub.

Drag it to your Applications folder and open it from there. Choose the same shared folder the apps use and turn on Open at login. After that it exports by itself a few minutes after your library changes.

If it crashes on launch

A few people have hit this and I have not pinned it down yet. If it happens to you, this gets me the most useful thing fastest — paste it into Terminal:

f=$(ls -t ~/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/*[Ll]ightbrary*.ips 2>/dev/null | head -1); if [ -n "$f" ]; then cat "$f" | pbcopy; echo "Copied: $f"; else echo "No crash report found"; fi

That copies the crash report straight to your clipboard — paste it into an email to the address below. If it says no report was found, try launching the app again and, right after it fails, run this instead:

log show --last 5m --predicate 'process == "lightbrary-mac" OR eventMessage CONTAINS "lightbrary"' --style compact | pbcopy

Same thing — paste what comes back.

Feedback

If something looks wrong or could work better, write to [email protected]. Every report is read.