Search every photo and video frame on your Mac by describing it

Made by Allen Lee

SCM (Screen Memories) lets you find photos and moments inside videos on your Mac by typing what you remember, such as a scene or a sign you saw.

A vision model (an AI that turns pictures into searchable meaning) indexes your folders on your own machine, splitting videos into scenes so a result opens at the right moment. It can also match text visible in images, through OCR (reading words in pictures), and exact spoken lines, through Whisper speech-to-text. The creator says nothing is uploaded: model weights download once, then it works offline.

Can I use this?

Mac app

You'll need An Apple Silicon Mac (macOS 12 or newer) and Homebrew · Free

Worth knowing Mac only, installed with Homebrew commands in Terminal. The first search model downloads about 435 MB, and indexing a big library takes time and disk space, with denser video settings costing more. The project is days old (the repository was created on 3 October 2026). An optional chat feature downloads a local model of 1 to 2 GB only if you turn it on. BuildTube has not run or verified this software.

Why it's here

406 people have starred it on GitHub.
Shown on Hacker News (Show HN) on 4 October, with 173 points.

Numbers as of 6 October 2026, from BuildTube’s latest daily refresh.

Behind it

See the code on GitHub

BuildTube has not run or verified this project. Everything above is written from what the creator published.

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