Findanyfilebywhat'sinsideit.
You never remember the file name. You remember it was the kitchen invoice, or the photo of the whiteboard. Type that — and there it is. Scans, screenshots and photographs included, in whatever language they are written in.
- Search works offline
- No account
- Nothing leaves your Mac
Your Mac already has everything.
It just can't find it.
Ordinary search can only find text that is already stored as text. It has no idea that Scan 2024-03-11.pdf is the invoice from the kitchen people, because a scan is a picture of a page — and no idea that IMG_4471 is a photo of a receipt, because nothing has looked at it. Loupe opens your files, reads them, and remembers what's in them.
It reads what's on the page.
Invoices, letters, notes, spreadsheets and slides — including paper you scanned, and photos you snapped of a receipt instead of scanning it. A page with no text on it gets read, wherever in the document it happens to be — and if there is nothing to read, it gets described. You search for what it said, not what it was called.
Photos and screenshots too.
Pictures with no words in them get described, so you can ask for “the whiteboard from the workshop” or “the screenshot of the booking” and actually get it. A page of a document that turns out to be a picture — a chart, a scanned exhibit — is described the same way.
Whatever language you live in.
Search in the language your files are written in — Japanese, Greek, Thai, German, Serbian. Nothing is ever skipped for being in the “wrong” one.
Always up to date.
A file you save is findable seconds later. There is no “rebuild index” button, because you should never have to think about one — though a new photo takes a while longer, while it waits its turn to be described.
It gives you the file.
No chat, no waffle, no paragraph about your documents. A list of files, with one line saying why each one matched. Press ↩ and it opens.
Three steps, then you forget it's there.
Install it
One download, no account, no sign-up. Tick the folders it should look after — Desktop, Documents and Downloads are suggested, Pictures is there if you want it, and you can point it at any other folder on the disk.
It reads your files once
Quietly, in the background, while you get on with something else. After that it keeps up on its own — a file you save is findable straight away, and none of it is uploaded anywhere.
Ask for what you want
Press ⌥Space from anywhere and type it the way you would say it out loud. Hit Return to open the file. That is the whole product.
Press ⌃⇥ and ask your code what it is.
Your repositories stay out of everyday results — nobody hunting for a receipt wants six thousand source files. Hit Tab and it flips: now you're searching only code, by what a file does rather than what somebody named it.
- Ask in English. “component where the streak is shown in a sheet” finds the right file even though it contains neither of those words.
- Names are read as words.
showStreakInSheetbecomes “show streak in sheet”, so half-remembered fragments still land. - Declaring beats mentioning. A file that defines the thing is ranked far above one that merely refers to it — no more Storybook stubs on top.
- Hundreds of languages, not a shortlist. Vue and Svelte through to COBOL. Build output, lockfiles and
node_modulesare skipped on purpose — nobody is looking for those.
Read moreHow code search ranks a file
Your files never leave your Mac.
Reading your documents is a lot to ask of anyone. So all of it happens on your own computer — the reading, the understanding, the searching. There is no server on the other end of this, which is also why searching doesn't cost anything.
Nothing is uploaded
Not your files, not their names, not a list of them. Searching works with your Wi-Fi switched off, and it is built that way on purpose.
There is no account
No password, no profile, nothing to log into. A licence is a line of text you paste in once, checked on your own Mac — the app never learns who you are, because it never has to ask.
It only ever reads
No cleanup, no “remove duplicates”, no bin, no tidying. It does not move, rename or delete a single file — your folders stay exactly as you arranged them.
You can throw it away
Everything it knows lives in one file on your Mac. Delete that and nothing of yours is affected; the folders it read are untouched, because reading is all it ever did.
The only download in the product is the models themselves, fetched once by a separate helper on your first run — and the big one, the part that describes photographs, is listed with its size before anything starts, and can be switched off right there.
The whole of itPrivacy policy — every byte that leaves
Try it for a week. Then decide.
Same product on every plan — the only question is how you'd rather pay for it. If it hasn't saved you time in seven days, it isn't going to, and you'll have paid nothing.
Free trial
Everything, for a week.
No card, no account. When the week is up searching stops — nothing is moved, nothing is deleted.
Get notifiedMonthly
Everything, month to month.
Cancel any time, in one click. No notice period, no email to write.
Get notifiedLifetime
Everything, forever.
One payment, every future update included. Costs less than seven months of the subscription.
Get notifiedEvery plan includes
- Search everything on your Mac by what’s in it
- Scanned paper, photos and screenshots
- Every language your files are written in
- Nothing moved, renamed or deleted — it only reads
- Search your code by what it does
- Searching works completely offline
- Free updates while your plan is active
The things
people ask.
Weighing it against somethingSpotlightDEVONthinkHoudahSpot
A real person
reads these.
Something not working, something missing, or you just want to know whether it will handle your particular pile of paperwork — ask. It's a small operation, so the reply comes from the person who built it, usually within a day.
- Trouble installing or getting started
- Refunds, licences and switching plans
- Something you wish it did
Find the thing you
gave up looking for.
Loupe is finished and in testing on Apple silicon — what's left is Apple's notarisation, which has to happen before a stranger's Mac will open it. Leave your address and you'll get one email, on the day it's ready.