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Opensolr Photos documentation

The open source Android app that turns your photo folders into a search engine, on an Opensolr Index of your own.

Welcome!

Why this app exists.

It was written to replace Google Photos on one phone without a single picture being uploaded to Google; to find one photo out of twenty thousand by typing what you remember; to find a gas receipt by the number printed on it and share it in two taps; to keep your people, places and tags in an index of your own rather than in a database you do not own; to clear out the duplicates; and to be open source on an Opensolr account that is free forever. Everything below is in service of those six.

Opensolr Photos is a free, open-source, MIT-licensed Android app that turns the photo folders on your phone into a search engine, on an Opensolr Index of your own. This is its complete documentation.

A photo can be found by any of these at once: what it shows, read into words and a search vector; the text printed in it, such as a receipt or a screenshot; the people in it, named by you; and its own facts: when, where, which camera, which folder, and your own tags. Reading what a photo shows and the text in it needs a plan with vector search; without it, photos are still indexed and searched by their facts and your words.

HOW A PHOTO BECOMES SEARCHABLE On the phonethe appPhoto in a folderEXIF read here1024 px copy madeKeeps a copy of the index photos_ingestapi.opensolr.comCLIP reads the copyFive photos per callCopy not stored The server writesapi.opensolr.comWords to a vectorPlace from the GPSDuplicate keys Your indexSolr, directOne complete documentWords and vectorPrinted text, peopleYour tags and wordingDate, camera, place Searchthe appWords, meaningFiltersOpens full screenBrowsing: the copy Paid for once per photoOpensolr keeps what a picture was read as,so a photo sent again costs nothing again.Ten photos read count as one AI request. The copy carries nothing elseRe-encoded from pixels, with only the tagsthe reader needs: time, camera, lens,exposure, position.Nothing else from the original travels withit.
HOW A PHOTO BECOMESSEARCHABLE On the phonethe appPhoto in a folderEXIF read here1024 px copy madeKeeps a copy of the index photos_ingestapi.opensolr.comCLIP reads the copyFive photos per callCopy not stored The server writesapi.opensolr.comWords to a vectorPlace from the GPSDuplicate keys Your indexSolr, directOne complete documentWords and vectorPrinted text, peopleYour tags and wordingDate, camera, place Searchthe appWords, meaningFiltersOpens full screenBrowsing: the copy Paid for once per photoOpensolr keeps what apicture was read as, so aphoto sent again costsnothing again.Ten photos read count asone AI request. The copy carriesnothing elseRe-encoded from pixels,with only the tags thereader needs: time,camera, lens, exposure,position.Nothing else from theoriginal travels with it.

Figure 1 — how a photo becomes searchable: read on the phone, labelled and embedded by Opensolr, stored in your own index, and searched by words, by meaning and by filter.

The phone keeps its own copy of the index, so browsing, Stats and a sync's comparison happen on the phone, without the network.

New here? Two pages and you will know whether you want it.

What Opensolr Photos is says what it does and what it deliberately does not do. Privacy says exactly what leaves your phone.

01 · The shortest path to searching your photos
  1. Check the requirements: Android 8.0 or newer and an Opensolr account. A plan with vector search decides whether your photos are read at all; without it they are still indexed and still searched by their words.
  2. Install the app from Google Play, or as the signed APK from GitHub.
  3. Sign in with Opensolr in your browser and read what your plan covers.
  4. Choose your folders. DCIM is proposed.
  5. Let the first sync run, and search as soon as the first photos arrive.
02 · Beyond this documentation

Opensolr Photos is open source and MIT licensed. Questions about your Opensolr account, index or plan go to opensolr.com/contact; questions about the app itself belong on GitHub.

Opensolr Photos Documentation