Phokus v0.2.0

Phokus is a local-first desktop media library for Windows — point it at
your image and video folders and it builds a fast, searchable gallery with
thumbnails, semantic search, visual discovery, AI tagging, and duplicate
cleanup. Everything is processed on your machine; nothing is uploaded.

0.2.0 is the biggest update since launch: albums, gallery multi-select with
bulk actions, colour search, a second AI tagging model (JoyTag), a full tag
manager, camera EXIF details in the lightbox, a slideshow mode, and a large
batch of performance and theme fixes. Updating from 0.1.x? The built-in
updater will fetch this for you — and afterwards, a new in-app "What's New"
tour shows you around.

Install / update

• Updating from 0.1.x: the in-app updater will offer 0.2.0 on launch — one
  click downloads, installs, and relaunches.
• Fresh install: download Phokus_0.2.0_x64-setup.exe below and run it.
  Windows SmartScreen will warn that the publisher is unrecognized — this
  build is not code-signed. Click More info → Run anyway.
• Requires Windows 10/11. WebView2 is fetched automatically if missing.

NVIDIA users wanting GPU embedding/tagging speed can use the
Phokus_0.2.0_x64-cuda-setup.exe variant instead (larger download; bundles the
CUDA runtime DLLs). Settings → Updates now shows which build you are running.

Highlights

Added

• Albums — cross-folder collections without moving files: their own
  sidebar section with cover thumbnails, create/rename/reorder/manage, and
  album-aware similar-image search.
• Gallery multi-select — hover a thumbnail's corner to start selecting,
  then bulk tag, rate, favorite, add to an album, or delete from a floating
  action bar. Works in similar-image, region, and album views too.
• Colour search — filter the Gallery, Timeline, or tag results by dominant
  colour via toolbar swatches or a custom picker.
• Choose your tagging model — pick between the anime-focused WD tagger and
  JoyTag (better for photo libraries), each with its own confidence
  threshold, plus a Reset AI tags action that never touches manual tags.
• Tag manager — rename, merge, and delete tags across the library, with
  live search and sorting; Explore's Tag Cloud also shows related tags on
  hover.
• Camera info in the lightbox — EXIF camera, lens, aperture, shutter
  speed, ISO, focal length, and a map link for geotagged photos.
• Slideshow mode, What's New tour after updates, quick theme switch
  from the title bar, an editable path bar in the folder picker, persistent
  per-folder worker pauses, and add-to-album from the right-click menu.

Changed

• Settings reorganised into General, Media, Updates & Setup, Storage, and
  AI Workspace pages.
• Menus unified — all context menus and dropdowns share one style, stay on
  screen, close on Escape, and support submenus.
• Faster Explore — quicker cluster revisits, much faster first-time
  clustering on large libraries, and a calmer Tag Cloud during active tagging.
• Faster CPU tagging (multi-core with headroom) and smoother GPU tagging.
• Safer deletion — deleting media now asks for confirmation and says
  clearly that files are removed from disk.
• Better narrow-window layouts, a real update download progress bar, and a
  two-column lightbox info panel.

Fixed

• No more self-indexing loops — Phokus now skips its own thumbnail cache
  when you add a broad folder like your user profile.
• Ratings keep your search order — rating an image mid-search no longer
  reshuffles similar-image, region, semantic, tag, or album results.
• AI tagging stays responsive — big GPU tagging jobs no longer freeze the
  UI, and noisy low-signal tags are filtered (older ones cleaned up on
  startup).
• First launch now fits smaller screens, Explore no longer flashes the
  previous folder, and a long list of Subtle Light readability fixes.

See the changelog
for the full list.

Checksums

SHA-256 (Phokus_0.2.0_x64-setup.exe)      = 9d52b485ef0d614620b0df4ba235fbdf285e0792e4a38841777e0f0a05f38770
SHA-256 (Phokus_0.2.0_x64-cuda-setup.exe) = b3a24ea5fb9f00f64fe5b4040a69347b91341c75eb83fd7bb2409cc74c5eb052

Phokus v0.1.1

Phokus is a local-first desktop media library for Windows — point it at
your image and video folders and it builds a fast, searchable gallery with
thumbnails, semantic search, visual discovery, AI tagging, and duplicate
cleanup. Everything is processed on your machine; nothing is uploaded.

This is a quality-of-life release on top of 0.1.0: a new in-app folder
picker, themes, smoother scrolling on large libraries, and a batch of fixes.
If you're updating from 0.1.0, the built-in updater will fetch this for you.

Install / update

• Updating from 0.1.0: the in-app updater will offer 0.1.1 on launch — one
  click downloads, installs, and relaunches.
• Fresh install: download Phokus_0.1.1_x64-setup.exe below and run it.
  Windows SmartScreen will warn that the publisher is unrecognized — this
  build is not code-signed. Click More info → Run anyway.
• Requires Windows 10/11. WebView2 is fetched automatically if missing.

NVIDIA users wanting GPU embedding speed can use the
Phokus_0.1.1_x64-cuda-setup.exe variant instead (larger download; bundles the
CUDA runtime DLLs).

Highlights

Added

• Custom multi-folder picker — navigate and stage folders from multiple
  locations and add them in one go, replacing the native OS dialog.
• Themes — Phokus, Subtle Light, and Conventional Dark chrome, with an
  inline theme picker in first-run onboarding.
• Timeline scrubber — a year/month rail to jump anywhere in the library.
• Folder reordering in the sidebar (drag-and-drop or keyboard), persisted,
  plus A–Z / Z–A / Custom sort for the Libraries list.
• Video playback settings — autoplay-in-lightbox and start-muted toggles.
• Rebuild semantic index maintenance action — fixes "dimension mismatch"
  search errors after switching CLIP models.
• Locate and filter images with failed AI-tagging jobs.

Changed

• Gallery grid and Duplicate Finder list are now row-virtualised — large
  libraries and large result sets (5,000+ pairs) scroll without lag.
• Settings now open on General by default.

Fixed

• AVIF thumbnails now generate correctly (routed through bundled FFmpeg);
  previously-failed AVIF jobs are requeued on startup.
• Video embedding jobs no longer churn through failed states before their
  thumbnail exists; previously-failed ones are requeued.
• Timeline scrolling is smooth on large libraries (per-row virtualisation);
  background batches no longer re-sort the whole loaded set.
• Numerous Subtle Light theme readability/parity fixes.

See the changelog
for the full list.

Checksums

SHA-256 (Phokus_0.1.1_x64-setup.exe)      = 1c19cbeb77f38a44149380c42c76b633add65777d317e1f3ff7e45d96d12d287
SHA-256 (Phokus_0.1.1_x64-cuda-setup.exe) = a7337ef5ee0478a785b48acc8012e8fc5c957341161d6103409213ad78eb845f

Phokus v0.1.0

Phokus is a local-first desktop media library for Windows — point it at your image and video folders and it builds a fast, searchable gallery with thumbnails, semantic search, visual discovery, AI tagging, and duplicate cleanup. Everything is processed on your machine; nothing is uploaded.

This is the first public release. Expect rough edges, and please file issues.

Install

1. Download Phokus_0.1.0_x64-setup.exe below (standard CPU/DirectML build — recommended for everyone).
2. Run it. Windows SmartScreen will warn the publisher is unrecognized — this build is not code-signed (signing is on the roadmap). Click More info → Run anyway.
3. Requires Windows 10/11. The installer fetches WebView2 automatically if needed.

NVIDIA GPU build (optional)

For faster embedding / semantic-search indexing on an NVIDIA GPU, download Phokus_0.1.0_x64-cuda-setup.exe instead. It bundles the CUDA runtime, so it's a much larger download (~295 MB) and needs a recent NVIDIA driver (CUDA 12.x). Everyone else should use the standard build.

On first launch, Phokus runs a short guided tour and downloads FFmpeg in the background (one-time). AI tagging (~1.3 GB) is optional; the CLIP model (~580 MB) downloads automatically the first time embeddings run. All of this stays on your machine.

Highlights

• Virtualized gallery for very large libraries; favorites, ratings, filters, sorts
• Filename, semantic (/s), and tag (/t) search
• Similar-image search, Explore clusters + tag cloud, EXIF Timeline
• Lightbox with zoom/pan and a custom video player
• Optional on-device AI tagging (WD tagger)
• Exact-duplicate finder with bulk delete
• Built-in updater

See the changelog for the full list.

Privacy

Your media and all derived data never leave your machine. No account, no telemetry, no cloud. The only network activity is the one-time tool/model downloads and update checks against this Releases page.

Known limitations

• Unsigned installer — SmartScreen warning as above.
• Windows only for now.
• Standard build uses CPU/DirectML inference; large libraries take time to embed on first index (the CUDA build above is faster on NVIDIA GPUs).

Verify your download (optional)

SHA-256 (Phokus_0.1.0_x64-setup.exe)      = 5ac01b43ed857d3e39e73fcff7fe06b66b6a7472e1f1604abb082e2ebacd508d
SHA-256 (Phokus_0.1.0_x64-cuda-setup.exe) = 47fe02679fab1f1ea67811d73977754c18ba646dfd222985de06f056fef4bfcf