Photo-Manager exists because managing a large photo library shouldn’t mean waiting, paying monthly, or trusting the cloud with your memories.
If you have a large photo library—tens of thousands of photos accumulated over years of family events, vacations, and everyday life—you’ve probably felt the pain. Cloud-based managers want you to upload everything to their servers (and pay monthly for the privilege). Desktop tools like Windows Photos struggle with large collections. And professional tools like Lightroom are overkill when you just want to browse, organize, and occasionally edit.
You shouldn’t have to choose between speed, privacy, and features. You should be able to have all three.
Photo-Manager is a native Windows desktop application built from the ground up for large photo libraries. It uses Rust for the backend and Svelte for the frontend, connected by Tauri’s lightweight bridge. This means the app is fast (no garbage collector, no runtime overhead), small (the installer is about 4 MB), and runs entirely on your computer.
Your photos stay on your hard drive. Your database is a local SQLite file. There’s no cloud account, no telemetry, no subscription. The app works offline and will continue to work even if this website disappears tomorrow.
A photo manager is only useful if it doesn’t get in your way. Every interaction should feel instant. Virtual scrolling, parallel processing, and native code make that possible.
We don’t touch your original files. Edits are stored as instructions. Deletes go to trash first. Database is local SQLite. No cloud lock-in, ever.
Photo-Manager manages photos. It doesn’t try to be a social network, a cloud storage service, or an AI art generator. It’s focused, reliable, and efficient.
Photo-Manager is built on a modern, proven tech stack designed for performance and reliability:
Backend language. Memory-safe, zero-cost abstractions, no garbage collector. Handles file I/O, image processing, database queries, and video transcoding.
Application framework. Uses the system WebView instead of bundling Chromium. ~4 MB installer vs ~100+ MB for Electron apps.
Frontend framework. Compiles to efficient vanilla JavaScript with no virtual DOM. Reactive runes for minimal re-renders.
Local database. WAL mode with 64MB cache and memory-mapped I/O. Handles millions of rows with sub-millisecond queries.
Image processing. Thumbnail generation, EXIF extraction, crop, resize, and filter application during export.
Video processing. Thumbnail extraction from video files, codec detection, and automatic H.264 transcoding.
Perceptual hashing. DoubleGradient algorithm for finding visually similar images across formats and sizes.
Frontend type safety. Full type coverage across API wrappers, stores, and component props. Zero svelte-check errors.
Photo-Manager is a personal project born out of a real need. After years of accumulating family photos across phones, cameras, and cloud services, I needed a tool that could handle my entire library without compromising on speed or requiring yet another cloud subscription.
I built Photo-Manager to be the tool I wanted to use every day. If it helps you manage your photo library too, that’s even better.
Photo-Manager’s source code is available on GitHub. You can browse the code, report bugs, suggest features, or contribute improvements. The project is actively developed with regular releases.
Download Photo-Manager and see how fast your photo library can be.