GrainDownload
Grain

Super-fast media searchfor macOS.

Private photo and video search for photographers and filmmakers, across your Mac, external drives, and Dropbox.

Download Grain

Free for 7 days, then $49 once. Apple silicon required.

See how it works
Grain on Mac showing results for b&w street photography, with Collections and Sources expanded and 370,998 assets in All Media.
Grain in action

Un-scatter your media.

Every drive, folder, and file in one place. No need to move or migrate anything.

  • Internal drivesMacintosh HD, expansion drives
  • External drivesSSDs, hard drives, memory cards
  • NAS / RAIDNetwork shares, RAID arrays
  • Cloud storageDropbox now, Google Drive soon

GrainMillions of photos and videosOne library. No sweat.

Search

Just describe it.

Search your entire archive for descriptions, concepts, or keywords. Grain analyzes your files on your device- no tagging, captioning, or uploads needed.

Searches from a real library:

Results for b&w street photography

Real results from our founder’s messy archive.

Built for your life’s work.

Safe by design
Grain never moves, renames, or alters your originals. Your archive stays exactly where you put it.
Works your way
Keep your folders, drives, metadata, and existing workflow. Grain fits around how you already work.
Made for millions
Tested with libraries of up to 10 million photos and videos.

Organize

Keep your RAWs intact.

Grain’s catalog sits on top of your files. Everything you add lives in Grain, and nothing is written into your originals.

  • Ratings, color labels, and keywords
  • Title, caption, creator, and copyright, read from your files
  • Custom fields for anything else: client, job number, usage rights
  • Existing XMP ratings and keywords come in automatically
Rating
Label
Select
Keywords
streetrainumbrella
Usage Custom field
Portfolio and print
Collection
Portfolio Selects
Original file unchanged

Made for working photographers.

Grain is designed around the way real photo and video archives grow: across years, clients, shoots, drives, formats, and changing workflows.

Commercial & studio
Find past campaign work, product setups, locations, and selects without digging through old job folders.
Weddings & events
Search years of weddings by moment, location, detail, or visual style, without relying on perfect keywords.
Photojournalism
Get back to the place, event, or frame fast when the deadline is already moving.
Landscape & fine art
Compare years of work by place, season, weather, light, composition, or subject across the whole archive.
Film & video
Find clips by what’s in them, across takes, interviews, B-roll, and long-form footage.
Creative & brand direction
Pull references, past campaigns, visual themes, and relevant archive work together when a pitch starts.

Tech specs

Guides

See all guides

Questions

Before you download.

Does Grain replace Lightroom or Capture One?

No. Keep editing where you edit. Grain is for finding, viewing, and gathering, and it reads the ratings and keywords those apps save to XMP.

Will it change my files?

Never. Grain only reads your originals and has no way to delete, move, or edit them. Ratings, keywords, and collections live in Grain’s own catalog, and your XMP sidecars stay untouched too.

Do my photos ever leave my Mac?

Browsing and search run on your Mac. Dropbox previews come directly from your account and are cached locally. We don’t store your library’s images on our servers. Media you export or allow a connected app or device to read may leave your Mac.

How does the free trial work?

Download Grain, sign in with your email, and use the full app for 7 days. You don’t need a card to start. When the trial ends, Grain asks you to buy it for $49 to keep going. Nothing is charged automatically, and your files are never touched either way.

What does the one-time purchase cover?

The Grain Mac app, yours to keep, with the features on this page. Pay $49 once through Stripe, from the app or your account, and it’s yours.

Don’t let your folders slow you down.

Download Grain

Free for 7 days, then $49 once.

For Mac with Apple silicon