Images
Remember what you saw.
Some memories arrive visually. A photograph. A palette. A shape. A composition.
A place. A strange object. A visual direction. Shelf helps those images remain findable when the words are missing.
Warm, editorial
- Kitchen, low sun
- Amber magazine spread
- Terracotta palette
Blue interfaces
- Cool product screen
- Ice-blue gradient
- Night city photograph
Objects, one per frame
- The red chair
- Glass on concrete
- Steel lamp study
Brutalist composition
- Concrete facade
- Black and white grid
- Heavy type on stone
Visual memory doesn't begin with keywords.
You may remember: the blue one. The warm photograph. The image with the red chair. The brutalist composition.
Shelf can use supported visual signals alongside meaning and context, so a description of the look is a real way in.
- Dominant colour and overall warmth
- One subject in frame, or a busy scene
- Flat graphic, photograph, or interface
- The week you kept it and what came with it
Groups you didn't have to make.
Shelf can gather images that belong together, so a visual archive stays browsable as it grows.
Warm photography
Similar light and palette, kept across several months.- Kitchen, low sun
- Amber magazine spread
- Terracotta palette
- Market stall, evening
Cool interfaces
Blue-led product screens you kept while looking at interface tone.- Cool product screen
- Ice-blue gradient
- Night city photograph
Single objects
One object, centred, plain background, a pattern in what catches your eye.- The red chair
- Glass on concrete
- Steel lamp study
Describing an image out loud.
These are the words people actually use when the filename is long gone.
What you remember
A single chair, red, plain room. I kept it as a colour reference.
Clues Shelf can use
- One object centred in frame
- Strong red against neutral
- Kept with other object studies
- Looks like
- One saturated object, muted surroundings.
- Meaning
- Recognisably furniture, not a graphic.
- Nearby
- Sits with your other single-object images.
Kept nearby
- Glass on concrete · October
- Terracotta palette · November
A visual archive can become deeply personal over time.
Images accumulate faces, homes, plans and things you haven't shown anyone. Shelf reads them on your Mac, so building a visual memory doesn't mean handing your pictures to a service.
No upload, no account, no training on what you keep.
Sometimes the image comes back before the words do.
Give your visual memory somewhere to live.
Keep the image. Describe the look later. Let the archive stay browsable as it grows.
Next thought
A visual library only earns its keep if a year-old image is as reachable as yesterday's.
Build a visual libraryKeep exploring
Shelf V3 is out now
Shelf V3 is the current build. Shelf does not use automatic updates, so download the latest build here and install it over your current version.
This is intentional. Shelf is built around a local-first, privacy-focused philosophy. An automatic updater requires additional background processes, network connections, update infrastructure, and another system with permission to modify the app. We prefer to keep Shelf’s network footprint and background activity as small as possible.
Manual updates keep the process explicit: Shelf only checks the internet when a feature actually needs it, and you decide when a new version is downloaded and installed.