Use case

Never lose a design reference again.

Designers collect constantly: a shot of a settings screen, a type pairing, a page with unusually good spacing. Almost none of it comes back at the moment it would be useful.

Shelf turns that collecting into a long-term visual memory instead of another feed you scroll.

Download Shelf See how it works

You sent a screenshot to Shelf.

Saved thing

Settings screen, dark appearance

Screenshot · 14 August

Why this belongs here

“Appearance · Dark”. Read out of the image by OCR, on device.

An illustration of how one saved item becomes a memory. Not a live library.

01 · The problem

Inspiration is easy to collect and impossible to recall.

You know you saved something with the right idea in it. You cannot name it, and naming it is the only way to find it.

02 · The old way

Boards, feeds and a downloads folder.

Feeds are optimised for the next thing, not for the thing you saved last spring. Boards need constant curation to stay useful.

03 · Shelf

A reference library that reads itself.

Screenshots: UI captures, read with OCR and summarised locally.
Images: Reference images kept with their source and moment.
Websites: Pages saved with their text, not just their address.
Notes: The reason you kept it, in your own words.

04 · Context

References that arrive as a group.

ScreenshotA settings screen with unusually calm spacing.
WebsiteThe product it came from.
Reference imageA type specimen saved the same afternoon.
Note“Use this density for the onboarding pass.”

Months later

You find one of them. Shelf hands back the other three, with the reason each one is attached.

05 · Retrieval

Search the way you describe work.

“That dark dashboard with the green chart.” “The quiet pricing page.” Rough language is usually enough, because Shelf indexes meaning alongside the words in the image.

Found it1 of 4 memories

Settings screen, dark appearance

Screenshot · saved 14 August

Meaning: “dark interface” matched a UI screenshot, not a filename
Words read: OCR found “Appearance · Dark” inside the image
Context: Saved while you were reading about interface design
When: 14 August · last summer

Also nearby

Article
The quiet end of light mode
Read the same week
Note
Contrast notes for the settings screen
Reuses two phrases from that article
Screenshot
Sidebar spacing study
Captured in the same session

An illustration of how Shelf reads a search on your Mac. Not a live search.

06 · Honest note

What this page does not claim.

Shelf indexes text and meaning. Visual similarity between images is not something Shelf claims to do today, so nothing here rests on it.

Build a visual memory, not a feed.

Keep the next reference in Shelf and it will still be reachable next year.

Download Shelf

Free. macOS 14 and later, Apple Silicon and Intel. No account.

Keep reading

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.

Download the latest version →Version 3.0 · macOS 14+