Use case

Remember every screenshot.

You take a screenshot because something mattered for a second. Weeks later the image is still there and the reason is gone.

Shelf reads screenshots when you save them, so the words and the meaning inside the picture become searchable.

Download Shelf See how it works

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.

01 · The problem

A screenshot keeps the pixels. Not the point.

Screenshot 2025-08-14 at 11.42.09 tells you nothing about what you captured or why.

02 · The old way

Scrolling a grid of thumbnails.

The only way to find a screenshot in a normal library is to recognise it visually, one row at a time.

03 · Shelf

Drag it to the top of the screen. That's the whole filing step.

You capturea pricing table
Shelf readsthe text inside the image
Shelf keepswhere it came from and when
You later type“that $12 per seat pricing thing”

04 · Memory

What Shelf takes from an image.

Text: OCR reads the words inside the screenshot.
Meaning: A local summary and topic, so a rough description works.
Source: The site or app it was captured from.
Time: When it was saved, and what you saved around it.

05 · Retrieval

Describe the picture in words.

Because the words inside the image are indexed alongside its meaning, screenshots stop being second-class search results.

06 · Privacy

Your screenshots stay on your Mac.

Reading and indexing an image happens on device. Nothing about a screenshot is uploaded to make it searchable.

Make your screenshots findable.

Keep the next one in Shelf and it stays reachable by what was in it.

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+