I replaced Google Photos with an offline AI gallery; finding old photos is finally easy
Finding images using AI and without an internet connection
For years, the author has amassed over 5,000 photos, many of which depict their three beloved dogs. Despite Google Photos' people and pets feature, finding specific images remains a tedious process. Seeking a solution, the author discovered Memoria, an offline AI-powered gallery app. Memoria uses Apple's MobileCLIP-S0 model and operates entirely offline after installation.
Users can grant app permissions and select folders to index. After indexing, searches are conducted using phrases, scenes, descriptions, metadata, and keywords, with support for English, Arabic, French, Russian, and Spanish. Memoria allows for image searches and cropping for similar image searches, and supports image sharing from other apps.
Search history can be pinned, and the confidence slider adjusts the strictness of the search. The author tested Memoria for a week and was impressed by its performance, successfully locating numerous images on their phone and saving considerable time. Memoria's small size (100MB) and open-source nature make it a compelling alternative to Google Photos.
Although it's currently available only on GitHub, it is expected to soon be available on F-Droid. The app has limitations, such as the time required for indexing a large number of images and the phone heating up and draining battery during initial setup. However, these issues diminish after the initial indexing. The author recommends keeping a charger nearby during the setup process.
Despite lacking certain features like move, copy, and delete, Memoria's search accuracy improves when combining keywords with descriptions. The Balanced option on the confidence slider yields the best results. While Memoria isn't a strong contender yet, the author is optimistic about its future development and potential to become a default gallery app.
The app's open-source ethos and local offline AI features make it an appealing alternative to AI-driven apps like Google Photos, which the author finds intrusive due to its tracking and telemetry practices.
Written by urgent.news from Android Police's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
