Self-hosted photo and video library
Rediscover the memories
sitting on your drives.
MemoryLane indexes the folders you already keep your photos and videos in and turns them into a fast, browsable library that lives entirely on your own machine. Built by working photographers.
A different memory every time you arrive.
For anyone with a growing archive
Let old memories surface again.
Most photos in a large library never get looked at again after the day they were taken. MemoryLane's home screen surfaces one at random every time you open it, alongside a slideshow of what happened on this day in years past.
June 2007 · London · 19 years ago
A fullscreen trip through your archive.
- Scan several folders or drives at once, reorder them, and rescan just one at a time.
- Photos, RAW files, video, and Apple Live Photos are all indexed side by side.
- Repeated bursts collapse into a single stack instead of filling your grid with near-duplicates.
- Ignore a folder and it disappears from your library without anything happening to the files themselves.
More than a folder browser
The tools to explore,
organize, and understand.
Start with simple browsing. Add local analysis and platform integrations only when you want them.
- Search and filtersSearch filenames, folders, dates, tags, camera metadata, and optional visual descriptions.
- Favorites and tagsKeep useful collections close and edit descriptive tags without reorganizing the original files.
- LocationsExplore geotagged photos on an offline map and jump directly back into the library.
- PeopleOptionally find and group faces locally, name people, and browse every photo they appear in.
- Reports and exportTurn camera and lens metadata into useful charts, filtered lists, and CSV exports.
- Install only what you useVideo tools, RAW metadata, AI, People, and Apple Photos are managed as first-party plugins.
- Cleanup with reviewFind unsupported videos and other maintenance candidates, then review every action before it runs.
- Apple PhotosOn macOS, connect a Photos library read-only and browse local and cloud-backed catalog entries together.
For libraries that never stop growing
Built for large
photography hoards.
Large libraries stay responsive because MemoryLane builds a compact local index instead of scanning every file on every visit. RAW and JPEG pairs from the same shot link automatically, so they never show up as two separate photos, and full bursts collapse the same way. When you want more control, select any set of photos yourself and stack them by hand.
- Fast browsing at any size, from a few hundred photos to hundreds of thousands.
- RAW and JPEG pairs from the same shot link automatically, with no separate import step.
- Select any photos yourself and stack them by hand, on top of the automatic grouping.
- Browse and filter by the keyword tags already embedded in your files.
Every format you actually shoot
Video, and Live Photos,
handled properly.
Video is indexed with a poster-frame thumbnail and a duration badge, and plays the original file directly in your browser's own player. Nothing is transcoded automatically, so playback depends only on what your browser can already decode. Apple Live Photos are detected on their own, shown as one tile with a LIVE badge, and play their paired clip right in the grid.
Poster frames, duration, and native playback.
Still and motion kept together.
- Old camera formats that won't play in a browser can be flagged and converted, opt-in, from Settings.
- You review and confirm the converted result before anything happens to the original.
- The original is only ever moved into a plain folder next to it, never deleted.
For photographers with serious archives
Every tag your camera
wrote, actually usable.
Lens, body and serial number, aperture, shutter speed, ISO, focal length, drive mode, rating, keywords, GPS. Every EXIF tag your files carry lands on a dedicated Reports page you can filter, chart, and export.
Filter by lens, camera, aperture, ISO, focal length, or year.
- Canon CR2 / CR3 / CRAW
- Nikon NEF / NRW
- Sony ARW / SR2
- Fujifilm RAF
- Olympus / OM System ORF
- Panasonic / Lumix RW2
- Pentax PEF
- Samsung SRW
- Sigma X3F
- Minolta MRW
- Kodak DCR / KDC
- Hasselblad 3FR
- Mamiya / Leaf MEF
- Phase One IIQ
- Adobe DNG
Optional, and local either way
AI features you start
yourself, on your own
hardware.
Find visually similar photos, search with a description instead of a filename, or group faces into people you can name. All three run through a local sidecar process that never sends a file path anywhere, only the thumbnails it needs to do its work.
Local-first, always
Your photos stay
where you put them.
MemoryLane is something you run, not a service you sign up for. There's no account beyond the admin login you create the first time you start it, no cloud upload step, and no subscription behind any of its features.
- MemoryLane only reads your originals. Its database, previews, and thumbnail cache live in the application data folder; they are disposable and can be rebuilt by scanning again.
- The one narrow exception: an opt-in tool that converts old video formats browsers can't play, and even that only moves the original into a plain folder next to it, after you've reviewed the result, never deleting anything.
- If you turn on the AI features, the sidecar still never sees a file path, only the thumbnails it needs.
Ready when you are.
Point it at a folder and it starts indexing. Everything above happens on its own from there.