The Vision Behind Fenn: Rethinking File Search on macOS

Feb 1, 2024

Let’s be honest—searching for files on your Mac today isn’t great.

You know the file exists. You remember a word, a sentence, or a moment from a video. But when you open Spotlight and type your query, you either get nothing—or a list of files that doesn’t help.

That’s the problem we wanted to solve.

That’s why we built Fenn, a new kind of file search engine for macOS.

A Moment That Sparked Everything

On November 23, 2023, Andrej Karpathy released a video on YouTube titled “Intro to Large Language Models.”

If you're curious about how LLMs (Large Language Models) work, I highly recommend you watch that video—and every other video he’s ever made, honestly.

But in this one, he said something that stuck with me.

He shared his vision of an LLM OS—an operating system where your main interface is an AI. You speak or type naturally, and the LLM interacts with your files, your apps, your computer—like a real assistant.

That idea lived rent-free in my head.

I started experimenting. I built systems, agents, tools to interact with the computer using voice or text. Some were autonomous. Some needed a bit of help. But no matter what I built, something always felt missing.

The Missing Piece: Understanding Your Files

An LLM is powerful, yes. But what if it has no clue what's inside your files?

That’s where most systems break. They can talk. They can plan. But they can’t truly see what’s buried in that chaotic folder with 30,000 documents, videos, slides, and screenshots.

That’s when the idea of Fenn clicked.

Meet Fenn: A Smarter File Search Engine for macOS

Fenn is a local file search engine for macOS.

But not just any search engine.

Fenn lets you search inside your files—not just filenames, but segments of videos, pages of PDFs, slides in PowerPoints, text inside images, and more.

Want to find the part in a video where a dog is wearing a birthday hat?

Just type:
👉 “Dog with a birthday hat”

Fenn will jump to the exact video frame.
Yes—really.

Looking for scenes related to The Matrix?
Type:
👉 “Trinity and Neo”

Fenn will search semantically, visually, and textually across your local files to find everything related—even if the words aren't an exact match.

Even if it’s just a brand name appearing briefly in a blurry video frame—like an Expedia ad—Fenn can find it.

Here is a simple example of a query:

Result:

That’s the power of combining local indexing with visual and semantic understanding.

Why Local Matters

Fenn is built from the ground up to be private, local, and fast.

Like Spotlight, Fenn runs directly on your Mac—no internet connection required. But unlike many cloud-based tools, Fenn doesn’t upload or share your files anywhere. Everything stays on your machine, and you decide what gets indexed.

What makes Fenn special is how it takes full advantage of the Apple Silicon chips (starting from the M1). These new processors allow us to run powerful AI models efficiently—enabling deep visual and semantic understanding of your files, all while keeping things smooth and responsive.

The result?
Smart, private, blazing-fast search that respects your data and your workflow.

No cloud. No compromise. Just a better way to search.

If you've experienced issues with Spotlight after recent macOS updates, you’re not alone. Many users reported problems with indexing and inconsistent results, especially after upgrading to macOS Sequoia.

We wrote a full breakdown of these issues in Why Spotlight Is Failing on macOS Sequoia – And How Fenn Can Revolutionize Your Search Experience.

The Future We’re Building

Our long-term vision for Fenn is to become the intelligent layer between you and your files—so you never feel lost in your data again.

We believe the future of computing is one where humans and AI work together, seamlessly. And for that to happen, your AI needs to understand your world—your videos, your documents, your ideas.

That’s why we built Fenn.

So the next time you’re stuck, thinking “I know I saw that somewhere…”
You’ll find it in seconds.

Try Fenn ! — the smarter, deeper file search engine for macOS.
Built for speed, powered by AI, and designed with privacy at its core.

If you want to go deeper into how Spotlight works (and where it falls short), we’ve also created The Ultimate Spotlight Guide (and Why You Might Need an Alternative), which compares its capabilities to what Fenn brings to the table.

You might also like:

‹ 5 Reasons Spotlight Isn’t Good Enough (And How Fenn Fixes That)

Why Spotlight Is Failing on macOS Sequoia – And How Fenn Can Revolutionize Your Search Experience ›