Visual Search on Mac: How Fenn Lets You Find Images by Content, Not Filenames
Apr 1, 2025
Let’s play out a common scenario.
You’re searching for a specific image on your Mac. You remember what it looked like, maybe you are an entomologist and it was an image of a mosquito you saved last month, or a pink flamingo photo from your last trip. You open Spotlight. You type “mosquito”. Nothing. Maybe an empty folder titled "mosquito" pops up. Useless.
Now you’re stuck digging through folders like some kind of digital archaeologist.
Sound familiar?
That’s the problem with traditional search, it only sees filenames, not content. If your image is named IMG_2039.jpg, Spotlight doesn’t stand a chance. And unless you manually tagged everything, good luck.
That’s exactly why we built Fenn and this article is all about how Fenn brings true visual search to your Mac.
What Is Visual Search?
Visual search means exactly what it sounds like: instead of relying on filenames or metadata, it analyzes the content of your images.
That means Fenn doesn’t care if your file is named final_final_use_this_one_2.jpg.
It looks inside the image—at colors, objects, even text—so you can search based on what you remember, not what you named the file.
With Fenn, you can search your image library by:
🐅 Object → "Tiger", "Mosquito", "Bear"
🎨 Color → "Pink", "Green", "Black and White"
✍️ Text inside images → "Urgent", "Welcome", "Miss Blythe"
👀 Scene → "Mountain landscape", "Desk with mouse", "Dog with party hat"
Want to see it in action?
In this video, we show how Fenn finds exact images across a library of animal photos using just a few typed words.
Why Spotlight (Still) Can’t Do This
Spotlight has barely changed in a decade—and it shows.
Try typing “pink image” or “tiger photo” in Spotlight. All you’ll get are files with those words in the title, not the content. That’s because Spotlight can’t see what’s inside your images.
It doesn’t analyze color. It doesn’t recognize objects. It doesn’t scan text.
We covered all this in 5 Reasons Spotlight Isn’t Good Enough—but the short version? Spotlight is stuck in the past. And it's failing modern Mac users who work with thousands of photos, screenshots, and design files daily.
How Fenn Does It (Locally, and Privately)
Fenn uses advanced visual models powered by Apple Silicon chips to scan your image files locally. No cloud. No upload. No privacy trade-offs.
When you type “bear,” it doesn’t guess based on filenames—it knows what a bear looks like. It identifies shapes, features, and context to surface results fast and accurately.
Same with colors. Type “pink” and Fenn instantly shows images where pink dominates—even if the word “pink” never appears anywhere in the file name or metadata.
And yes, it works offline.
📶 No internet? No problem. Visual search still works on a plane, in a café, or off-grid in a cabin with zero bars.
We break this down more in Why Privacy Matters in File Search if you’re curious about how we built everything to run 100% on-device.
A Real Use Case: Searching Animal Images with Fenn
In our latest demo video, we ran a simple experiment: search across a large folder of animal images using just a typed query.
Here’s what we tried:
🦟 Query: “Mosquito”
🎯 Fenn returned exact images showing mosquitoes—no filename trickery needed.
🐻 Query: “Bear”
🔍 Even images named IMG_0482.jpg showed up correctly. Because Fenn understood the content.
🎨 Query: “Pink”
💡 Fenn returned multiple images with strong pink tones—even abstract ones.
💬 And yes, this all worked without any tags or manual sorting.
You can try the same kind of search across your own Mac with Fenn—whether it’s product design images, screenshots, memes, or client work.
Beyond Filenames: Start from an Image
One of Fenn’s superpowers? You can start with an image, not a word.
📁 Just drag and drop any image into Fenn. It will:
Find similar visuals across your entire library
Match frames in videos that resemble the image
Surface screenshots, designs, or assets with similar colors, layouts, or objects
This is true visual search. And it's available right now—on your Mac.
TL;DR: Visual Search That Actually Works
Spotlight is fine for launching Safari.
But if you’re trying to find a specific image—not just the file, but the content—you need something smarter. Something modern. Something that actually sees what you see.
Fenn delivers:
✅ Object-based search
✅ Color-based search
✅ Text-in-image OCR
✅ No metadata required
✅ 100% local + private
✅ Works offline
Because when Fenn understands what you're looking for, you don’t need to remember filenames ever again.
Ready to Find What You Actually Need?
You’re not just storing images. You’re storing work, inspiration, and memory.
So next time you think “I know I saw that somewhere…”
Let Fenn find it—in seconds.
👉 Try Fenn now – Visual search for your Mac, powered by AI
You might also like: