Queryable - Photo Search App

Remembering the picture but not the date is a familiar problem, and Queryable is built to solve it. Download the Queryable IPA for iPhone from builds.io and search your photo library by describing what is in the shot.

What is Queryable?

Queryable is made by SmashMelon LLC and listed under Photo and Video with Utilities as a second category. Instead of tags or albums, you type a sentence such as two people by the sea or a girl in red on the lawn, and the app ranks the photos that match. It can even respond to a mood like falling in love, because it reads longer, more human descriptions than a keyword filter can.

Everything happens on the device. The first launch builds an index of the library, a one-time job that takes a few minutes depending on how many pictures you have; the developer quotes about 2,000 photos a minute on an iPhone 12 mini. After that, searches are instant, and you can refresh the index by hand whenever new photos arrive. The app works without a network connection, so your pictures and your search words stay on the phone. You can even turn off its network permission if you want that guarantee.

A newer addition lets you search in your own language. Queries in a language other than English are translated on the device before they reach the search model, which keeps the accuracy of the English model without sending anything out. The interface itself is localised in English, French, German, Spanish and Italian. The project is also described as open source, with its code on GitHub.

Queryable key features

• Natural-language photo search with sentences instead of tags
• Search by example photo, plus filtering of results by time
• Batch selection and sharing of matches
• Cleanup of similar and duplicate photos with group review
• Support for Live Photos and videos in results
• Fully on-device analysis with no account

Price and requirements

In the App Store, Queryable is a paid app at $4.99, sold as a one-time purchase rather than a subscription. It first appeared in December 2022 and needs iOS 18.0 or later. The most recent notes describe an upgraded duplicate cleanup: new photos are processed incrementally without a full rescan, progress is saved so it can resume after an interruption, and large libraries run faster with a better iPad layout.

Queryable is listed on builds.io as an IPA for iPhone; a single tap sends it to the phone, and no computer is needed along the way.