Search
Smriti’s search is one box for the library metadata it already has: named people, dates, places, albums, favourites, media type, filenames, camera names, and optional local visual meaning. It does not use cloud AI.
What Search Understands
| Query | Meaning |
|---|---|
Goa 2023 | Photos from Goa taken in 2023 |
Dad 2024 | Photos containing Dad from 2024 |
Dad and Mom | Photos containing both Dad and Mom |
only Dad | Photos where every detected face is Dad |
only Dad and Mom | Photos where every detected face is Dad or Mom, and both are present |
favourites Dad | Favourite photos containing Dad |
videos Goa 2024 | Videos from Goa taken in 2024 |
album Goa Trip | Photos in the matching album |
Nikon Goa | Filename/camera/location fallback for unmatched words |
beach sunset | Visually similar photos, when visual search is installed and indexed |
The interpreted filters appear as chips above the results so you can see what Smriti understood.
People
People search uses names from the People view. Matching is case-insensitive and supports combinations:
Dad
Dad and Mom
Dad with Mom
Multiple people are treated as an intersection: every returned photo must contain every requested person.
Strict only
only is intentionally strict.
only Dad
only Dad and Mom
A photo matches only Dad only when:
- face processing has completed for the photo
- Dad appears in the photo
- no detected face is assigned to another person
- no detected face is unassigned or unknown
If a photo has an unrecognised face, it is excluded. This avoids showing group photos when you asked for one person only.
Dates
Search recognises:
- years:
2024 - month + year:
March 2019,Mar 2019,2019 March - exact dates:
2024-03-15 - relative dates:
today,yesterday,this week,last month - seasons:
spring 2020,fall 2021
Date filters combine with every other filter.
Places
Places are resolved from your library’s stored city/country metadata. There is no hardcoded city list in smart search. If GPS reverse-geocoding has not been run, place search has less to work with.
Albums, Favourites, And Media
Use album <name> or in album <name> to filter by album.
Use favourites, favorites, or starred to filter to favourite items.
Use videos, video, photos, or photo to filter media type.
Visual Meaning
Visual search is optional. Install the visual model from
Settings -> Assets -> Visual search and install the runtime pack with
Download assets, then run Index visual search. Smriti stores the
model outside the app binary and stores per-library vectors under
.photovault/semantic.
When visual search is ready, natural queries such as:
beach sunset
food photos 2024
videos mountains
are matched against local image/video-poster embeddings. Structured
filters still apply: food photos 2024 is semantic food plus photo
media type plus the 2024 date range, not a separate loose search path.
What It Does Not Do Yet
- No cloud lookup.
- No OCR dependency in the main search path.
- No regex or wildcard syntax.
- Trashed photos are excluded.
Pivots From Elsewhere
Several views open Search with a pre-filled query:
- Insights -> click a heatmap cell, person, or location
- Map -> click a cluster or place
- People -> click a person card