TagStudio

Tag and organize photos and files in place, with a tag library stored next to your folders instead of a proprietary catalog.

Open source alternative to:

Eagle

Adobe Lightroom

DEVONthink

Adobe Bridge Apple Photos

Overview Releases

TagStudio is a desktop photo and file organizer built around tags that live on your own disk. A library is just a folder you point the app at: TagStudio drops a .TagStudio folder inside it containing a SQLite database of entries, tags and fields, then indexes every file already in that tree. Nothing is moved, duplicated or renamed, and no sidecar files are scattered next to your images, so your existing folder structure keeps working in any other program.

Unlike string-based taggers, a TagStudio tag is an object with its own properties: a display name that does not have to be unique, shorthand and aliases, a colour, and parent tags it inherits from. Parent tags can be marked as disambiguating, which makes "Freddy Fazbear" display as "Freddy Fazbear (FNAF)" when several characters share a name. Tags that are flagged as categories get their own section in the preview panel, and entries can also carry fields such as Title, Author, Series and free-form text or datetime values.

Search is where the system pays off. Queries combine tags with boolean operators and parentheses, and mix in path:, filetype: and mediatype: filters plus special:untagged and special:empty to find the gaps in a library. Previews cover raster and vector images, RAW files, animated formats, video, audio, plaintext, ebooks and project files such as PSD, Blender and Krita documents, with playback handled through FFmpeg. Builds are shipped for Windows, macOS and Linux, and the interface is translated on Weblate into roughly thirty languages.

Highlights

Libraries are folders: a .TagStudio SQLite database sits alongside your files and never touches them
Rich tags with aliases, shorthands, colours, inheritance and disambiguating parent tags
Text, text-box and datetime fields on top of tags, with category tags shown separately in the preview panel
Boolean search over tags, paths, file types and media types, including special:untagged
Previews and playback for images, RAW, video, audio, documents and creative-tool project files
Native desktop builds for Windows, macOS and Linux, including portable variants

Compared with paid catalogues, TagStudio replaces the tagging and browsing side of Eagle, Adobe Bridge and the Lightroom library module rather than their editing features. Eagle keeps its tags in its own library database and is built around a visual asset grid; Bridge attaches keywords to files as XMP sidecars and depends on the Creative Cloud ecosystem; Lightroom ties tagging to a develop pipeline and a subscription. TagStudio is GPL-3.0, has no account, no cloud and no sync, and deliberately avoids copying metadata into proprietary formats — its roadmap instead splits the library core into a separate API that other frontends can build on.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which platforms does TagStudio run on?

TagStudio ships prebuilt desktop downloads for Windows, macOS (both Apple Silicon and Intel) and Linux, with extra self-contained portable archives for Windows and Linux. There is no web or mobile version. The project asks users to install only from its GitHub Releases page, because builds found in package managers or other stores are unofficial and unsupported.

Where does TagStudio store its data, and will it change my files?

Opening a folder as a library makes TagStudio create a .TagStudio folder inside it, holding a SQLite database with entries, tags and fields. The files themselves are only indexed: TagStudio does not move, rename or modify them, apart from explicit actions such as Move File(s) to Trash. The tradeoff is that if you move or rename files outside the app, those entries become unlinked and must be relinked from the Tools menu.

Can I import tags or catalogs from Lightroom, Eagle or Adobe Bridge?

No. There is no importer for other catalogues or their tag databases, so tags have to be rebuilt by hand, though multi-select plus Add Tags to Selected makes bulk tagging reasonably quick. What TagStudio does automatically is index an existing folder tree when the library is created, which means you can keep the directory layout you already have and start tagging from there.

What search syntax does TagStudio support?

Queries can combine tags with the boolean operators AND, OR and NOT, grouped with parentheses, plus quoted phrases and underscore substitution. Filters cover file paths with glob syntax, file types and media types, and there are special conditions such as special:untagged and special:empty for finding entries missing tags or fields. Path searches currently need wildcards around the filename in most cases.

What do I need installed alongside TagStudio?

FFmpeg is required for video thumbnails and playback, and the project publishes an FFmpeg help guide for setup problems. ripgrep is recommended but optional, and speeds up library scanning and refreshing. Running from source instead of a release build needs Python 3.14 plus PySide6, and libraries below 10,000 files are rescanned automatically when opened.

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