Free and open source · Mac, Windows, Linux
Import, cull, search and edit in one window. The library stays a plain folder on your own disk, and the finished photos mirror to your own Immich server.
Nothing is exported halfway to be finished somewhere else.
01 Import
Point at a card, a camera or a folder. The review opens while the copy is still running.
02 Cull
Stars, colour labels and tags from the keyboard, then filter down to what you meant.
03 Find
Type “sunset at the beach”. A local model does the looking, so nothing leaves your machine.
04 Edit
Non-destructive throughout. What the preview shows is what gets exported, and the original is never written to.
05 · Keep
Plain files in a folder you chose, a database that travels with them, and a backup you can open without this app.
Database and thumbnails live inside the library folder, so the whole thing moves when the folder moves.
Backup writes every photo plus all ratings, tags, albums and edits into a single file. Restore is one step.
Point at a NAS or an old archive drive and browse it in place. Nothing is copied and nothing is modified.
Rollfilm is the desk you work at, Immich is the shelf everyone else looks at. Cull and edit locally, and the finished photos appear on your server. The local library stays the original, always.
| What it is | An end-to-end desktop photo manager: import, cull, search, edit, sync |
|---|---|
| Platforms | macOS (Apple Silicon, .dmg), Windows 10 or later (.exe), Linux (.AppImage) |
| Price | Free. No account, no subscription, no tracking |
| Licence | Open source, MIT |
| Where photos live | A library folder you choose, on your computer or a NAS. Self-contained, so it moves with the folder |
| Search | Natural-language and similar-photo search, computed locally with a CLIP model |
| Safety net | Trash with restore, backup to a single zip, one-click library repair |
| File types | JPEG and RAW, with RAW+JPEG pairs shown as one photo |
| Editing | Non-destructive, on RAW and JPEG alike: tone, curves over the histogram, colour mixer, grading wheels, masks including AI subject selection, film simulations |
| Look | Three light and dark skin pairs, Graphite, Slate and Ink, with a Light, Dark or Auto switch |
| Server needed | None. No Docker, no self-hosting setup |
| Network use | A one-off search-model download on first start, plus your own Immich server if you connect one |
| Built with | Electron, React and TypeScript on a bundled Python and FastAPI backend with SQLite |
A normal desktop app. Pick your system.
Pick your system above. What it needs to open opens here, with the download underneath it. Or .
macOS warns about every download. When you open Rollfilm, macOS puts up a warning and refuses to start it. Nothing is wrong with the app. Your browser attaches an invisible marker to everything it downloads, and macOS blocks marked apps that were not signed with a paid Apple developer account. Rollfilm is a free project without one.
Taking the marker off is the whole fix. The order matters, because the app has to be in Applications before the command can reach it:
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine "/Applications/Rollfilm.app"
Every update needs this again. The marker is attached to the download, not to the app, so each new .dmg arrives with a fresh one and step 3 has to be repeated. There is no click-only way round it either: because Rollfilm carries no signature at all, rather than one from a developer macOS has not heard of, it is reported as damaged and Privacy & Security offers no Open Anyway button. Right-clicking the app and choosing Open used to work instead, but Apple removed that in macOS Sequoia.
Download for macOS Apple Silicon · .dmg
Windows warns about the installer. Rollfilm is not signed with a paid certificate, so SmartScreen calls the publisher unknown and stops it. Nothing is wrong with the file, and it takes two clicks to get past.
Only the installer is stopped, not Rollfilm itself, so you go through this once per install. SmartScreen judges each file on its own, so an update is a new file and may well ask again.
Download for Windows .exe installer
Linux does not warn at all. Nothing to approve and nothing to unblock. There is only one thing to know: an AppImage is a single file that carries the whole app, and Linux will not run a file you downloaded until you mark it as a program.
chmod +x ~/Downloads/Rollfilm-*.AppImage
~/Downloads/Rollfilm-*.AppImage in Terminal.Every update needs step 2 again, because the file you download is a new one and arrives without the permission. Nothing is installed system-wide either: the AppImage runs from wherever you put it, and deleting the file removes Rollfilm. If it quits with an error mentioning libfuse.so.2, your distribution ships FUSE 3 while AppImages expect FUSE 2. On Debian and Ubuntu sudo apt install libfuse2 fixes it; on anything else, start the file once with --appimage-extract-and-run.
Download for Linux .AppImage
Latest release: 0.1.45 · Older versions and the source are on GitHub. A card showing an older number means that platform's installer for the latest release is not built yet.
Rollfilm is a free, open-source desktop app for macOS, Windows and Linux that takes a photo the whole way: import from a card, cull, search, edit RAW and JPEG non-destructively, and optionally sync the results to your own Immich server. The library lives on your own computer or NAS, there is no account and nothing is uploaded to a cloud service.
Yes. Rollfilm is free of charge and the source code is published under the MIT license. There is no paid tier, no subscription and no account. Donations are welcome but optional.
No. Rollfilm is a normal desktop application you install like any other program. There is no server and no Docker. The only time it needs the internet is the one-off download of the search model on first start, and afterwards for your own Immich server if you choose to connect one.
In a library folder that you pick on first start. The database, thumbnails and import staging live in a hidden .photomanager subfolder inside it, so the whole library is self-contained and moves with the folder. You can point the app at a different folder later to switch libraries.
Rollfilm runs a local CLIP model on your machine and stores the resulting embeddings in its own database. Typing something like “sunset at the beach” or “dog in the snow” matches photos by what they look like, without any tagging first. No image and no search term ever leaves your computer.
Yes. Enter your Immich host and API key in the settings and choose a sync mode: ask on import, selective sync for the photos and albums you flag, or full sync for everything. A background loop uploads what is missing, mirrors albums, matches assets by checksum so Immich does not fill up with duplicates, and propagates deletions. Only JPEGs are uploaded, RAW files stay in your local library, and automatic sync can be paused on a metered connection.
Yes. Rollfilm reads RAW files, keeps them paired with their JPEG siblings as a single tile, and gives every RAW a sensible starting correction so it does not look flat on screen. You can switch that off and see the RAW exactly as the camera recorded it.
It covers the same path from memory card to a searchable, edited library, but it is a personal project rather than a Lightroom replacement. The library, search, organizing and Immich sync are solid; the develop module is experimental. Compared with Apple Photos or Google Photos, Rollfilm has no cloud, no account, works on all three desktop platforms and keeps your files in a plain folder you control.
Yes. If you took a laptop and a small library travelling and culled the trip there, Import a library folds that folder into your main one and carries the work across: stars, colour labels, tags and every edit come with each photo, albums and tags merge by name rather than duplicating, and RAW+JPEG pairs stay paired. A photo the main library already has keeps its file and only takes over the newer ratings and edits. The other drive is only ever read.
No. Deleting an imported photo moves it to the Trash with its stars, tags, albums and edits intact, and Restore brings it back exactly as it was. Only Delete forever on the Trash page removes the original file from your library folder. Photos from an external source are never deleted at all, because their files are not yours to remove. There is also a backup that writes every photo plus all ratings, tags, albums and edits into a single zip you can restore from.
Yes. An external source points at a folder, for example on a NAS or an old archive drive, and indexes it read-only. The files stay exactly where they are and are never modified, and each source is re-scanned at startup or on demand.
The app is not code-signed with a paid Apple certificate — the membership costs 99 € a year and Rollfilm is an unpaid hobby project — so Gatekeeper blocks the first launch. What actually triggers it is an attribute called com.apple.quarantine that your browser attaches to anything it downloads. Because the app carries no signature at all, rather than one from a developer macOS has not heard of, it is reported as damaged and Privacy & Security offers no Open Anyway button, so the attribute itself has to go. Do not take the dialog's offer to move it to the Trash: that button is the only one it shows, but nothing is wrong with the file, so choose Cancel. Move Rollfilm into your Applications folder and run xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine "/Applications/Rollfilm.app" in Terminal. The marker belongs to the download rather than to the app, so every update arrives with a fresh one and that line has to be run again after each one. (Right-click → Open used to work instead; Apple removed that in macOS Sequoia.) On Windows, SmartScreen shows a similar warning: choose More info, then Run anyway.
Please do. Bugs and ideas belong in the issue tracker, and pull requests are welcome. It is a personal project, so replies can take a while.
I wanted a simple way to keep my own photos in order. Every tool I tried was either too complicated or could only do part of the job, so I built the thing I was missing.
It was never meant to compete with the big photo programs. Rollfilm should stay small and fast: the things I actually use, in one window, on my own machine.
And to be open about how it is made: this is a full vibe-coded project. The whole app was built with AI as the pair programmer, which is exactly why it grew as fast as it did.
Pasqual Kreher
The library is a folder you can open in Finder. Nothing about that changes if this project ever stops.
A free project, given away as it is. If it is useful to you, a small donation keeps it going.
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