swachh

A footage and photo organizer for editors. Browse, tag, and cull clips and stills across any project folder — on macOS, Windows, or Linux.

Named after the Marathi/Hindi word for clean — स्वच्छ.

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What it does

swachh scans a folder of video clips and photos, pulls out metadata (camera, date, focal length, ISO, etc.), generates thumbnail previews, and gives you a fast grid view to browse, tag, star, and cull them. Videos and Photos sit behind two tabs at the top of the window, and everything you can do to a clip you can do to a photo: multi-select, bulk tag, star, mark for deletion, drag straight onto an NLE timeline, AI analysis. Tags are shared across both, so a tag you invent on a clip is one click away on a photo. It works completely offline — your files never leave your computer.

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Walkthrough

Grid view	Clip details & tagging	Settings

(Screenshots above are from a sample project with placeholder test-pattern footage — your real footage will show actual video thumbnails.)

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Requirements

swachh needs two things installed before it will run:

• Node.js (18 or newer) — runs the app
• ffmpeg (which includes ffprobe) — reads video metadata and generates thumbnails

Both are free, open-source, and used by thousands of other apps. Installation steps for each OS are below.

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Installation (step by step, no coding experience needed)

Step 1 — Download the app

1. Go to the GitHub page for this project
2. Click the green Code button near the top right
3. Click Download ZIP
4. Once it downloads, unzip it
5. Move the unzipped folder (called swachh-main or similar) somewhere you'll remember — your Desktop or Documents folder works fine

Step 2 — Open a terminal

You don't need to know how to code — you'll just be copying and pasting the commands below.

• macOS: Press ⌘ + Space, type Terminal, press Enter (or find it in Applications → Utilities)
• Windows: Press Win, type PowerShell, press Enter
• Linux: Open your distro's terminal app (varies by desktop environment — often Ctrl + Alt + T)

Step 3 — Install Node.js and ffmpeg

Install Homebrew first if you don't have it (paste in Terminal, press Enter, enter your password when asked):

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

Already have Homebrew? Skip this. Not sure? Run brew --version — if you see a version number, you're set.

Then install Node and ffmpeg:

brew install node ffmpeg

Install Node.js by downloading the Windows installer from nodejs.org and running it (accept the defaults).

For ffmpeg, the easiest route is winget (built into modern Windows) — in PowerShell:

winget install Gyan.FFmpeg

Close and reopen PowerShell afterward so it picks up the new ffmpeg command. If winget isn't available, download a build from ffmpeg.org/download.html, unzip it, and add its bin folder to your PATH (search "Edit environment variables" in the Start menu).

Use your distro's package manager, for example:

# Debian / Ubuntu
sudo apt install nodejs npm ffmpeg

# Fedora
sudo dnf install nodejs ffmpeg

# Arch
sudo pacman -S nodejs npm ffmpeg

Verify both installed correctly:

node --version
ffmpeg -version

Step 4 — Navigate to the swachh folder

In your terminal, type cd (with a space after it), then drag the swachh folder from your file manager directly into the terminal window — the path will appear automatically. Press Enter.

It should look something like:

cd /Users/yourname/Desktop/swachh-main       # macOS/Linux
cd C:\Users\yourname\Desktop\swachh-main     # Windows

Step 5 — Install swachh's dependencies

Still in the terminal, paste this and press Enter:

npm install

This downloads the libraries swachh needs to run. It only needs to happen once. You'll see a lot of text scroll by — that's normal. Wait for it to finish (you'll see your cursor come back).

Step 6 — Run swachh

npm start

The app will open. On first launch, click Choose Project Folder and point it at a folder containing video clips. swachh will scan everything recursively and generate thumbnails — this takes a minute or two depending on how much footage you have.

Next time you want to open swachh, just open your terminal, navigate to the folder again (Step 4), and run npm start.

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Optional: Build it as a standalone desktop app

npm run build

This creates a file at dist/mac-arm64/swachh.app. Drag it to your /Applications folder, then to your Dock, to open it like any other Mac app.

After the first install, use this instead to rebuild and replace the copy in /Applications automatically:

npm run update-app

Quit Swachh before running the command.

Note: Packaged builds are currently macOS-only. On Windows and Linux, run swachh from source with npm start (Steps 4–6 above) — it works the same way, just without a double-clickable app icon. Contributions adding a Windows/Linux build target are welcome.

Note (macOS): Because swachh isn't distributed through the Mac App Store, macOS may warn you the first time you open it. To get past this: right-click swachh.app → Open → Open again in the dialog.

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Optional: AI clip analysis

swachh can analyze your video clips using AI and write a description of what's happening in each clip — useful for finding footage later or getting a quick overview of a shoot.

To use this feature:

1. Get a free API key from console.anthropic.com (you'll need to create an account and add a small amount of credit — analyzing a full shoot of ~400 clips costs roughly $1–2)
2. In swachh, click the ⚙ Settings gear icon in the top right
3. Paste your API key and click Save
4. Open any clip and click Analyze — or use Analyze All to run on every clip at once

Your API key is stored privately on your computer and never sent anywhere except directly to Anthropic's servers.

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Project data

When you open a folder, swachh searches the whole folder tree — every subfolder, at any depth, following folder aliases — so it doesn't matter how your videos and photos are split up inside it. swachh creates a hidden .organizer/ subfolder inside it containing thumbnails, metadata, and your tags and notes. This data travels with your footage — if you copy the folder to an external drive, your tags come with it.

You can safely delete .organizer/ to start completely fresh.

App-level settings (last used folder, Anthropic API key) are stored separately, outside any project folder:

OS	Location
macOS	~/Library/Application Support/swachh/organizer-config.json
Windows	%APPDATA%\swachh\organizer-config.json
Linux	~/.config/swachh/organizer-config.json

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Features

Tabs	Videos and Photos, each with its own grid, filters and counts
Group by	Day, Camera, Folder
Filter by	Camera type, focal length, resolution (megapixels for photos), date
Per-item	Tags, notes, star, mark for deletion
Reset tags	Settings → "Reset all tags…" clears every tag at once, behind a confirmation that spells out what will move
Selection	Cmd/Ctrl-click to pick several, Shift-click for a range, Cmd/Ctrl-A for all
Drag out	Drag the selection straight onto a timeline, like dragging from Finder
Delete flow	Mark → review list → confirm → moves to your OS Trash / Recycle Bin
Camera metadata	Aperture, ISO, shutter, white balance, LUT (Blackmagic/iPhone clips)
GPS	Links to Google Maps for geotagged clips

Keyboard shortcuts

Key	Action
D	Mark / unmark for deletion
S	Star clip
T	Focus tag input
← →	Previous / next clip
Space	Play / pause
F	Toggle filter sidebar
Esc	Close detail panel

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Supported cameras

Tested with:

• iPhone via Blackmagic Cam — full metadata (lens, aperture, ISO, shutter, WB, LUT, GPS, day/night)
• Fujifilm X-E4 — date, resolution
• Sony XAVC — date, resolution
• Any other camera that produces .mov, .mp4, .mts, .m2ts, .avi, or .mkv files

Photos: .jpg, .png, .heic, .tif, .webp, .gif, .bmp and camera raw (.raf, .arw, .cr2, .cr3, .nef, .dng, .orf, .rw2 and friends). On macOS, swachh reads full EXIF — camera, lens, focal length (with the 35mm equivalent), aperture, ISO, shutter and GPS — and renders raw and HEIC files for preview using the system image tools. Raw and HEIC need macOS; on Windows and Linux the Photos tab handles the common web formats with dimensions only.

iPhone clips recorded in ProRes or HEVC will show a thumbnail preview instead of a live video player (a browser limitation). You can open them directly in your system's default video player from the detail panel.

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Platform notes

swachh runs the same core experience on macOS, Windows, and Linux — scanning, thumbnails, tagging, filtering, starring, and deleting all work identically everywhere. A couple of things currently differ:

• Photo metadata and raw/HEIC support rely on macOS's sips and mdimport. On Windows and Linux, .jpg, .png, .webp, .gif and .bmp still show up in the Photos tab with their dimensions, but without EXIF, and raw/HEIC files can't be read.
• "Show in Finder" for a single clip works on every OS (opens your default file manager — Finder, Explorer, Nautilus, etc.) with the file selected.
• Revealing multiple starred clips at once, pre-selected in the file manager, currently only works on macOS (it uses AppleScript under the hood). On Windows/Linux this falls back to opening the containing folder.
• Packaged, double-clickable builds (npm run build) are macOS-only for now — see the build section above.

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Troubleshooting

"command not found: node" / "'node' is not recognized" — Node.js isn't installed or isn't on your PATH. Revisit Step 3 for your OS.

"command not found: ffmpeg" / "'ffmpeg' is not recognized" — Same as above, for ffmpeg. Run ffmpeg -version to confirm; reinstall if you get an error.

App opens but shows a blank screen — Make sure you selected a folder that actually contains video files.

Thumbnails not generating — ffmpeg may not be installed or not on your PATH. Run ffmpeg -version in your terminal to check.

macOS says the app is from an unidentified developer — Right-click swachh.app → Open → Open. You only have to do this once.

Windows SmartScreen warns about an unrecognized app — Only relevant if/when a Windows build is available; click More info → Run anyway.