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.
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.
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.)
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.
Installation (step by step, no coding experience needed)
Step 1 — Download the app
- Go to the GitHub page for this project
- Click the green Code button near the top right
- Click Download ZIP
- Once it downloads, unzip it
- 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.
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.
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:
- 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)
- In swachh, click the ⚙ Settings gear icon in the top right
- Paste your API key and click Save
- 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.
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 |
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 |
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.
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.
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.
