Lap
Lap is a local-first desktop photo manager for browsing, organizing, searching, and editing personal photo and video libraries on your Mac.
What is Lap?
Lap is a desktop photo manager that helps people organize, search, and maintain large personal photo libraries while keeping files on their own storage. It is developed by Lichuan Liu and supports a folder-based workflow, so you can work with existing photo folders instead of moving everything into a cloud service. On macOS, users can browse images and videos, sort collections with filters such as tags, ratings, dates, cameras, and locations, and build Smart Albums for saved views. Lap also includes local AI-powered search and similarity tools, duplicate finding, comparison views, and basic image editing for everyday cleanup and organization. It is designed for users who want a private, native-style media workflow for family archives, hobby photography, or large offline libraries.
Key features
- Browse photos and videos from existing folders without forcing cloud upload
- Search locally with text prompts, similarity tools, and face-based organization
- Organize large libraries with tags, ratings, favorites, filters, and Smart Albums
- Find duplicate files and review similar images before cleaning up a library
- Compare multiple images side by side to choose the best shot
- Edit images with crop, rotate, flip, resize, and basic adjustments
- Work with Apple Live Photos while keeping related sidecar files together
Review app leftovers with diCleaner
Inspect caches, support files, containers, and login items before cleaning.
Safety overview
Status: Mostly safe
Lap is a legitimate local photo-management app that works with folders on your Mac and stores its own database, cache, and settings in your user Library. Access to your photo folders is normal for this kind of app, and local AI features are intended to run on your device rather than requiring a cloud upload. Because the app can move files to Trash and help clean duplicates, review batch actions before confirming them, especially if you manage a large library. Removing the app does not remove your original photos, but deleting its support files can remove its database, tags, thumbnails, and other library organization data.
Recommendation: Keep Lap if you use it to organize or search your photo library. If you no longer use it, you can remove the app; just remember that deleting its support files may also remove Lap-specific library data such as indexes, thumbnails, and organizational metadata stored by the app.
Common paths
/Applications/Lap.app
Cache paths
~/Library/Caches/com.julyx10.lap
Support paths
~/Library/Application Support/com.julyx10.lap~/Library/WebKit/com.julyx10.lap
Preference paths
~/Library/Preferences/com.julyx10.lap.plist
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