Distill inspiration.
Make something new.

Stillroom is a quiet, local library for visual references. It works with the folders already on your disk: each folder is a board, and Stillroom adds tags, notes, favorites and collections on top, without moving your files somewhere hidden. Everything stays on your computer. Nothing is uploaded, and there's no account.

This is the first public beta. It has been tested carefully, but please read the beta notes at the end before pointing it at a collection you care about.

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Features

Your folders are the library

• Add any folder as a library. Its subfolders appear as boards in the sidebar, and folder tiles preview what's inside.
• Keep several libraries open at once, such as one for work and one for personal projects.
• Create, rename, move and delete folders from inside Stillroom; the changes happen on disk. Drag folders in the sidebar to reorganize them.
• Live updates: add, rename or move files in Explorer and Stillroom catches up on its own. Tags and notes follow files that move inside the library.
• Folders that already have their own Stillroom library are detected, so libraries don't end up nested by accident.

Bringing references in

• Drag files from Explorer onto the window, paste images with Ctrl+V, or use Import. Files are copied into the folder you're viewing, and a progress panel shows larger imports.
• Supports PNG, JPEG, WebP, GIF, BMP, AVIF, SVG and ICO images, plus MP4, WebM, M4V, OGV, MOV and MKV video. Which video codecs play depends on Windows.

Organizing

• Tags with suggestions as you type. Rename, merge or delete a tag across the whole library from the sidebar.
• Notes on every item, saved automatically as you type.
• Author field for crediting the artist or source.
• Favorites: star anything and find it in Favorites, across all libraries.
• Collections group references from different folders without moving or copying the files. Drag items onto a collection in the sidebar to add them.
• Rename an item by editing its title. The file is renamed to match.
• Drag and drop items into folders or collections, or drag to reorder them in a custom order.
• Multi-select with Ctrl/Shift-click or Ctrl+A to tag, move, favorite or set aside many items at once.
• Undo (Ctrl+Z) for moves, renames, reordering, folder changes, tag renames and deletes, and The Cellar.

Finding things

• Search titles, authors, notes and tags. Type #tag to match tags only.
• Show the current folder only, or include subfolders.
• Sort by newest, oldest, title, or your own custom order.
• Adjust the thumbnail size with the slider.
• Find duplicates spots identical files anywhere in a library, even when they have different names.

Viewing

• Click a card once for its notes, twice for the viewer.
• Zoom and pan with the scroll wheel or a double-click, and use the arrow keys to step through the board.
• The viewer shows each image's colour palette, its details, and its tags and notes.
• Videos play in the viewer, and their thumbnails come from the first frame.
• Reveal any file in Explorer, or open it in its default app.
• Arrow keys move between cards on the board too.

The Cellar

• Send to The Cellar instead of deleting. Items set aside there disappear from boards and search but keep their tags and notes.
• Restore puts an item back in the library root, or in the folder it came from.
• Delete from The Cellar moves the file to the Recycle Bin.

Built for big collections

• Tested with libraries of 30,000 items. Opening, scrolling, searching and editing stay quick.
• Thumbnails are made in the background, visible items first, and stored in a local cache instead of inside your library.

Comfort

• Dark, light, or match the system theme.
• Resizable, collapsible sidebar.
• Works offline. No account, no tracking, no network access needed.

For bug reports

• Stillroom keeps a small log file of errors. Open it from Settings → Show log file.
• Settings → Third-party licenses lists the open-source software Stillroom uses.

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Beta notes: please read

Back up first. Stillroom works directly with the real files on your disk: renaming, moving and deleting in the app changes them for real. Keep a copy of any reference collection you can't replace before adding it as a library.

Avoid cloud-synced folders for now. OneDrive, Dropbox, Google Drive and iCloud can conflict with Stillroom's index while syncing, which can lose tags and notes. Your images themselves stay safe. Folders on network drives carry the same risk. Use a local folder for this beta.

About deleting:

• Delete from The Cellar moves the file to the Recycle Bin, and its tags and notes are removed from Stillroom. A file restored from the Recycle Bin comes back without them.
• On network drives and some external drives, Windows skips the Recycle Bin, so deletes there are permanent.

The .stillroom folder. Each library gets a hidden .stillroom folder that holds your tags, notes, order, collections and The Cellar. Deleting it loses that information. Your images in the library itself are never affected.

Install warning. Stillroom isn't code-signed yet, so Windows shows "Windows protected your PC". Click More info → Run anyway. On PCs with Smart App Control turned on, Windows blocks unsigned apps entirely, and Stillroom can't run there yet.

Windows only, for now. Stillroom is made for Windows 10 and 11 and has so far been tested on Windows 11. Linux and macOS versions are planned but untested.

Large libraries. The first time a big library opens, thumbnails take a while to fill in. The duplicate finder reads every file, so on large libraries it can take a while, and that library's other actions wait until it finishes.

No automatic updates. Download new betas from the website. Installing a new version keeps your libraries, tags and notes.

Found a bug? Send what you were doing, what happened instead, your Windows version, roughly how big your library is, and your log file (Settings → Show log file → stillroom.log). The log may include file and folder names, but never image contents or notes.