Local-first photo library — macOS & Windows
Hokusai brings the calm of Apple Photos to a library you actually own — every file on your disk, every edit written in place, with optional sync to Google Photos and Apple Photos. No subscription. No cloud lock-in.
Most photo apps want your library in their cloud, behind their subscription, on their terms. Hokusai takes the opposite position: your photos stay on your machine, organized into a library that is fast, quiet, and entirely yours — and when you want a cloud copy, you choose exactly which provider receives it.
Hokusai runs no servers for your library. There is no account to create, no analytics in the app, and nothing trains on your photos.
Somewhere on your disk, all of this is waiting to be seen again.
Inside the app
This is the library view — the room where your photos live. A quiet sidebar, a grid that answers to seven zoom levels, and not a single pixel asking you to subscribe to anything. The photographs below are samples; the feeling is exactly what ships.
Snapshots
Plate I
Light on one side, your photograph on the other. Sliders for brightness, contrast, saturation and blur; rotation, flip, and eight considered filters. When you save, the edit is written into the file itself — atomically, on your disk, with no database standing between you and the picture.
Every adjustment previews live, full-screen, before a single byte changes.
Plate II
Every photo is fingerprinted with SHA-256 as it enters the library. The Duplicates view gathers byte-identical copies into one row, so reclaiming gigabytes becomes a calm review pass — keep one, let the rest go, and nothing is guessed.
Hashes, not heuristics. A duplicate here is a duplicate, provably.
Plate III
Your life, grouped by the day it happened. Capture dates come from the EXIF record inside each file, so the order is the order you lived it — scroll a year in seconds, land on an afternoon, and stay a while.
Included free, forever — alongside albums, favorites, people and search.
Features
JPEG, PNG, WebP, HEIC, TIFF and BMP. Every file is fingerprinted with SHA-256 on the way in, and you decide what happens when a copy already exists — ask each time, skip, or import anyway.
Albums, favorites, a timeline grouped by capture date, a people view, and instant search across names, dates and tags. Seven zoom steps from contact sheet to full row.
Brightness, contrast, saturation and blur sliders, rotation and flip, and eight considered filters. Edits are written straight to the file on disk — atomically, never through a database.
A dedicated Duplicates view groups byte-identical photos by their hash, so reclaiming space is a review pass, not a scavenger hunt.
Receipts, handwriting, illustrations and documents get their own utility views. A map view for GPS-tagged shots. Recently saved, viewed, edited and shared — each a keystroke away.
Deleted photos rest in Recently Deleted for 30 days, each marked with the days remaining, before the library lets them go for good.
Cloud sync — optional, bidirectional
Hokusai is local-first, not local-only. Connect Google Photos or Apple Photos and reconcile in whichever direction you choose — download, upload, or both at once.
Sign in with Google’s own OAuth flow — your password never touches the app. Download new shots into your library, upload local edits back, or run a full bidirectional mirror.
Export from or import straight into the system Photos library. What lands in Hokusai passes through the same duplicate-safe import pipeline as everything else.
Auto-sync runs every fifteen minutes while the app is open — or trigger a run yourself and watch every transfer, with a Stop button that actually stops.
Sync credentials are encrypted at rest with your operating system’s keychain. They never leave your machine except to the provider they belong to.
Local-first, by design
No account. No analytics. No AI training on your library — we couldn’t if we wanted to; your photos never pass through a server of ours.
The only network calls Hokusai makes are the ones you ask for: license validation, update checks, and sync with the providers you explicitly connect.
A note on the photographs above: they are not anyone’s library. Every sample image on this page is a stock photograph from Pexels, used with thanks under the Pexels license — by Bri Schneiter, Simon Berger, Stephan Seeber, James Wheeler, Joyston Judah, eberhard grossgasteiger, Chevanon Photography, Anjana C, Sam Kolder, Jane T D., jonas mohamadi, Magda Ehlers, and Pixabay. They ship with this page; no real library was ever consulted.
Pricing
$0
After the trial, forever.
$39 one-time
Every Pro feature. Every future update.
3 machines per license · 30-day refund · Secure checkout by Polar
Download
Hokusai is in private beta. Public downloads for macOS 11+ and Windows 10+ (64-bit) will open here — soon, and worth the wait.
For macOS
macOS 11 or later · Apple Silicon & Intel · DMG
Coming soonFor Windows
Windows 10 or later · 64-bit · installer
Coming soonNot your platform?
Want to know the moment the doors open? Write to support@kura.photos and we’ll save you a seat.
Questions
No. Pro is $39, paid once, and it includes every future update. There is no renewal, no tier ladder, and nothing that stops working if you never pay us again.
Every install starts with the full Pro feature set for 30 days — no card, no account. When the trial ends, Hokusai continues as the Free tier and your library is untouched. Upgrade whenever you like.
One license key activates up to 3 machines. If you hit the limit, the app shows your activated machines and you can deactivate one — or manage everything from Polar’s customer portal.
Thirty days, no questions asked. Purchases, receipts and refunds are handled by Polar, our merchant of record — reply to your receipt email or write to support@kura.photos.
On your disk, in ordinary files you can open, back up, or move yourself. Hokusai keeps no cloud copy and runs no servers for your library — deleting the app data removes every trace we ever had.
Only what you choose, only to the provider you connect. Sync direction is your call — download, upload, or bidirectional — and nothing moves until you sign in and start a run.
JPEG, PNG, WebP, HEIC and HEIF, TIFF, and BMP. Videos are not part of the library today.
Current builds are not code-signed, so macOS Gatekeeper and Windows SmartScreen are cautious. On macOS, right-click Hokusai and choose Open; on Windows, click More info → Run anyway. Every release will publish SHA-512 checksums alongside its downloads.
