What's New

New to Find? Here's everything that's happened in the past several years.

v4

Find now includes an iMessage extension!

4.0.2
More filters!
Jan 30, 2023
Download
  • 3 new metadata filters!
  • File Size - find the largest photos in your photo library
  • File Type - sort by screenshots, live photos, etc
  • File Format - search for RAW photos, GIFs, PNGs
  • Upgraded troubleshooting screen
  • Touched up the photo gallery layout
  • Redesigned Aspect Ratio filter with fine-tuned control
  • More intuitive gestures in the Smart Albums filter editor (Navigation stack style)
  • Photo info sheet now shows the file extension
  • Rewatch the onboarding animation in Settings → Debug
  • Removed the Christmas filter from Messages since it's 2023

Find is also now listed under Find App, Inc. 🎉

4.0.1
Merry Christmas!
Dec 25, 2022
  • Fixed a layout bug.
4.0.0
iMessage extension
Dec 24, 2022
  • Search your friends' photos!
  • Automatically search by locations, dates, aspect ratios, and more
NEW!
iMessage Extension
Search your friends' photos!
2
Go to Messages
3
Tap the
icon

v3

Once again rebuilt from the ground up, this version offers Smart Albums and super fast search

Technical note: v3 is built with almost 100% SwiftUI. This helped a lot with the animations.

3.0.6
Dates... a thing that eludes me
Dec 21, 2022
  • 20+ new date filters! Includes dynamic dates, relative ranges, and more.
  • Filter sharing! Import and export your filters via a URL.
  • Batch selection in Filters. Makes organization even easier.
  • Smart Album suggestions. Just tap to add to your collection.
  • Enhanced debugging menu for Scanning.
  • More consistent layout margins across devices.
  • Fixes a crash when scanning for colors.
  • Fixes an issue in Filters where the number of favorites was out of date.
3.0.5
Quality-of-life improvements
Dec 4, 2022
  • Double-tap to zoom photos
  • New Turbo Mode design
  • Toggle High Contrast mode for accent colors
  • Fixes adding photos to Favorites
  • New debugging tools for photo scanning

Btw — if you find a photo that consistently crashes the app, could you please email it to me (aheze@getfind.app)? I've had some reports of corrupted photos but haven't been able to pin down the problem.

3.0.4
Quick bug patch
Nov 28, 2022
  • This update fixes a crash on startup.
3.0.3
New features and improvements
Nov 27, 2022
  • Color search! Find photos by hex code.
  • Save and name custom colors
  • See what colors are in a photo
  • Customizable album sort settings
  • Up to 2x faster scanning
3.0.2
OpenFind is now open-source!
Nov 15, 2022
  • Versions 0.0.1 to 2.0.7 of Find are now open-source! github.com/aheze/OpenFind
  • Smoother photo loading
  • Photo info sheet now shows dimensions and file size
  • Fixed a bug where themes wouldn't load correctly
3.0.1
Themes!
Oct 18, 2022
  • Themes! Featuring 10+ colors to choose from.
  • 2 new app icons
  • New scanning preview
  • New language, Chinese (Simplified)
  • Improvements in Search
  • Fixed a bug where photos wouldn’t show up in the gallery
3.0.0
Literally the biggest update
Oct 9, 2022
  • Smart Albums
  • Object recognition
  • Saved filters
  • Custom gallery layout
  • Cascading search
  • Tags

v2

Rebuilt completely from scratch. This version focused on Photos and text search. Lists also got a huge upgrade with a redesign editor and sharing support.

However, ever since Apple added Live Text during WWDC21 (just before Find 1.2.8), Find has been kind of irrelevant. Why not just use the built-in Photos app? It was back to the drawing board and time to plan v3...

2.0.7
Photo notes!
Jun 2, 2022

Introducing… photo notes! Add custom, searchable labels to your photos, keeping everything organized. This version also comes with some other updates:

  • Replaced the RealityKit launch screen with a pure SwiftUI one.
  • Instant results when searching for notes.
  • Video stabilization in the camera.
  • More settings to customize.
  • Smoother animations.
  • Performance improvements.

Faster photos! But still not fast enough. I finally fixed the slow loading issue for good in v3.

Twitter
2.0.6
Added a new launch screen!
May 22, 2022
  • Replaced the RealityKit launch screen with a pure SwiftUI one.
  • This makes loading much faster.
  • Fixed a bug where photos wouldn’t appear with Display Zoom enabled.
  • Added a link to help translate Find. (thank you!)
  • Updated the share screen
2.0.5
More optimization for huge photo libraries.
May 20, 2022
  • Photos is now up to 6x faster than v2.0.4.
2.0.4
A couple improvements.
May 14, 2022
  • Supports huge photos libraries (like even if you have 20k+ Find should handle it)
  • Supports slanted text (so the app will work even if your photo is sideways)
  • New setting: Highlight Padding
  • Smoother animations due to a bug fix in Popovers
  • Some easter eggs - try typing /strawberry or /gradient in a search bar. Thanks Eleni and Leo!

At our school's coding club we've been learning Swift and SwiftUI. The /strawberry and /gradient commands were made by our club members, and I added them into Find.

We're just about to launch our actual app, a Clash Royale soundboard (Clash Royale is a mobile game that most of the club members play). It did very well on reddit!

Edit: here's the download link!

2.0.3
Bug fixes for iPad.
Apr 27, 2022
  • Fixes a crash when editing lists on iPad.
2.0.2
iCloud support and small improvements.
Apr 25, 2022
  • Find can now download photos stored in iCloud and scan them!
  • The camera status indicator now shows a tip when no text is entered.
2.0.1
Minor changes and bug fixes.
Apr 24, 2022
  • New loading indicator for the launch screen
  • Added a context menu to photos - long-press to open then
  • Fixed photos not update after existing the search bar
  • Updated the Share App button in Settings
  • Fixed highlights offset slightly in camera
  • Better orientation change handling in Camera
2.0.0
The biggest update to Find, ever.
Apr 22, 2022
  • Photos. The algorithm now delivers results instantly.
  • Camera. Now with zoom, panning, and landscape mode.
  • Lists. Check out the completely redesigned editor with sharing support.
  • Search bar. Add multiple bars and filter lists automatically.
  • Settings. Manage preferences in a brand-new interface.
  • Landscape mode. Use the app in any orientation.
  • Launch time. Find now launches almost 2x faster.
  • And much, much more.

v1.2

A major redesign of Find. Started to actually look like an actual, usable app around this time.

1.2.10
Bug fixes to make sure Find looks great on iOS 15.
Sep 29, 2021
  • Fixed - Transparent navigation bar when viewing photos
  • Fixed - Results too large when finding from photos
  • Fixed - Dark status bar when finding from photos
  • Fixed - Text too large in Settings
  • Also - the v2.0 designs are complete! I’m currently at work converting them into actual code. If you have any suggestions, comments, or whatever, please let me know in the Discord Server.

Find's Discord is pretty cool. It's been active for almost 2 years now and every day people hop on. Also, there's Findbot! I learned Python just to make this bot. It's open source if you want to take a look (although I'm not sure why you'd want to, the code is horrible).

Join the server
1.2.9
Check out the enhanced camera!
June 17, 2021
  • Photos that you take are now always clear and produce incredibly accurate results
  • Besides that, there’s some bug fixes
  • Let me know what you think on the feedback form!
1.2.8
A couple features to make Find even more useful.
June 9, 2021
  • 7 new text recognition languages!
  • > French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese (Simplified), and Chinese (Traditional)
  • Redesigned photos slider!
  • > Multi-filter support
  • > New screenshots category
  • And bug fixes, of course.

Great numbers this month

Thanks reddit
1.2.7
Thank you, r/iPhone, for your amazing feedback!
April 1, 2021

I’ve never had this much support for Find before. I’ve added a lot of your feature requests in this update, especially focusing on Accessibility.

  • Full VoiceOver support
  • Comprehensive spoken descriptions for highlights
  • Choose pitches to substitute colors
  • Explore text transcript with your finger
  • Browse photos by swiping up and down
  • Speak how many detected results there are

Here’s some other new stuff:

  • Improved rendering algorithm for faster results
  • 2 new shutter styles - check them out in Settings!
  • App Clip (hopefully nothing went wrong, it’s my first time…)

And the bug fixes:

  • What’s New screen in Chinese on some devices
  • Conflicting gestures when finding from photos

Here’s the current roadmap for future updates:

  • New languages: French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese
  • Auto-caching (Automatically cache when you pause the camera) + Chinese support
  • Translations - thank you u/atosredd and u/metalzero24 for volunteering!
  • Steadier camera - I’ll work on making it clearer
  • Lists sharing - share your lists! With import and export support, and possibly an iMessage app.
  • And even more after the above are completed.
1.2.6
Fixed some stuff.
March 13, 2021

Now that Find has a website (this one!), I linked it in the app too.

Bug Fixes

  • Screen fades to black when dismissing photos
  • Placeholder text when requesting photo permissions
  • Stats screen not updating
  • Outdated contact information
1.2.5
Some much-needed changes here.
March 7, 2021

A bunch of improvements to the camera

  • Studying at night? No problem - Find can now use the flashlight!
  • Tap anywhere on the screen to focus
  • New full screen mode
  • Faster launching

Bug Fixes

  • Camera shutter sometimes not tappable
  • Camera freezes after coming back from the App Switcher
  • Settings icon not visible in older iOS versions
  • Photo controls sometimes missing

Made a trailer for the app.

Music is "BACK 2 U" by my friend W IN K.

1.2.4
Find is a lot more stable now!
February 25, 2021

What’s New

  • Slide to select multiple photos quickly
  • Smoother transition when pausing the preview
  • New morphing animation in the Stats button
  • Cleaner interface for the Lists Builder

Bug Fixes

  • Some colors would turn white in dark mode
  • Crash when loading the thumbnail of an animated image
  • Highlights would sometimes not disappear
  • Haptic feedback was off by default
  • Status bar would not hide when viewing photos in full-screen
1.2.3
Pushed the last release a bit too hurriedly.
February 13, 2021

Bug Fixes

  • Incorrect caching progress indicator
  • Full screen photo finding should have dark background
1.2.2
Some general improvements.
February 12, 2021

UI Updates

  • New non-modal interface for caching individual photos

Bug Fixes

  • In Camera, caching progress doesn’t disappear when done
  • Pressing “continue” doesn’t do anything in Photos
  • Keyboard doesn’t hide when transitioning to full screen in Photos
  • Swipe to navigate between tabs is disabled by default
1.2.1
Find is now only ~30mb
February 6, 2021
  • Bug Fixes
  • I accidentally left a couple testing images in the app bundle. Combined, that added an extra 40 mb…
1.2.0
A huge update.
February 4, 2021

1. Redesigned navigation - instead of a weird floating button, you now get a nice, clean tab bar.

2. Photos, Camera, and Lists each get their own tab - and you can swipe between them.

3. Complete user interface overhaul.

This time, we mainly focused on improving Photos.

4. Syncing - Photos is now linked to the built-in Photos app on your phone. This means that you can find from all your existing photos, and not just the ones saved from Find.

5. Filters - we added a slider where you can switch between the different types of photos, which are:

• Local - photos saved from Find

• Starred - photos that you’ve starred (do this for the ones that you view the most)

• Cached - cached photos, which churn out results instantly when you find from them

• All - all your photos

6. Refreshed gallery view - photos are now grouped by month instead of day, and displayed in a 4 column layout to take advantage of all available space

7. Resumable finding - you can now switch between the gallery view and the finding sheet without losing your place.

8. Cleaner finding - we polished up all the little shadows and corner radiuses… but also rethought the interaction, so everything is much easier to use.

9. Universal icons - photos will now have the Star or Cache icon everywhere, whether that’s in the gallery view, or the finding sheet.

10. Info sheet - shows the date taken and origin of a photo. Also, for cached photos, you can now copy their transcripts.

There’s even more, but let’s get to Camera.

11. Cleaner layout - gone are the popup and rings from 1.1. Now, the shutter button springs out from the tab bar, supported by 2 buttons at the corners. That animation took quite a while to make!

12. Shutter - we made a bunch of improvements here. Back in 1.1, all it did was take photos. But we realized that people would rather pause the preview, so that’s what it does now.

13. But that’s not all. When you pause the preview, the tab bar is replaced with the Save and Cache buttons.

14. Press Save to take a photo and save it to the photo library (we actually didn’t remove this feature!)

15. You can now also cache directly in the paused preview, getting you faster and more accurate results.

We redesigned Settings too!

16. More modern interface - redesigned to contrast beautifully with the camera, it now has an awesome dark theme.

17. More settings - we added levels for haptic feedback, so you aren’t stuck with just ON or OFF. There’s now also an option to turn off “Swipe to Navigate” if you don’t want to swipe between tabs.

18. Better help center - we’re now using SupportDocs, which is an open-source project of ours.

And finally, Lists.

19. We brought the design refresh to Lists, too - you’ll get more vivid colors and a more fluid experience.

20. The icon gallery view now has 8 columns, making it easier to pick the one you want. We’ve also made the header sticky, so you always know which category you’re browsing.

21. Code-level improvements - Lists in the previous version had a lot of redundant code. We’ve optimized it for a faster and more efficient program.

Well, that’s pretty much all! And Find is still completely free with no ads, even almost a year later. Enjoy, and keep the reviews coming!

For several months I watched a bunch of anime. Distance Learning meant that I had a bunch of spare time — school was via Zoom, and most teachers didn't even need us to turn on our camera. So anime it was!

Here's a list of all the titles that I watched around this time:

  • Sword Art Online
  • Steins;Gate
  • Attack on Titan
  • Neon Genesis Evangelion
  • Sailor Moon
  • Assassination Classroom
My Twitter profile pic that has literally never changed. It's Luna from Sailor Moon

v1.1

Made some updates during the summer. The app icon borders are also a bit rounder.

1.1.5
Updated screenshot order
October 23, 2020
  • The order of the screenshots got messed up, so I fixed them in this patch.
1.1.4
More minor updates!
October 21, 2020
  • The order of the screenshots got messed up, so I fixed them in this patch.
1.1.3
Minor updates!
September 19, 2020
  • Faster and more efficient finding

During the beginning of sophomore year it was COVID and stuff, so I started getting into a couple things.

One was open source. I released ProgressGif, my second app, on the App Store on Aug 9, 2020. This was a simple utility app that turned videos into gifs — I had a blog on Medium, and since Medium only allowed gifs, I had to convert all my screen recordings before uploading them. This was kind of annoying so I made an app for it. The defining feature was the progress bar — it automatically rendered a progress bar on top of the gif, so you can clearly tell when it starts or ends.

From ProgressGif I learned about size classes and got more comfortable integrating with Photos and AVFoundation. It's live on GitHub if you want to check it out.

github.com/aheze/ProgressGif
1.1.2
More general improvements.
July 30, 2020
  • Added background blurs
  • Updated support URL
1.1.1
Visual improvements and minor bug fixes.
July 8, 2020

General Improvements

  • Tutorials appear only when you need them
  • Smoother transitions

Bug Fixes

  • Overlapping text in Photos
  • No Chinese translation when Caching photos

My mom helped me with the Chinese translations. Thanks mom!

1.1.0
Translated into Chinese
July 3, 2020

您好!We've translated Find into Chinese! However, only English and Pinyin are currently supported as input by the text recognition engine.

New Features

  • More focused onboarding and tutorials
  • What’s New screen for displaying new features

Bug Fixes

  • “Ok” button covers up text in the tutorials
  • Icon preview in the Lists Builder appears overly large
  • Overlapping text in the Help screen

Name Changes

  • “History” is now “Photos”
  • “Matches” is now “Words to Find”

v1

The first versions of Find make their way to the App Store.

1.0.2
More general bug fixes and improvements.
April 21, 2020

I had some trouble with the build number, but it turned out fine!

New Features

  • Share photos!
  • Floating Keyboard support (iPad)

Bug Fixes

  • Photos don’t appear in History on first launch
  • Context Menu interaction enabled during selection mode in History
  • Can’t dismiss onboarding
  • During Caching, first and last photos are clipped

General Improvements

  • Minor improvements in Lists Builder
  • Overlays are now also optimized for iPad
1.0.1
Some general bug fixes and improvements.
April 14, 2020

UI Updates

  • History photos have smarter corner radii
  • Improved Dark Mode support
  • Smoother transition when tapping a photo in History (on iPad)

Bug Fixes

  • Photos don’t appear in History on first launch / Crash when tapped
  • Go button partially covered during onboarding
  • Stats menu disappears when a new match is found
  • While finding from History, default highlight color reverts to blue after dismissing zoomed photo
  • Crash on iPad when tapping certain buttons
  • Placeholder image when camera access was denied

General Improvements

  • As long as one photo is not yet cached, tapping Cache when multiple photos are selected will now cache all selected photos
  • Warnings are less obstructive
1.0.0
Initial Release
April 6, 2020

Version 1.0

After almost an year, Find is here! Thanks to everyone who supported me. Without you guys, Find would have just been a fleeting idea.

Pre-Release

First commit was October 13, 2019. I had started learning Swift the winter prior (2018), when I bought a Mac mini. It was so slow! My dad helped me install an SSD — after that it was usable. I'd use this computer for another year, when I released v1 of Find.

I originally wanted to make Find because in 8th grade Spanish we were assigned a bunch of worksheets almost daily. It was busy work and didn't help much — all you needed to do was look through your textbook for the answers. But I didn't want to flip through all those pages and read line-by-line. So why not make an app?

The first commit. Was signed into my dad's account back then.

The first app I wanted to make was actually something called "FariExcuse" — back in 7th grade I had a classmate called Fari that would make excuses all the time. I thought it would be cool to make an iMessage extension that generated random excuses when you needed them. I ended up making some designs, but didn't code anything.

Another app I designed pretty extensively was an iOS client for this game called agma.io — a complete agario knockoff, but it had faster gameplay and I really liked it.

Designs for the agma client. Back then I had no idea how to write even a single line of code, so I spent most of my time designing.

I fished this out from this huge pile of old sketches. If you'd like to check out what I've been up to many years ago, ping me on Twitter and I'd be happy to take some pics.

- Andrew