The first version, from November 2020, was called AntiPhoto. The name was a mood. I had tens of thousands of photos and videos scattered across drives and old phone backups, and Apple Photos wanted me to live inside its library, on its terms. I didn’t want a walled garden. I wanted something that could point at a messy folder and just make sense of it.
I linked to Tyler’s project over 5 years ago. I was excited about any new Mac-based solution for photo management at the time. And I’ve tested several builds of Iris Photos since (thanks Tyler).
The 1.0 release looks great. Many of the things the app does out of the box I do within my Apple Photos library (such as have smart albums for dates and people).
The only downside (for me) about Iris Photos is that it prefers that your entire photo library exists locally… preferably directly on your Mac. I simply do not have the disk space for that. So since my reluctant switch to iCloud Photo Library I’ve been using that exclusively.
Congrats to Tyler for shipping!