Face search for Mac, jump to frames and pages
Oct 9, 2025
Search a person's face across images, video, and PDFs
You remember a face from a meeting, or a conference, not the filename. Fenn now lets you find a person's face across your images, videos, and documents with embedded images, then open at the exact frame, timestamp, or page. Everything is on device by default for privacy.
The pain in your words
“I have hundreds of photos and clips from depositions. I need every shot where the witness appears.”
“My research lives in scanned PDFs and slide decks. I want every page that shows this speaker.”
“Marketing sent a shared drive of event media. I need to pull all moments where our CEO is on stage.”
Why typical Mac tools fall short
Finder and Photos search focus on filenames and simple metadata. They do not find the same face across mixed file types.
Video players do not index faces by time. You scrub blindly and miss moments.
Cloud services raise privacy concerns. Many teams cannot upload sensitive media.
What Fenn’s face search does
Finds the same person across images, videos, and documents with embedded images, such as PDFs and slides.
Opens directly at the moment you need, page for PDFs and slides, frame or timestamp for video.
Runs on device by default, so your media and face data stay on your Mac.
Optional cloud indexing for speed and scale, up to about 100 GB, when your policy allows it.
Five minute setup
Install Fenn on your Apple Silicon Mac.
Choose sources to index, add your case folders, research libraries, and shared media drives.
Let Fenn index on device. You can enable optional cloud indexing later for speed and scale.
Press the Fenn shortcut to search.
Click the Face search option. Choose a reference face from any indexed image, or drop a reference photo of the person.
Add the Person you want to detect across your files from the Index settings
Tap @ to show the list of Person available from the search bar
Press Enter to show all the matching files across images, videos, and any visual documents
How to work with results
Images, open and review the file in context.
Videos, open at the exact timestamp where the face appears.
PDFs and slides, open on the page where the face is detected.
Use filters for date ranges, folders, or file types to narrow quickly.
Save a Smart Search for ongoing matters or long projects.
Accuracy tips
Use a clear reference photo, facing forward if possible.
Add a few reference shots for the same person, different lighting and angles.
If you get lookalikes, refine with folder or date filters.
Low resolution, masks, and heavy motion blur can reduce matches.
Privacy, in plain English
Indexing and face search run on your Mac by default.
Your media and face representations are stored locally.
Optional cloud indexing is available for speed and scale when you choose it.
You control sources, retention, and deletion. Your data does not need to leave your device.
Mini case, legal team
A partner needs every instance of a witness across a month of photos, body cam clips, and scanned exhibits. With Fenn, the paralegal selects one clear still as the reference face. Fenn returns images, timestamps inside MP4 files, and exhibit pages inside PDFs. The team builds a timeline in under an hour. The same task previously took a day of manual scrubbing and guesswork, with sensitive media kept on device.
Mini case, research lab
A researcher tracks a keynote speaker across a semester of recorded seminars and slide PDFs. Fenn finds every slide and every moment in video where the speaker appears, then opens to the exact time or page. Notes are finished before lunch, no uploads required.