Search your screenshots on Mac, recover decisions you forgot

You screenshot everything. Product mocks, customer messages, Slack threads, dashboards, bug reports. It is the fastest way to save something in the moment.

The problem comes later. You remember the slide, the chart, the chat, but not when you took the screenshot or what the file is called. Photos and Finder show you grids of tiny images. Search barely helps. You scroll, squint, then give up.

With Fenn on your Mac, you can search your screenshots like real content. Fenn reads text inside images and understands what is on screen, so you can ask in natural language and surface the screenshot that proves a decision, captures a metric, or shows a UI that has changed.

Why screenshots are your real memory on Mac

If you work on a Mac all day, screenshots are often more honest than docs.

You screenshot:

• Slack or email threads where people commit to dates or scope

• Dashboards and charts before numbers move

• Figma or design tools while you iterate

• Error messages and logs during debugging

• Whiteboards and sticky notes after meetings

Most of that never gets cleaned up into a formal document. Months later you remember what you saw, not where it lives.

Without a better tool, you have three choices:

• Scroll through thousands of images in Photos or Finder

• Try to guess when you took it

• Give up and redo the work or ask someone to resend it

Fenn exists to avoid that.

What Fenn does with screenshots on Mac

Fenn is a file search engine for macOS that understands your content. It runs on device by default and can index:

• Screenshots and other images

• PDFs and Office documents

• Notes and internal docs

• Apple Mail messages stored on your Mac

• Audio and video recordings with useful timestamps

For screenshots, Fenn:

• Reads text inside images

• Uses that text to power search across your entire screenshot library

• Lets you ask using the words you remember from the screen

• Can mix screenshots with related documents and emails in one result set

So you can type what you remember, then open the file yourself and verify.

Examples:

• “Screenshot of the roadmap that shows Q4 launch for Team Billing”

• “Stripe dashboard screenshot where MRR crosses 100k”

• “Slack screenshot where Alice agrees to 10 percent discount for ACME”

• “Error message about missing entitlement com.apple.security.files.user-selected.read-write”

Search modes that make screenshots useful

Screenshots behave like any other content source in Fenn. You can switch modes depending on what you remember.

• Semantic mode
  Use natural language. Great when you remember the idea, not the exact wording.
  Example: “chart that shows churn spike after January price increase”.

• Keyword mode
  Exact words or phrases that appeared on screen.
  Example: “ERR_REQUEST_TIMEOUT” or “Experiment group B retention”.

• Hybrid mode
  Combine semantic and keyword so you can say “dashboard screenshot” and still require a specific field name.

• Exact mode
  When every character matters, for example log snippets, IDs or error codes.

You hit your Fenn shortcut, pick the mode, and search screenshots along with other indexed sources. Results show context so you can open the image and check the details.

Agent Mode, when screenshots are part of a bigger question

Screenshots rarely live alone. They sit next to PDFs, docs, decks, and emails. This is where Agent Mode is useful.

Agent Mode lets you ask a larger question and have Fenn do the first pass across screenshots and other files.

Examples:

• “Find screenshots that show the old pricing page and list the price points, then surface related contracts mentioning those prices.”

• “Show screenshots of the analytics dashboard where churn is above 8 percent, plus the board deck pages that discuss the same period.”

• “Collect screenshots of Figma mocks with the teal gradient header and see which ones also mention Summer Lookbook.”

Agent Mode uses models on your Mac to understand content and tie related items together. Everything runs locally.

Agent Mode works best on higher memory Macs, especially if you index a lot of large images and other heavy files. It also runs on 16 GB. If you want help tuning settings on your Mac, contact us.

Workflows where screenshot search pays off

Founders and product leaders

You capture:

• Chart snapshots before a board meeting

• Customer messages that confirm needs or promises

• Screens of early prototypes and competing products

With Fenn you can:

• Search “screenshot where net revenue retention first hit 120 percent” and open that image to verify.

• Ask “conversation screenshot where ACME agreed to expand seats to 200” and surface it next to the signed document.

• Recover old mock screenshots to see how far the product has moved and what changed.

Designers and creatives

You gather:

• Screenshots of inspirations and competitor flows

• Design reviews from Figma or other tools

• Marketing pages and campaign visuals

With Fenn you can:

• Search “screenshot with hero image of cyclist at dusk” or “landing page screenshot that mentions free returns”.

• Quickly find the reference you showed a client months ago.

• Pair screenshots with InDesign, Illustrator, or Photoshop exports in the same search.

Developers and engineers

You keep:

• Error messages, stack traces, and logs as screenshots

• Terminal output and profiling graphs

• UI issues captured on staging

With Fenn you can:

• Search “screenshot with kernel panic about disk I/O” or “screenshot showing 500 error from /api/billing”.

• Use Exact or Keyword mode for rare error codes.

• Pull old debugging context when a bug comes back in a slightly different form.

Legal, finance, and operations

You often screenshot:

• Bank dashboards and statement summaries

• Contract tools and signature status

• Messaging apps when someone confirms something important

With Fenn you can:

• Search “screenshot where client confirms in writing that notice period is 60 days”.

• Recover dashboard screenshots that showed a cash balance or metric on a specific date.

• Link screenshots to the underlying contracts or invoices in one query.

Quick start, searching screenshots with Fenn

You do not need to rearrange your life. You just need to tell Fenn where your screenshots are.

1. Install Fenn on an Apple silicon Mac
   Sonoma 14 or later is recommended.

2. Add your screenshot folders as sources
   Common locations are Desktop, Downloads, or a dedicated Screenshots folder. Add those plus any synced screenshot folders from tools you use.

3. Add related content sources
   Projects, contracts, notes, Apple Mail storage, creative exports, and research folders. Screenshot search is more powerful when Fenn also sees the files they relate to.

4. Let Fenn index on device
   Leave your Mac plugged in for the first pass if you have a lot of files. All processing happens locally.

5. Use the keyboard shortcut and switch modes
   Ask in Semantic mode first. If you know an exact word or code from the screenshot, switch to Keyword or Exact.

6. Use Agent Mode for complex questions
   When the answer spans screenshots, PDFs, and emails, ask once and let Agent Mode do the heavy lifting.

Screenshots stop being a junk drawer. They become a reliable part of your memory.

Download Fenn for Mac. Private on device. Find the moment, not the file.

See also

• Find text in images and screenshots on Mac

• What a powerful MacBook really lets you do

• Search Apple Mail on Mac, open the exact message

• Turn your Mac into a private AI agent

• Apple silicon M5, faster on device AI with MLX