Winnow clusters your bursts, scores every frame for sharpness, and pre-picks the keepers across the thousands of shots in a single wedding or event, all on your Mac and iPhone. No upload, no subscription, no account, unlike the cloud tools that rent you their workflow by the month. The duplicate finder stays free forever for everyone else.
Winnow your library: separate the keepers from the rest, entirely on your own device.
The real prototype, running above on sample photos. Press K to keep, X to set aside, ↵ for the next cluster. Nothing is uploaded; there is nothing to upload.
The backlog
A single wedding or event runs to thousands of frames, most of them bursts and near-identical takes, and hand-picking the keepers is hours of work with your judgment fading after the first 90 minutes. The same backlog builds from a weekend of your kid's games or a week of travel. Deleting feels dangerous, so nothing gets deleted, and it quietly turns into years. The worst part: your built-in duplicate finder only catches byte-identical or trivially similar files, so the real clutter, the bursts and the almost-identical frames, never even shows up.
What hand-picking the keepers from a single 3,000-photo library actually takes, with judgment fading after the first 90 minutes.
In the app today
Winnow Photos is live: the iPhone build on TestFlight and the Mac app alongside it. These are actual captures from the current builds, reviewing a sample library.
The moment this is built for
Cards off the camera, the last cluster of the night. Burst of seven collapsed to one starred frame, "1 of 22 to set aside," Speed mode running the whole review by keyboard, no mouse required.
The workspace
Eight capabilities. Built where they are live, mocked up where they are not, and never mixed up on this page. The category sells a verdict; this is the workspace behind it.
Drop your library in. Near-duplicates and 40-shot bursts collapse into one cluster, with the sharpest, best-composed frame already starred, even past 10,000 photos.
Live nowFree clusters and pre-picks today. Full-library depth is Pro.
Start sorting on your Mac, finish on your iPhone. Only your keep and set-aside decisions sync, through your own iCloud, never a photo.
Live nowPro: Mac and iPhone/iPad sync today.
Every pick carries its reason, sharper focus and stronger composition, plus a tunable severity slider, so intentional motion blur or bokeh doesn't get auto-flagged as a defect.
Live nowPro: the reasoning and the sensitivity slider both ship in the current build, visible in the review screen above.
Every set-aside photo lands in a recoverable album with full undo. Nothing is ever silently deleted, the fear that keeps most libraries from ever getting sorted.
Live nowFree tier, from the very first run.
All scoring runs on Apple's on-device vision frameworks. No upload, no account, and it works in airplane mode.
Live nowEvery tier, zero cloud dependency, verified against the current build.
RAW decode for the formats that matter, ARW, CR2/CR3, NEF, RAF, DNG, batch export with folder structure, and XMP sidecars, so Lightroom or Capture One pick up Winnow's picks automatically.
Live nowPro Max, shown below in the current build.
Point Winnow at more than one memory card, old drive, or stalled catalog at once, and sort the whole scattered mess in a single pass.
Live nowStudio tier, shown below in the current build.
An arrow-keys-only review mode: keep, set aside, next cluster, no mouse, no menus. Live on Mac today; a swipe-fast version for iPhone is next.
Pro Max, Mac only, shown below in the current build.
iPhone swipe review, shipping to Studio members. The image below is a mockup.
The honest split
What is live today vs. what Studio members unlock nextClustering and pre-pick, why-this-frame reasoning, the quarantine safety net, on-device processing, cross-device sync, RAW export to your editor, multi-source batch ingest, and keyboard speed mode on Mac all run in the current build, shown above with no preview tag. Touch-swipe review on iPhone is the one unbuilt piece: Studio members lock in today's price now and get the feature the moment it ships. Nothing on this page outruns the build it describes.
How it works
Open Winnow and select your Photos library on iPhone or iPad. No import, no conversion, no account.
On-device artificial intelligence (AI) groups visually similar shots, scores each frame for sharpness and aesthetics, and pre-picks the best of every cluster.
Review clusters side by side, confirm Winnow's pick or swap it, and the rest moves to a recoverable set-aside album. Undo anything.
Why Winnow
Everything marked shipped is in the current build, verified before it appears on this page. No claim on this page outruns the build.
Perceptual, on-device matching clusters near-duplicates and bursts even when filenames differ or edits were made, the clutter that byte-identical checkers skip entirely.
Every cluster is scored for sharpness and aesthetics and the best frame comes pre-selected, so a 40-shot burst is one confirm, not 40 decisions.
Everything you set aside moves to a recoverable album with full undo. Nothing is silently deleted, which is exactly the fear that keeps libraries bloated.
All photo processing runs on your device with Apple's on-device vision frameworks: no cloud, no server, no third party. It works in airplane mode. (If enabled, only your keep/set-aside decisions sync through your own iCloud, never a photo.)
Pay once and own it. No monthly fee, no renewal, no account required. In a category full of subscriptions, Winnow charges you once and gets out of the way.
The Mac app has landed: keyboard-first speed mode, RAW support, batch export with XMP sidecars, and your keep decisions syncing privately through your own iCloud, never a third-party cloud.
The honest comparison
Feature-by-feature against the three tools buyers compare us to most. Shipped means shipping in the current build; every Winnow claim below reflects the build as it stands.
| Capability | Winnow | Gemini Photos | Aftershoot | Lightroom (cloud) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Near-duplicate + burst clustering, beyond exact copies | ✓ Shipped | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ manual |
| Auto best-shot pick per cluster, scored | ✓ Shipped | Partial | ✓ | ✗ |
| 100% on-device, photos never uploaded | ✓ Shipped | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ cloud-first |
| Recoverable set-aside + undo, never silent delete | ✓ Shipped | Trash-based | Not stated | Manual |
| Genuinely free tier, not a timed trial | ✓ Duplicate finder, free forever | ✗ three-day trial | ✗ 30-day trial | ✗ |
| One-time purchase available | ✓ $29 / $49 / $99 once | ✓ $19.95 lifetime | ✗ subscription | ✗ subscription |
| Cross-device sync of keep / set-aside decisions | ✓ Shipped · Pro | ✗ | ✗ | Via cloud upload |
| RAW format support | ✓ Shipped · Pro Max | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Photo editing and retouching | ✗ out of scope | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Face recognition / keyword tagging | ✗ out of scope | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
What Winnow deliberately does not do: Winnow picks your keepers; it does not edit or retouch (Aftershoot does), and it does not do face recognition or keyword tagging (Lightroom does). It finds keepers and hands them to whatever you already use for editing. Winnow ships on iPhone, iPad, and Mac today; Windows and Android are on the long-term roadmap. Comparison reflects our July 2026 research of the photo-review category; product details change, check each vendor for current specifics.
The industry, in its own words
These are sourced voices from photography communities describing the problem, not Winnow customers. Real customer reviews will replace these as they come in.
"I still have about 30,000 photos in my backlog, so I should be done in about 100-300 days."
"After my son's baseball games, I'd come home with thousands of photos to sort through. Most of them were just rapid-fire bursts, near-duplicates, or completely irrelevant, useless shots."
"Trying to go through hundreds of thousands of images in Lightroom and deleting them is no easy feat."
The score
Most tools in this category say an AI picks your best shots and stop there. Here is the whole of it, so you can decide whether it will see your photos the way you do.
First, a feature print of every frame. Near-identical shots sit close together in that space and a different scene sits far away, which is how a long burst collapses into one cluster without anyone tagging a thing. Second, Apple's trained aesthetics score, which also flags a utility shot: the receipt, the whiteboard, the screenshot that was never meant to be a photograph. Third, a sharpness measure taken from the variance of the image's second derivative, the classic way to tell a crisp frame from a soft one.
The aesthetics score decides, and sharpness separates the frames it rates level. Utility shots move down the list rather than getting starred. The sensitivity slider changes where the cutoff sits, so deliberate motion blur or a shallow depth of field does not read as a mistake.
All three signals run on the chip in the device you are holding. That is why it works in airplane mode, and why there is nothing to upload.
The limits
Apple's aesthetics scoring arrived in iOS 18, and that is the app's minimum: there is no older-OS fallback to install into.
Winnow decodes ARW, CR2, CR3, NEF, RAF, and DNG through Core Image and scores them exactly like a Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) file, but that requires Pro Max or Studio.
There is no Android version and no Windows version.
Sync carries keeps and set-asides through your own iCloud. A device that cannot already see the library has nothing to show you. That is the cost of never uploading a photo, and it is deliberate.
There is no develop, retouch, or export preset beyond copying originals with their sidecars. Winnow finds the keepers and hands them to whatever you already use for editing.
Pricing
Every feature listed ships in the current build. Your price locks now and never changes.
"A single wedding-sized shoot runs three to five hours of your own time to sort by hand, or $10 to $48 a month forever on a subscription built for someone else's workflow. One year of Aftershoot Pro runs $480 to $576. Winnow Studio is $99, once, and Pro is $29."
Leave your email and we will send your TestFlight invitation for the current iPhone build, plus the Mac app. Your price locks the day you join. No spam, no sharing, unsubscribe any time.
Questions
No. All processing runs on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac using Apple's on-device vision frameworks. Nothing is uploaded, there is no Winnow server involved at any step, and the app works with no internet connection at all. If you use cross-device sync, only your tiny keep/set-aside decision log travels, through your own iCloud; your photos never do.
No. Winnow is a one-time purchase. The duplicate finder is free forever, and Pro ($29), Pro Max ($49), and Studio ($99) are single payments with no renewal and no expiration. Your price locks the day you join.
Apple Photos catches byte-identical or trivially similar files. Winnow uses perceptual matching to cluster near-duplicates and burst sequences even when files differ, then scores every frame and pre-picks the best shot, which is where the real clutter lives.
Today: on-device duplicate and burst clustering, sharpness and aesthetics scoring with a pre-picked best shot, the recoverable set-aside safety net, album filing, and the Mac app, with private iCloud sync of your decisions, RAW support, batch export, XMP sidecars, and the keyboard-first speed mode. Everything on this page is what the Mac app does now.
Yes, with Pro Max. Winnow decodes and scores the major formats (Sony ARW, Canon CR2/CR3, Nikon NEF, Fuji RAF, Adobe DNG) using Apple's RAW engine, treats RAW+JPEG pairs as one photo, and exports your original RAW bytes untouched with an XMP sidecar.
Yes. Your keep and set-aside decisions, never your photos, sync privately between your own devices through your own iCloud, never a third-party cloud. Start on your Mac, finish on your iPhone, and every decision carries over.
Swap it. The starred frame is a proposal, and confirming or overriding it is one key either way. The sensitivity slider moves the threshold for the whole library at once, which is the right control when a whole shoot is intentionally soft: a long lens wide open, a night scene, deliberate motion. Nothing is decided until you confirm the cluster.
They go to a recoverable album, not to the bin. Every set-aside is undoable, and nothing is ever deleted without you doing it yourself in Photos afterwards. Accidental deletion is the fear that keeps people from sorting their photos at all, so the answer is deliberately boring: Winnow moves things, it does not destroy them.
No. Every signal Winnow uses runs on the chip in your own device, so a review works in airplane mode. The only thing that ever travels is your keep and set-aside decisions, and those go through your own iCloud between your own devices. There is no Winnow server for a photo to reach.
Winnow does not edit or retouch photos and does not do face recognition or keyword tagging. It does one job, finding the photos worth keeping, and plugs into whatever editor you already use.
Epiphani Studios builds tools that run on your hardware, respect your files, and charge you a fair price once, because the software you rely on every day should be something you own.