# Argus - AI Search — AI search for your iPhone life

> AI-powered personal search engine for all your iPhone data. (iPhone/iPad app by Liqun Chen.)

- Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/argus-ai-search/id6760634171 (this page in markdown: same URL + `.md`)
- Developer: [Liqun Chen](https://appshunter.io/developer/1880102480)
- Category: Lifestyle, Health & Fitness
- Price: Free
- Rating: 5.00/5 from 1 App Store ratings · 1 written reviews indexed
- Age rating: 4+
- Requires: iOS 17.0 · 13 MB
- Languages: American English
- Released: 2026-03-23
- Data updated: 2026-09-10
- Monetization: free
- User reviews in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/argus-ai-search/id6760634171/reviews.md

## What is Argus?

Argus is your personal knowledge search engine. It indexes everything you create on your iPhone — photos, messages, calendar events, reminders, notes, contacts, voice notes, web bookmarks, workouts, sleep, and visit history — and makes it all searchable, askable, and actionable from a single search bar.

EVERYTHING ON-DEVICE BY DEFAULT
Argus runs Apple Foundation Models on iOS 26 for AI features at no cost and no data leaving your phone. Want better answers? Bring your own Claude, OpenAI, Gemini, or any OpenAI-compatible API key. You decide which model handles text, vision, image generation, and voice — all separately.

POWERFUL SEARCH
• Hybrid search blends keywords, semantic embeddings, and recency
• Filter by source: photos, contacts, calendar, messages, notes, more
• "Photos of food," "what did I do last weekend," "10 most recent emails" — natural language understood
• Geek Mode for power users: 73 commands with pipes, macros, and workflows

CHAT & AGENT
• Multi-turn conversations with personas, voice input, and spoken answers
• Pin favorite exchanges, share as text or image, branch into alternate paths
• Agent Mode lets the AI run commands on your data — search, summarize, create reminders, send messages — with your confirmation for anything destructive

PHOTOS & STORIES
• AI Photo Studio: generate, edit, describe, enhance, OCR, remove backgrounds, watermark
• Photo Stories turn 2-10 photos into a narrated journey
• Manga Mode redraws your photos as manga panels with speech bubbles
• Visual Intelligence (iPhone 16 Pro+) — point your camera at anything and search your data

HEALTH (NEW IN 2.0)
• 8-chart dashboard: activity rings, sleep stages, HRV, resting HR, walking HR, VO2 max, steps, active energy, workouts
• Workout routes plotted on Apple Maps with heart-rate zone breakdown
• Mood Journal correlates sentiment with sleep and exercise
• HealthKit data is read on-device only and never uploaded

INSIGHTS & MEMORY
• Weekly/monthly Data Insights — charts of your activity by source and topic
• Time Capsule surfaces "On This Day" memories every morning
• Morning Brief notifications with today's calendar, weather, health rings, and a 1-line LLM narrative

POWER USER TOOLS
• Custom keyboard extension with snippet expansion across every app
• Quicklinks (parameterized URLs), workflows (multi-step macros), smart folders (saved searches)
• Spotlight integration with interactive snippets — see top results without launching
• Live Activities, widgets, AppIntents, Shortcuts, Action Button, Camera Control
• iPad layout with NavigationSplitView, hardware keyboard support

PRIVACY-FIRST
• All ingestion happens on-device
• HealthKit, Photos, Contacts, Calendar, Reminders, Location — read locally, indexed locally
• Cloud AI is opt-in with explicit consent and BYOK
• Full data export (Markdown / JSON / CSV) anytime
• Tap-once delete from any item

REQUIREMENTS
• iOS 17+ for core features; iOS 26+ for Apple Foundation Models, Liquid Glass UI, Visual Intelligence, SpeechAnalyzer
• HealthKit features require Health permissions (optional)
• Cloud AI requires your own API key (optional)

Argus is built by an independent developer. Feedback: in-app via Settings → Send Feedback.

## Key features

- On-device AI processing
- Hybrid keyword and semantic search
- Natural language queries
- AI Photo Studio for image editing
- Health data dashboard
- Personalized insights and memory features
- Customizable power user tools

## Recent user reviews (1 of 1)

All indexed reviews: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/argus-ai-search/id6760634171/reviews.md

### 5/5 — Feature requests/bug

*2026-06-17*

When doing the prefix search, something like “wiki Japan” doesn’t seem to work. I’m getting used to the app. Also, can you make it so all 7000+ of my pictures are in the database? It shows only 1000 something. I did “/rebuild”, but nothing. I’m wondering if this is because they are in iCloud?

Also, can you make it so that all of the photos it matches are actually shown? Not just the texting showing what is in the photo? Only some show photos, the others show text from the photos or text of what the image contains

It also shows files as being a source I can search for. It says I need to check to make sure files is enabled in my data source. I don’t see an option for files.

I also cannot change the app icon. It doesn’t select the one I choose. 

The keyboard doesn’t have a dismiss button when first launching the app.

I have added a google Gemini API. When using my API key it says that it “failed to decode LLM response”. I use a curl command with my API key and it works just fine.

—-
Additional:
I guess I was wanting this app to be able to search through the past on my phone too. I wanted to be able to search through all calendars of all the history of events on my phone. I would like finer control as to which calendars are accessed by this app. It scrapes all of my reminders, but only recent calendar events and future calendar events. I wanted to be able to search all my photos (iCloud included); it only does 1000 photos. It would be cool to import all fields of my contact. The location is also not shown in the database browser. I would like to import safari web pages and have this app scrape the text and add it to the database. This app can be way cooler. I really like the idea

—
Also, can you prevent two hyphens from auto correcting to a single long hyphen? It is hard to add arguments to commands

—
When I use /export —source reminders —format csv it says it was exported. I search my files I cannot find it. When I try to use /share with that command. It doesn’t work

## Frequently asked questions about Argus

### Does Argus have ads?

Argus is free and does not contain advertisements.

### What is the pricing for Argus?

Argus is available for free.

### What devices does Argus support?

Argus is compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.

### How often is Argus updated?

The latest version, 2.0.0, was released on May 8, 2026, indicating active development.

### What is the age rating for Argus?

Argus has an age rating of 4+, making it suitable for a wide audience.

### How does Argus handle user privacy?

Argus prioritizes privacy with all data ingestion and processing happening on-device by default. HealthKit and other sensitive data are read and indexed locally, and cloud AI is opt-in.

### Can I export my data from Argus?

Yes, Argus offers full data export in Markdown, JSON, and CSV formats, allowing users to retain control over their information.

### What are the core AI models used by Argus?

Argus runs Apple Foundation Models on-device for free. Users can also opt to bring their own API keys for Claude, OpenAI, Gemini, or other OpenAI-compatible models for enhanced AI features.

## Version history (last 2 releases)

### 2.0.0 — 2026-05-08

Argus 2.0 — a major update.

Chat
• Multi-turn chat with personas, voice input, and read-aloud answers
• Pin favorite Q&As, share whole conversations as text or image
• Branch a conversation to explore alternate paths
• Quick actions on AI answers: call, message, open in Maps, copy

Photos & Stories
• AI Photo Stories — turn 2-10 photos into a narrated story
• Manga Mode — convert photos to manga art with speech bubbles
• Save stories to Photos, export as PDF

Insights & Mood
• Weekly/monthly Data Insights with charts of your activity
• Mood Journal — sentiment analysis of notes & messages, line trends

Health
• HealthKit integration — workouts, sleep, heart, activity, mindfulness
• 8-chart Health dashboard: rings, sleep stages, HRV, resting HR, walking HR, VO2 max, steps, active energy, workouts
• Workout routes on a map with HR zone breakdown

Power features
• Agent Mode in Chat — AI runs commands and acts on your data
• Command Reference wiki in Settings — searchable catalog of every command
• Per-modality AI providers — pick separate models for text, vision, image gen, and voice
• Hot-fixable model catalog — new models without app updates
• Visual Intelligence camera search

iOS 26 native
• Liquid Glass UI throughout
• On-device Image Playground for free image generation
• Apple Foundation Models with streaming responses

iPad layout, larger keyboard support, and many performance and stability improvements.

### 1.0 — 2026-03-23

No release notes.

## More apps by Liqun Chen

- [IntelliNote — AI Notebook](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/intellinote-ai-notebook/id6759671191)
- [CatClaw Terminal](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/catclaw-terminal/id6759690902)

All apps by Liqun Chen: https://appshunter.io/developer/1880102480

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*Data collected daily from the US App Store and indexed by [AppsHunter](https://appshunter.io/). User reviews are verbatim App Store reviews. Ratings, prices and chart positions refresh continuously; this snapshot is from 2026-09-10.*
