Queryable vs PixelThat
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Queryable
This app allows you to search your personal photo collection using natural language descriptions. It works entirely offline, ensuring your privacy, and understands complex queries beyond simple tags. Build an index once and then quickly find any moment in your album.
- Natural language photo search
- Offline functionality
- Open-source
- Privacy-focused
- Complex description understanding
- One-time indexing
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A product that has reached #1 on the front page of Hacker News and topped the paid tools chart across all European countries, while ranking #2 in the US on the same day. Queryable is an open-source, offline photo album search tool unlike anything you've used before. Search your photos with natural descriptions like "two people by the sea," "a blonde woman holding a glass of red wine," "a girl in red on the lawn," or even emotional moments like "We fell in love." Queryable understands longer, more human descriptions instead of only simple tags. You can type in your own language: non-English queries are translated on your device before searching. NEW: SEARCH THE TEXT IN YOUR PHOTOS Turn on text recognition and Queryable also finds photos by the words in them: a Wi-Fi password in a screenshot, the total on a receipt, a dish on a menu, a line on a lecture slide. Switch between Visual and Text search with one tap, and copy all the text from any photo. Recognition uses Apple's on-device engine at its highest accuracy. It is off by default, so building your index stays as fast as before. ALSO IN QUERYABLE • Search by photo: pick or take a photo to find similar ones • Clean up duplicates and similar shots group by group, with space estimates • Filter results by date, select in bulk, and share full-resolution originals • Videos and Live Photos play with sound, even in silent mode; GIFs animate • A redesigned interface with your recent searches one tap away Pay once and use it forever. No ads, no subscription. Queryable works completely offline after download, protecting the privacy of your photo library. FAQ: 1. What languages can I search in? You can describe photos in your own language. Queryable translates your query on device, while keeping the accuracy of the English search model. The first time, iOS asks once to download your language for offline translation; you can also do it anytime in Settings. Text search looks for the words exactly as they appear in your photos; it reads English and, where Apple's engine supports it, your device language. The app interface is available in 18 languages. 2. How is my photo privacy protected? Queryable works completely offline. You can even disable the app's network permissions. The only time it uses the network is when you choose to download the full-resolution original of a photo stored in iCloud. 3. How do I use it? After downloading, build an index for your photos. This takes a few minutes depending on your library and device, and is only required once. When you add new photos, you can update the index at any time. Text recognition is optional and slower than the visual index; you can pause it and continue later. 4. Why can't Text search find some photos? With "Optimize iPhone Storage" turned on, many photos are kept on your iPhone only as small previews that are too small to read. Open such a photo and download the original, and its text is recognized automatically. Contact: - Email: myfancoo@gmail.com - Twitter: @immazzystar - GitHub: https://github.com/mazzzystar/Queryable
PixelThat
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PixelThat turns a photo into crisp pixel art or ASCII art, right on your iPhone. Point it at a picture and it does the work a pixel artist would do: it finds the face and frames it the way an avatar is framed, lifts the subject off the background so the edges stay clean, and flattens the colours to a small, deliberate palette chosen from the picture itself, with faces weighted so skin tones survive. Only then does it lay down the pixels. Everything runs on your device. There is no account, no upload and no queue. The app contains no networking code at all, so it works with the network switched off. ASCII ART MODE • Switch the same photo to characters: classic, colour, blocks, Braille dots or your own words • Choose how many characters across, and add grain and glow for a film look • Copy it as text, save it as a picture, or make it move as a short looping video AVATARS THAT FIND THE FACE • Auto framing puts the head where an avatar's head belongs • Or drag the selection box yourself: move it, pinch it, tap to jump • Square, rounded or circle, with a 1 to 4 pixel frame in any colour BACKGROUNDS ON YOUR TERMS • Transparent, a flat colour, a two-colour gradient, a pixel-art blue sky with clouds, or keep the photo • On-device subject cutout with a threshold, grow and shrink, and a live preview when it needs a nudge PALETTES WORTH KEEPING • A palette built from your own picture, in CIELAB, with faces weighted • Paste your own hex colours • Floyd-Steinberg and ordered 2x2, 4x4 and 8x8 dithering FINE CONTROL WHEN YOU WANT IT • Sizes from 8 to 256 pixels, or any width from 4 to 512, with the common sizes previewed side by side • Auto levels, ink edges and outlines • Contrast, saturation, brightness and gamma • Fine zoom, pan and mirror • Hold to compare with your photo, with undo and redo RECENTS THAT REMEMBER Every picture you keep is filed with the settings that made it. Tap it later to put those settings on a different photo, which is how you make a set of avatars that match. EXPORT Save the enlarged copy to Photos, which is what most sites want for an avatar, or share both the real pixels and the enlargement. PRIVACY PixelThat collects nothing. No account, no analytics, no advertising identifier, no tracking and no network requests of any kind.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is price: PixelThat at Free against Queryable's $4.99. PixelThat also leads on update cadence (every 6 days vs every 2 weeks). Queryable's advantage is chart position (#50 vs unranked). On ads, in-app purchases, device support and iOS requirement there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
PixelThat is free to download; Queryable costs $4.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Queryable ships an update every 2 weeks, PixelThat every 6 days. Both last shipped on November 3, 2026.
| Parameter | Queryable | PixelThat |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $4.99 | Free — better |
| Rating | 4.7 (92 ratings) — better | — |
| Positive reviews | 78.8% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 92 — better | — |
| Update frequency | Every 2 weeks | Every 6 days — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Paid | — |
| Best chart rank | #50 — better | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, Mac — better | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 18.0 | 17.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 198 MB | 3 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | SmashMelon LLC | Mohammed Shehada |
Bugs and requests
Queryable
Reported bugs
12 issues- App freezes after analyzing ~12k photos
- App freezes when selecting a photo and searching for similar
- App crashes during indexing
- App freezes on Mac
- Videos won't playback, appear black
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- App returns black photos and irrelevant results on Mac
- App crashes immediately after search
- App doesn't work on iPad Pro
- App doesn't work on older iPads (A12X)
- Indexing stops if app is used while indexing
- Deleted photos are blank
- App crashes when trying to view image
Requested features
39 requests- Multi-select for many images
- Copy/move selected images to other apps
- Open images in native Photos app
- Masonry-like image display
- Fix iPad horizontal mode image shrinking
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- Select all photos feature
- Move selected photos to Files folder
- Support for Chinese language
- Search in Brazilian Portuguese
- Search in Spanish
- Search in German
- Search in French
- Choose clip model for keywords
- Access to photo location/folder
- Voice search
- Incremental index building
- Automatic background index updating
- Gestures for navigation
- Display metadata by default
- Show photos taken around same time
- Sort results by date
- Filter by location
- Work with arbitrary folders on macOS
- Better photo app integration
- Zoom in on images
- Share images from the app
- Swipe left/right to browse images
- Refined UI/UX
- Add a nuage de mots-clés for results
- Add more languages
- Add gestures
- Add ergonomics
- Order results by timestamp
- Filter by location
- Show info about photo by default
- Show photos taken around the same time
- Better photo app integration
- Delete photos
- Fix blank deleted photos
PixelThat
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
Queryable
No in-app purchases
PixelThat
No in-app purchases









