Lightbrary
Keep the best shot, free space
Only for Mac
Free
Mac
Your library holds years of moments, many of them ten times over: bursts, retakes, the shot you took again just to be sure. Lightbrary finds those near-duplicates, helps you choose the one worth keeping and clears out the rest, freeing space on your iPhone and in iCloud. Session by session, your archive becomes a collection you can actually find your way around.
FIND THE REPEATS
Lightbrary looks at your photos on your own device and groups the ones that are nearly identical and taken close together. You decide how alike they must be and how big a group is worth your time.
PICK THE BEST, TWO AT A TIME
Choosing one photo out of ten is hard. Choosing the better of two is easy. Lightbrary turns each group into a short tournament: the current favourite against the next challenger. You pick the better one until a single winner is left.
YEARS OF PHOTOS, A LITTLE AT A TIME
Nobody sorts fifteen years of photos in one go, and you do not have to. Every star, mark and choice you make stays, and each one builds on the ones before. Settled groups do not come back, and the more often you compare, the more the ratings reflect your own taste. Filter by year and by what is still unrated to see exactly what is left, and pick it up again whenever you have the time.
FIVE MINUTES IS ENOUGH
Tidying up does not need an evening at the desk. Settle a few groups on your iPhone in a waiting room, on the bus, in a taxi or before a lecture starts, then carry on at your Mac with the big screen. Your stars, marks and decisions follow you between the two, so each device picks up where the other left off.
COMPARE SIDE BY SIDE
Put two photos next to each other, step through a group on each side and zoom into both at the same spot to see which one is really sharp.
LET GO SAFELY
Nothing is deleted behind your back. Mark what you don't need, review the marks, then delete them in one go with the system's own confirmation. Deleted photos go to Recently Deleted and can be restored for 30 days; the space comes back once they leave it.
RATE AS YOU GO
Lightbrary uses the same stars as Apple Photos, so your ratings show up there and on your other devices through iCloud Photos.
YOUR PHOTOS STAY YOURS
No account and no server. Lightbrary works on your photo library where it is, and whatever it passes between your devices goes through a folder in your own iCloud Drive.
Ratings & Reviews
- This app hasn’t received enough ratings or reviews to display an overview.
NEW: Review a folder before it goes into Photos.
File → Import from Folder… opens a folder of photos, for example on an external drive. Rate with 1–5, press X to leave a photo out, and sort by "weakest first" to see blurry and accidental shots first. Import copies the photos you kept into Photos with their stars, into an album named after the folder. RAW+JPEG pairs arrive as one photo, and you can convert JPEG or RAW to HEIC on the way in to save space. Files on the disk are never changed.
Also:
- The photo library permission prompt now follows the language of your Mac.
- Sync is more robust: decisions are no longer skipped while another sync runs, and the shared file is replaced in one step.
- Cancelling a delete no longer shows an error.
- Computing fingerprints can no longer stall and runs in the background.
The developer, Radoslaw Przybyl, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .
Data Not Collected
The developer does not collect any data from this app.
Accessibility
The developer has not yet indicated which accessibility features this app supports. Learn More
Information
- Seller
- Radoslaw Przybyl
- Size
- 1.9 MB
- Category
- Photo & Video
- Compatibility
Requires macOS 27.0 or later and a Mac with Apple M1 chip or later.
- Mac
Requires macOS 27.0 or later and a Mac with Apple M1 chip or later.
- Mac
- Languages
- English and Polish
- Age Rating
4+
- 4+
- Copyright
- © 2026 Radoslaw Przybyl