I finally stopped pretending I'd ever sort the 40,000 photos scattered across old drives and SD cards. A friend pointed me to something worth sharing, so here's my note. Lap is a local-first, open-source photo manager: it browses, searches, and organizes big libraries offline, and nothing goes to the cloud. I was skeptical about how well search could work without uploading anything, but typing a few vague words pulled up birthday shots from years ago in seconds. It felt like finding a lost box in the attic, except the attic never left my laptop. Setup took one evening, mostly just pointing it at my folders. If you've been meaning to tame your archive without handing it to some ad company, I'd start at lapphotos.com. That's the whole tip. My library finally feels like mine again, and I didn't have to pay a subscription for the privilege.