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Where it lives

By default, a Mauvely Snap folder inside your Pictures directory. Change it in Settings ▸ Library. The folder is created if it does not exist, and Snap always points at a real directory — a missing library is created rather than reported, because there is nothing useful you could do about it.

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The structure

  • A collection is a directory. Nesting works.
  • A capture is an image file. Nothing is imported and nothing is converted.
  • A .snap.json sidecar holds the annotations for the image it sits beside.
Drop an image into the folder from anywhere and it appears in Snap without a manual refresh — Snap watches the tree.
If you move an image outside Snap, take its .snap.json with it. On its own, the sidecar is meaningless; without it, the image loses its annotations and nothing else. Renaming and moving inside Snap always moves both together.

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The sidebar

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Filters

Four rows, which are filters over your whole library rather than places:

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Collections

Below the filters, your folder tree, with a count on each. Selecting a collection shows that collection and everything nested inside it. Picking a collection widens the filter back to everything — “recordings in this folder” is a combination that reliably shows nothing and looks broken. Matches file names, case-insensitively, and combines with whichever filter or collection is active.

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Viewing

Grid or list, toggled in the library view and remembered. Sort by newest, oldest, name, or largest first. Double-click a capture to open it in a tab. Ctrl W closes the tab; the Library tab is permanent.
An open capture is currently a viewer. The annotation tools — numbered steps, callouts, spotlight, crop — are not built yet.

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Working with captures

All are also on the right-click menu, the Edit menu, and the inspector. Rename changes the base name and keeps the extension, moving the sidecar with it. Import an image… copies an existing file into the library. Delete asks for confirmation by default — turn that off in Settings ▸ Library if you prefer.

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Performance on a big library

A folder has no index, so answering “how many captures, how big, sorted by date” means walking the tree. Three things keep that quick:
  • The scan runs in the background, so a large or network-mounted folder never freezes the window.
  • Per-file details — size, dimensions, annotation count — are cached and re-read only when the file actually changes.
  • A file added from outside triggers a rescan automatically.

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Settings

Settings ▸ Library

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Backing it up

It is a folder of ordinary files — any backup tool covers it. Include the .snap.json sidecars, or you keep the images and lose the markup. Cloud backup of the library is planned and will mirror the folder rather than replace it.