A free, on-device alternative to Google Photos search — no upload, no account, no cloud.
Pitara (पिटारा) — Hindi for "box of surprises." That's exactly what your photo library is.
Download Pitara free at GetPitara.com
Pitara is a Windows desktop app that lets you search your entire local photo library using plain English — in under half a second, across 100,000+ photos, with nothing ever leaving your machine.
Type what you remember:
paris morning 2023
iPhone summer kids birthday
FirstWeek december evening family
mountain above 8000 feet
from 2018 to 2022 sammamish weekend
Pitara has eight built-in tabs — Search, Places, Times, Cameras, Tags, Folders, Hikes, and Festivals — and a plugin system coming soon that will let the community add new ones.
- Sub-0.5 second search across 100,000+ photos
- Understands time of day, day of week, season, year ranges, location, camera, altitude, festivals, and custom tags
- 100% on-device — no account, no upload, zero telemetry
- Free · Windows 10 / 11 · 64-bit
| Folder | Contents |
|---|---|
festivals/ |
Festival date data files for 7 countries (1999–2026) |
plugins/ |
Plugin system — coming soon. Spec and roadmap in progress. |
docs/query-syntax.md |
Full reference for Pitara's natural language query syntax |
docs/fes-format.md |
Specification for the .fes festival data file format |
Pitara tags photos automatically based on festivals that fall on or near their capture date. Search "Diwali photos" or "Chinese New Year 2019" and Pitara matches photos taken on those exact dates.
| File | Country | Festivals included |
|---|---|---|
America.fes |
United States | Thanksgiving, Labor Day, Memorial Day, Mother's Day, Father's Day, Easter, Mardi Gras |
India.fes |
India | Diwali, Holi, Rakhi, Janmashtami, Dussehra, Anant Chaturdashi, Maha Shivaratri |
China.fes |
China | Chinese New Year, Lantern Festival, Qingming, Dragon Boat Festival, Mid-Autumn Festival, Double Ninth, Winter Solstice |
Canada.fes |
Canada | Victoria Day, Canada Day, Labour Day, Thanksgiving, Remembrance Day, Family Day, Easter Monday |
Japan.fes |
Japan | New Year, Setsubun, Hinamatsuri, Showa Day, Tanabata, Obon, Shichi-Go-San |
Spain.fes |
Spain | Three Kings Day, Easter Sunday, San José, Feria de Abril, San Fermín, La Tomatina, National Day |
UK.fes |
United Kingdom | Easter Sunday, Easter Monday, Early May Bank Holiday, Spring Bank Holiday, Summer Bank Holiday, Guy Fawkes Night, Boxing Day |
All files cover 1999 to 2026.
Want to add your country? See CONTRIBUTING.md. Countries we'd love next: Brazil, Mexico, Germany, France, Australia, South Korea, Nigeria, Egypt.
Pitara is being designed to support community-built plugins. The first planned type is custom tag providers — letting developers add new tabs and tagging logic without modifying Pitara's core.
See plugins/README.md for the roadmap and how to get notified when the API is ready.
Full reference with real-life examples → docs/query-syntax.md
More resources on the website:
- Sample Searches — 50+ working query examples
- User Guide — getting started, tabs, keyboard shortcuts
- FAQ — common questions
- Festival data — Add a new country or fix dates. See CONTRIBUTING.md.
- Plugin ideas — Open an issue tagged
plugin-requestto suggest what you'd want to build. - Query bugs — If a search doesn't work as expected, open an issue with the query and what you expected.
Festival data, plugin specs, and documentation are released under the MIT License.
The Pitara application itself is proprietary. Only the community data and docs in this repo are open source.
Built by Naren — a developer who believes privacy-first software should be fast, free, and actually work.
If Pitara saves you time finding memories, a ⭐ helps others find it.