Needle reads your documents, images, and videos once, then finds them from a plain-language description — no exact names, no folders to remember. All the AI runs on your machine. Nothing is ever uploaded.
“notes about the Q3 launch,” “the invoice from the plumber.” Needle matches what a file is about, even if you forgot what you named it.
“photo at the beach” or “the clip where the dog runs into the water” matches the actual pixels — no tags or captions required.
Pro adds OCR: text inside scanned PDFs, screenshots, and photos of paper becomes fully searchable.
The models run locally and the index lives in ~/.needle. Needle makes
zero network requests — your files never leave your computer.
Your license key is emailed instantly after checkout. Activate it in the app — works offline, on any of your machines.
Most “AI search” tools ship your files to a server. Needle doesn’t — the embedding models are bundled into the app and run entirely on-device, so a folder of sensitive documents stays exactly where it is. No account, no cloud, no telemetry.