Grain
First-matter reference threshold
Collect and organise references (images, audio, video, 3D and notes) on a freeform canvas. Fast, local-first, and yours: everything lives in files and folders on your own computer.
All downloads
- Download for macOSmacOS 12+ (Apple Silicon)
- Download for WindowsWindows 10/11 (x64)
Early-bird: 20% off, applied at checkout, until 31 October 2026
Free download · macOS 12+ (Apple Silicon) · Windows 10/11 (x64) · Licence: €20 one-time
Version 0.10.1
What makes it different
Your files stay files
Grain watches folders you choose and indexes what is in them: a folder is a store, one per project. Nothing is imported into a proprietary bundle, nothing is rewritten, and nothing is ever deleted for you. Move the folder to another computer and everything is still there as ordinary images, audio and markdown. There is no single board file that a crash can corrupt and take months of collecting with it: the library is an index, and an index can always be rebuilt.
A canvas and a library, not two apps
One window replaces the usual pair: a canvas app to arrange references on, and a separate organiser to ever find them again. Arrange freely on an infinite canvas, then search the whole collection across every store without leaving it. Tags, colours, notes and the text inside your markdown are all searchable, so a store of four hundred images stays findable instead of becoming a scroll marathon.
Search by meaning, not just by filename
Find a picture by describing it, or ask for more like the one you are looking at. The same works for audio, and spoken recordings are transcribed so you can search what was said. The models run on your own machine as an optional download, nothing is sent anywhere to make this work, and nothing is ever generated from your work or trained on it.
Local-first, one-time price
No account, no sign-in, no subscription and no cloud. Grain opens instantly and works with no connection at all. The download is free for three stores, for as long as you like; a licence is €20 once, for good.
How a store is organised
Grain has four words, and they nest.
- store
- A store is a folder Grain watches. One per project: everything you gather for a painting, a game, a film, in one place, as ordinary files.
- group
- A group is a frame on the canvas. Drag grains into it to sort them; name it; move it as one.
- grain
- A grain is one thing you kept: an image, a recording, a note, a page, a model. It carries its tags, its sources and its place on the canvas.
- media
- Media is what a grain is made of. One per grain, and not always a file: a webpage and a video embed are grains too.
No single grain does much. Enough of them, and there is a heap you never noticed forming.
Threshold is a grain word. The Old English is þerscold, from þerscan, to thresh: to beat the grain loose from the husk on the packed floor just inside the barn door. To discern is to sift apart; a criterion is a sieve; to winnow is to throw the threshed grain into the air and let the wind take the chaff. Judgement, in every one of those words, is separating what feeds you from what does not. A grain is the smallest countable thing, a fragment of someone else’s finished work, and a seed. A store is where you keep what survived the sieve.