Private, not just “private mode”.
No cloud, no account, no telemetry. Face recognition, search and organisation all happen on your own hardware. The app makes no external connections during normal use.
How privacy worksLocal-first photo management for Windows 11
Your photos.
Your machine.
Still yours.
Picasa and Windows Live Photo Gallery gave us fast, private, local photo libraries. Live Gallery brings that back for Windows 11 — with face recognition, tags, search and RAW support that never leave your PC.
- 100% local
- No account required
- Built for Windows 11
0 bytes uploadedEverything stays on this PC
8,491 photosIndexed locally, ready to browse
Built on the bones of the tools you remember — without the cloud in the middle.
The problem
Your library is not content. It’s a life, organised.
Somewhere between Picasa and the cloud, photo management stopped feeling like yours. Monthly fees, upload queues and a server deciding what happens to your memories.
Live Gallery is a return to the thing that worked: a fast local library, on your PC, under your control. No account. No upload progress bar. Point it at a folder and it gets to work.
0bytes uploaded by the app
5,000photos in the free public beta
100kimages on the Home licence
1×buy once, keep your features
Picks up where you left off.
If you organised photos in Windows Live Photo Gallery, your people and tags are still sitting inside those files. Live Gallery reads them and brings the library back.
About migrationFast at the size of a real library.
The beta is capped at 5,000 images while performance is refined. The same engine is built to handle libraries well beyond that, up to unlimited on the top tier.
See the tiersThe essentials, rebuilt
Everything you missed. Nothing you don’t.
Not a greatest-hits list bolted onto a cloud service. The daily essentials — people, tags, search, formats and a fast grid — designed around a library that lives on your drive.
People
It knows who matters. Locally.
Live Gallery groups faces on your machine — no internet round trip and no cloud face database. Tag someone once and find every photo they appear in.
- Runs entirely on your hardware
- Name people once, search forever
- No face data leaves the device
Tags & albums
Twenty years of organisation, intact.
Tags, albums, ratings and folders work together. Your system stays legible, whether you inherited it from another app or built it yourself.
Search
Type a name. See the memory.
Filter by person, tag, folder or date. Results land immediately, because the index is already on your machine.
Appearance
At home in Windows 11.
Light and dark modes, with Mica materials that pick up the tone of your desktop instead of fighting it.
Formats
Every format in the folder.
Old JPEGs, new HEICs and RAW files from a proper camera can live in one library. No conversion step before you can browse.
JPEGRAWHEICPNGWebPTIFFBMP
All supported formats
The library view
Eight thousand photos. Still instant.
A proper photo grid, not a feed. Resize from tiny to large, move through years, switch folders and jump between people without waiting for a page to load.
- Tiny, small, medium and large thumbnail modes
- Timeline browsing by year
- Folders, people, tags, locations and stats in one sidebar
- Slideshow and full-screen views built in
Gallery · Folder: Holidays · 8,491 photos
TinySmallMediumLarge
Coming home
Your old tags are still in there.
When Microsoft retired Windows Live Photo Gallery, it did not erase the organisation you had built. Tags and people names were written into the files themselves. Live Gallery reads them back on the first scan.
- No manual re-tagging of an old library
- People and tags restored together
- Nothing sent to a server to make it work
- Works with folders on any drive
People & tags found in files 14 items
SarahMumItaly 2009WeddingCornwallChristmasFilmDad
Reading embedded metadata
Live Gallery libraryPeople & tags restored automatically
Your organisation was never the app’s to lose.
For photographers
Real cameras. Real libraries.
RAW alongside JPEG. Years of files across drives. A library too big for a phone gallery and too personal to hand to a subscription service. Live Gallery is built for that library.
Built for photographersSimple by design
Try it free. Keep it forever.
The beta is free for up to 5,000 photos. When the paid tiers arrive, they will be one-time licences — not another monthly subscription for your own library.
Free
Beta$0
Up to 5,000 images with every current feature included.
Start hereHome
One-time$49
Up to 100,000 images for home and personal use.
See what’s includedHome Unlimited
Most capacity$99
Unlimited images, every current capability, yours to keep.
Compare the tiersPublic beta is free. Paid licences are coming soon; registering interest does not take payment.
Good questions
Questions, answered.
Is Live Gallery really offline?
Yes. Your photos are read from the folders and drives you choose, and the library is built on your PC. The app does not upload your photos or require a cloud account, and normal library use works without an internet connection.
Will my Windows Live Photo Gallery tags come across?
If your tags and people names were written into the photo files by Windows Live Photo Gallery, Live Gallery reads them during the first scan and brings them back into the library. If your metadata came from another tool, what transfers depends on what was written into the files.
What happens at the 5,000-photo beta limit?
The free public beta indexes up to 5,000 images. If you reach the cap, your existing library stays browsable and searchable; only importing new images pauses. The paid home tiers lift the cap to 100,000 images or unlimited.
Is this a subscription?
No. The beta is free, and the planned paid licences are one-time purchases. You buy the version that exists when you buy it, and it continues to work. Bug and security fixes are free; optional future feature upgrades are a separate purchase if you want them.
Which photo formats can it read?
JPEG, PNG, RAW from major camera manufacturers, HEIC/HEIF, WebP, BMP and TIFF. See the full format list
Do you read every piece of feedback?
Yes. Beta feedback is read by the person building the product and directly shapes what gets fixed and built next. If you are reporting a bug, the most useful thing you can include is the steps that make it happen.
A proper home for your library
Your photos have waited
long enough.
Download the free beta and point it at a folder. No account, no upload, no waiting for someone else’s server.
Windows 11 · Free 5,000-photo beta · No account needed