Best Photo Picker
Free · Open source · On your own computer
Best Photo Picker (BPP) scores every photo for sharpness, light, faces and composition, then hands you the best photos of the people you choose. It all runs on your computer, so your photos are never uploaded anywhere.
Before you start
Pick any folder of phone exports, iPhone HEIC or camera RAW. It copies them into its own library, leaves your originals alone, and scores every photo offline.
It recognizes faces and gathers each person’s photos in one place. Name the people you care about, or a group like “Family”, and the picks favor them.
Ask for any number, 10 or 500, from the whole library or any album. You get the best of them, with near-duplicates and burst shots left out.
Scores
Sharpness, exposure, faces and composition, each measured and shown, so you can see why a photo rose to the top and overrule it when your heart disagrees.
No chatbot and no cloud: sharpness and exposure are measured from the pixels, composition from where the faces and subject sit, and faces by small on-device models that also notice closed eyes and smiles. You can change how much each one counts.
People
It recognizes the same face across all your photos and gathers each person's pictures in one place. Name the people who matter, then ask for the best photos of just one of them, or tell it to favor a few. It also notices who keeps showing up together and makes a group for them. Name it “Family”, open it, and you get the best photos of the kids with mom and dad, together.
Duplicates
Look-alike shots are put side by side and compared on what makes a photo worth keeping: eyes open, a smile, a face turned toward the camera, sharp focus, good light, a well-framed shot. Keep the winner and let the rest go.
Where it fits
Great for storing and browsing everything you shoot. BPP works alongside them and hands you the best photos of the people you choose.
Made for photographers culling one shoot at a time, mostly as paid tools. BPP goes through years of family photos at once, and it’s free.
Powerful free tools for managing and searching a big library, on your desktop or your own server. BPP does one job: a short list of the best photos, ready to share.
| Feature | BPP | Apple Photos | Google Photos | Lightroom Classic | digiKam |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Runs locally, fully offline | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | mostly | ✓ |
| Ranks the whole library into a best-N set | ✓ | limited | limited | AI culling | basic |
| Leans the picks toward a named person | ✓ | limited | limited | ✗ | ✗ |
| Near-duplicate grouping | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Free and open source | ✓ MIT | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ GPL |
| No account, no subscription | ✓ | ✓ built into macOS | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
As of October 2026, for each tool’s mainstream desktop or consumer version. Features and terms change; check current details.
And more
Crop, straighten and rotate, adjust light and color, fix red-eye or auto-enhance. A machine-learning model can remove a stray object. Your original file is never changed.
Type “birthday cake” or “beach at sunset” and the matching photos come up. No tags or keywords to add first: it matches what is in the picture.
Face recognition, search and object removal use machine-learning models on your computer. See each one’s size and source before it downloads, and switch them in Settings.
Took 200 photos at one party? You won’t get 40 of them back. Picks are spread out, by default no more than 3 from a day when it can, across the whole year.
Export the picks to a folder for a photo book or print service, with a simple web gallery alongside so the whole family can look through them.
Each person and group, every year, Top Rated, Duplicates, Screenshots and Pets (once pet detection is on) fill themselves in. Ask any of them for its best photos.
iPhone HEIC, camera RAW, JPEG and PNG, imported as they are. The extra files that come with Live Photos are tucked away so they don’t clutter the grid.
Scan a code with your phone or tablet on the same Wi-Fi, approve it once on your computer, and browse there. Remove any device whenever you like.
Anything you delete waits thirty days in Recently Deleted, so you can cut hard and still change your mind, then it is cleared away for you.
Many photo services copy your whole library to their servers to process it. BPP does all of the work on your computer, so nothing is sent away to be analyzed, scanned, mined for data or used to train AI.
What’s new in the latest release →
Known limits
The app, signed and notarized by Apple. Open the download and drag it into Applications.
Download for Mac →Opens the full app on a small set of generated sample images, none of your own, and deletes them when you stop it. Needs Python 3.11.
pipx install --python 3.11 "bppicker[web]" && bpp demo
Install it with Python 3.11 (HEIC and camera RAW support included), then run bpp serve to open it in your browser. Tested on Linux; Windows should work but hasn't been tested end to end.
pipx install --python 3.11 "bppicker[web,heic,raw]"
After the same install, run it without the app window: point it at a photo folder and it links the best ones into another folder, leaving your originals where they are. The first command accepts the free-license face models once; the command line then downloads the models it needs without asking. A Dockerfile is included but untested, and there is no published image yet.
bpp model accept-attribution && bpp run --input /photos --k 50 --out ~/best --symlink