Here’s an app I really love and use on a daily basis but rarely see mentioned around. If you are a photographer or a designer, you might find Eagle extremely helpful.
One way to describe it is as an improved version of Adobe Bridge1. Another is to call it the best way to manage your local and shared assets.
Also, it only costs around 30€. Once.
Right now, I’m using Eagle just to collect inspiring images (or videos) I find online, but I’m thinking about moving all of my RAW images into it.
The only real downside is that it’s desktop-only (for now), but honestly, that’s where most of us do serious work anyway.
Features
Assets management
You can use Eagle to store images, videos, GIFs, fonts, audio, text files, and much more.
Here you can see all the options available in the Add new menu:
Folders and tags
In Eagle, each item can belong to multiple folders and multiple tags. Both tags and folders are hierarchical, allowing you to create any structure you can dream of.
You can also use Smart folders to save your most-used filters.
Above you can see how I organise folders in Eagle and below is a screenshot of my sub-tags for the photography tag.
Ratings and filters
Apart from tagging assets, you can also assign them a score from 1 to 5 and then filter by it.
Filters also allow you to find images based on colours in the image, tags assigned, folders they belong to, their shape, and more.
Multiple libraries
Eagle allows you to create multiple libraries and easily switch between them (like Obsidian vaults).
Right now, I only have one library, but again, I’m thinking about creating a new one to manage all of my RAW files2.
Browser extension
Obviously, Eagle offers an extension for all major browsers. With it, you can collect images (including all images on a page in bulk) or capture a website screenshot.
Since Eagle is currently desktop-only, these extensions aren’t available on mobile. As a workaround, I save images from mobile using either the favourite options available in social networks or in Anybox. Then, when I’m at my laptop and have some time, I go through the list of saved items and move them to Eagle.
Plugins
Once in Eagle, you can install various plugins. I have plugins to search for similar images across the web, show the histogram in the sidebar, upgrade the resolution of images, and automatically add metadata.
If you’re into it, you can also develop your own plugins.
Collaboration
Since Eagle saves your libraries in a local folder, you can sync that folder with the service you prefer (iCloud, Google Drive, Dropbox, etc.) and easily share it with other people or devices.
Actions
With actions, you can create shortcuts to complete a series of preset tasks. Right now, this is pretty limited, as it allows you to only edit ratings, tags, and folders, but hopefully, it’ll become more powerful in the future.
What’s next for Eagle
From their blog:
Moving forward, our team will focus on preparing for the next major update—Eagle 5.0. In this new version, we plan to introduce more AI-powered features to provide a smoother and more convenient user experience. The “AI Semantic Search” and “AI Automatic Tagging” features, previously mentioned at the release of the official version of Eagle 4.0, will be our primary focus. We appreciate the ongoing support and valuable feedback from all our users. Please look forward to future updates, and continue to follow our progress.
Integrating AI to streamline library management, find assets, and automate tagging makes perfect sense, and it’s something other apps like mymind3 have already been doing for a while.
Overall, Eagle is a powerful tool for anyone dealing with visual assets, whether for photography, design, or inspiration. It’s fast, local-first, and avoids the bloat of many other asset managers. While it’s currently limited to desktop, its robust tagging, filtering, and collaboration features can easily balance that out. If you’re looking for an efficient way to manage your files, it’s definitely worth checking it out.