How to find all photos of yourself in a folder
- Add a reference photo. Choose a clear picture of your face (or whoever you're looking for). If it contains several people, click the right face.
- Choose a folder. Point it at your Pictures folder, a phone backup, a Google Takeout or iCloud export, or an event's photo dump. Subfolders are searched too.
- Review the matches. Results appear best-first while the scan runs. Slide towards Strict to hide doubtful matches or towards Loose to catch harder ones, and untick anything wrong.
- Export. Copy the matching photos into a new folder, download them as a ZIP, or save a list of their file paths.
Private by design: your photos never leave your computer
Most face search services make you upload your pictures to their servers. This one doesn't. Your browser reads each photo directly from your disk, and the face recognition runs on your own computer's graphics chip. No photo, face or result is ever sent over the internet.
What is downloaded: this page and the face-recognition model files (about 12 MB, once, then cached). They are served from atypicalquant.net itself. Like the rest of this site, the page also shows ads (Google AdSense) and counts visits (Google Analytics); the face finder never gives them your photos, faces or results.
To make repeat scans instant, the face data for each scanned photo is stored in your browser's own storage on this computer. You can wipe it at any time with Clear saved scan data.
What people use it for
- Finding every photo of yourself across years of phone backups and camera imports.
- Collecting photos of your kids from a school trip, party or shared family folder.
- Weddings and events: photographers and hosts can pull out each guest's photos from hundreds of shots.
- Sorting exports from Google Photos (Takeout), iCloud, WhatsApp or Facebook downloads.
- Memorial slideshows: gathering every picture of a loved one from scattered folders.
- Before sharing an album: find the photos of someone who asked not to be included.
Tips for the best results
- Use a clear, front-facing reference photo with good light. Selfies and passport-style photos work well.
- Add 2–3 reference photos: with and without glasses, different hairstyles, or different ages. A photo matches if it looks like any of them.
- Group photos? Set Detail to High so small faces in the background are detected too.
- Too many wrong matches? Move the slider towards Strict. Missing some? Move it towards Loose.
- Use Chrome or Edge to copy matches straight into a folder. In Safari and Firefox, use Download ZIP instead.
How the face matching works
For every image, a detector (SSD MobileNet) finds all faces. Each face is aligned using 68 landmark points (eyes, nose, mouth, jaw), and a recognition network turns it into a face descriptor: 128 numbers that describe the face's shape. Two photos of the same person produce descriptors that are close together, so the tool measures the distance between each face and your reference photo and shows the closest ones first. The Strict–Loose slider sets the cut-off distance.
It's built on the open-source face-api library and TensorFlow.js, running on your GPU through WebGL. A typical laptop checks several photos per second.
Compared with Apple Photos and Google Photos
| This tool | Apple Photos (People) | Google Photos | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Searches any folder on disk | Yes | Only photos imported into the Photos library | Only photos uploaded to Google |
| Photos stay on your computer | Yes | Yes | No, uploaded to the cloud |
| Works on Windows & Linux | Yes | No | Yes (in the browser) |
| Start from any photo of a person | Yes | After it finishes indexing | After upload and indexing |
| Price | Free | Included with Mac | Free up to 15 GB of storage |
Frequently asked questions
Are my photos uploaded anywhere?
No. Your browser reads the photos directly from your disk and the face recognition runs on your own computer. No photo, face or result is ever sent to a server. You can prove it: once the page has loaded, turn off Wi-Fi and run a scan. It keeps working.
Does it work offline?
Yes. The page and its face-recognition models (about 12 MB) download once. After that you can disconnect from the internet and scan as many folders as you like.
Is it free?
Yes, completely free, with no account, no limits and nothing to install.
Does it work on Mac and Windows?
Yes. It runs in any modern desktop browser on macOS, Windows, Linux or ChromeOS. Chrome and Edge are recommended because they can also copy the matching photos straight into a folder.
Which photo formats are supported?
JPG, PNG, WebP, GIF, BMP, AVIF, and HEIC/HEIF photos from iPhones. RAW camera files and videos are not scanned.
Can it find me in group photos?
Yes. Every face in every photo is checked. For large group shots where faces are small, set Detail to High.
How accurate is it?
With a clear reference photo, clear front-facing matches are found very reliably. Profile shots, sunglasses, heavy blur or large age differences are harder. Adding 2–3 reference photos and adjusting the strictness slider helps.
Why does my browser ask to “upload” the folder?
Safari, Firefox and Brave use the word “upload” whenever a web page is allowed to read a folder. Here the photos are only read inside the browser tab and never sent anywhere. Chrome and Edge word it more accurately (“Let site view files?”). To be sure, switch off Wi-Fi before choosing the folder: the scan still works.
Can I use it to find someone on the internet?
No. It only searches photos that are already on your own computer. It is not a reverse face search engine.