Phototagger

Phototagger is a SwiftUI iPhone app for people whose photo library has outgrown Apple Photos. It adds custom tagging, fast retrieval, and cleanup workflows on top of PhotoKit by maintaining a local metadata index in SQLite via GRDB.

It is intentionally opinionated about modern iOS development: Swift 6.2, SwiftUI, @Observable, async/await, PhotoKit, and a database-backed architecture that keeps the UI responsive even with large libraries.

Feature Highlights

• Inbox-first triage flow for untagged photos
• Custom tags stored locally and mapped to PHAsset.localIdentifier
• Browse/search experience powered by indexed metadata
• Duplicate detection using Vision feature prints and DCT-based perceptual hashing
• Cleanup workflows for screenshots and large videos
• Capture flow that lets users shoot and tag in one motion
• Privacy-forward architecture with local-first storage

Architecture

The app is organized around a clear split between product surfaces and infrastructure:

Phototagger/
├── Models/       GRDB-backed records and lightweight domain types
├── Database/     SQLite schema, migrations, and high-performance queries
├── Services/     App state, indexing, PhotoKit integration, diagnostics
└── Views/        Feature-driven SwiftUI screens and reusable components

Core pieces:

• AppState is the @Observable main-actor coordinator for shared app state.
• PhotoLibraryService wraps PhotoKit and authorization concerns.
• IndexingService keeps the local index in sync with the user’s library.
• AppDatabase handles persistence, migrations, and query-heavy workflows.

Tech Stack

• Swift 6.2
• SwiftUI
• Swift Observation (@Observable)
• GRDB / SQLite
• PhotoKit
• AVFoundation
• Vision
• Optional diagnostics integrations:
  • Firebase Crashlytics
  • TelemetryDeck

Diagnostics Setup

This repository does not include live diagnostics credentials.

• Crash reporting is disabled unless you add your own GoogleService-Info.plist.
• Analytics is disabled unless you provide TELEMETRYDECK_APP_ID in the app’s Info settings.
• A safe starter file is included at GoogleService-Info.plist.example.

To enable diagnostics locally:

1. Copy GoogleService-Info.plist.example to GoogleService-Info.plist and replace it with your real Firebase config if you want Crashlytics.
2. In Xcode target build settings, provide a value for TELEMETRYDECK_APP_ID if you want TelemetryDeck.

Building

The current Xcode project and scheme are still named PhotoShelf, while the product and app branding are Phototagger.

Build in Xcode:

• Open PhotoShelf.xcodeproj
• Select the PhotoShelf scheme
• Run on an iPhone simulator or device running iOS 18.6+

Command line build:

xcodebuild -project PhotoShelf.xcodeproj -scheme PhotoShelf -destination 'generic/platform=iOS Simulator' build

Key Areas

• Services/AppState.swift for state orchestration and app-level coordination
• Services/IndexingService.swift for PhotoKit indexing and perceptual hashing flow
• Database/AppDatabase.swift for schema and query-heavy persistence work
• Views/Inbox/ for the focused inbox sprint workflow
• Views/Cleanup/ for cleanup tooling and duplicate detection UX
• Journal.md for the engineering story, tradeoffs, and debugging history