I built Curlo, a Mac app for searching local sound libraries by description with local AI
Curlo is a 100% local, AI-powered macOS app built for people who work with large local audio assets, including sound designers, video editors, music producers, and audio post-production professionals. Problem: I’m also a part-time audiobook post-production editor, so Curlo came from my own frustration with managing and finding sounds in local audio libraries. Traditional audio asset managers usually depend on filenames, folders, and manual tags. That works when a library is small, but it gets painful when you have thousands or tens of thousands of sound effects, music cues, loops, ambiences, or production audio files. Sometimes you know what you want to hear, but you do not know the filename. Curlo analyzes the audio content locally on your Mac, then lets you find sounds by natural language. The search does not need the file to already be named or tagged perfectly. For example: heavy rain on a tin roof footsteps on gravel gentle piano melody short metallic hit dark cinematic drone Your audio files and search queries stay on-device. Key features: Semantic search for local audio files (Fully offline) Metadata search with commands like /filename, /tag, /ucs, and /format Drag clips into apps like Pro Tools, Logic Pro, Reaper, Premiere Pro, and other tools Similar audio search from a file or selected region AI auto-tagging and UCS category support Metadata reading, editing, and writing Localhost API for custom workflows Comparison: The closest apps I looked at are Soundminer, BaseHead, and Soundly. Soundminer and BaseHead are powerful professional tools for studio and post-production database workflows. Curlo is not trying to replace every part of those systems. It is more focused on fast local semantic search, Apple Silicon performance, and a simpler Mac-native workflow. Soundly is great if you want a broader sound library platform. Curlo is more focused on managing and searching your own local library without cloud upload, accounts, or internet access for search. Pricing: Curlo has a free tier with semantic search, metadata search, tags, UCS classification, and up to 5,000 indexed files. Pro adds unlimited indexed files, similar audio search, metadata writing, batch AI-infer for UCS and tags, local API, and priority support. $5.99/month $39.90/year $99 lifetime Website: https://curlo.ahrisy.com System requirements: Apple Silicon Mac macOS 14.6 or later I have 10 lifetime codes for r/MacApps. If Curlo sounds like something that could speed up your workflow, please leave a comment below sharing your specific use case. I'll DM the codes to 10 users. Would love to hear your feedback and feature requests!
Collected discussion
Update: all 10 lifetime codes have now been claimed. Thank you again to everyone who shared your workflows and feedback. It has already helped me identify several bugs, and I’ll start working on an update right away. My first priority will be fixing the bugs that came up, and after that I’ll start working through the new feature requests that came from your feedback. I’m still very happy to hear more feedback from anyone trying the app.
Hi. Does it do conversations ? Like recognising a conversation regarding a certain topic? If it does I would certainly like a code. I records mostly conversations and leave it as it’s auto name filing. So if it will be able to locate which file it is when I have a discussion with the doctor regarding certain issues. That would be great.
Hi! Not at the moment. Curlo is currently focused on searching SFX, ambience, music, BGM, and other audio assets by their sound/sonic characteristics, rather than transcribing speech or recognizing conversation topics. So if your main use case is searching spoken conversations by topic, Curlo probably isn’t the right fit yet. But it’s an interesting direction and I’ll keep it in mind. If you also manage SFX or BGM, I’d be happy to DM you a code.
Very interested in this. I do some docu work - sounds like it can come in handy in making things a lot smoother.
This looks great! I’m currently using another app for my local SFX files but that relies on names and tags to search. I would love to try this! My wife and make book trailers for children’s books and are always looking to include sound effects to punctuate the visuals
this is a real problem. searching my valentino lib with a pdf- then searching file names! thank you man
I just sent you a lifetime code via DM. Please check your messages when you get a chance. I also have a similar SFX library that even ships with its own search app lol.
This sounds exactly what I’ve been looking for a while. I work on feature film editing and documentaries and the other options don’t feel native and I ended up using Swinsian (iTunes replacement) as my SFX organization and search app but it lacks SFX oriented tools and doesn’t have waveform display. Good job.
Thanks for your interest! I just sent you a lifetime code via DM. I’d love to hear your feedback after you’ve tried it.
This solution could be interesting; is it applicable to languages other than English? Additionally, how is the indexing speed? Which large language model (LLM) is used, and is there a possibility of employing it for speech analysis, perhaps to identify specific phrases or names? Thank you for your time. I am using artificial intelligence to translate this into English as I am not a native speaker. ah, I use Another Dock, made by you, I think...
Thanks for the questions! Yes, Curlo supports languages other than English for search queries, although the quality may vary depending on the language and the type of sound you are searching for. Indexing speed depends on the Mac and the audio library, but on my M3 Mac, indexing around 10,000 audio files usually takes about 20-30 minutes. Curlo is not using a traditional LLM for the audio search. It uses a two-tower model: audio and text are embedded separately into the same vector space, then compared by similarity. So when you type a description, Curlo searches for audio whose embedding is close to that text description. Unfortunately, this type of model is currently not very good for speech understanding. Curlo is mainly designed for SFX and BGM. It is not meant for transcribing speech yet. And yes, Another Dock is also made by me. Thanks for using it! If you also manage SFX or BGM, I’d be happy to DM you a code.
Olá, aprecio muito o que você fez aqui! Sou editor de vídeos e isso com certeza aceleraria meu fluxo de trabalho. se possível, me disponibilize um código! Agradeço desde já!
I just sent you a lifetime code via DM. I’d love to hear your feedback after you’ve tried it!
I do video work for our local HS marching band (create recap videos from band camp, football games and performances) and I think a tool like this would help not just with sound effects and background music but also some of the performance stuff. I'd love a code if you have any left.
I just sent you a lifetime code via DM. I’d love to hear your feedback after you’ve tried it!
Very nice. How is distribution going so far?
Thanks! I’ve sent out 9 codes so far. Update: all 10 lifetime codes have now been claimed.
Very exciting! I've been looking for a good local tool like this for a long time. I'm a sound designer and I've mostly been using Soundly for managing all of my local files, but the 10k file limit on the free app has been tough to manage and I'm not interested in a subscription.
I just sent you a lifetime code via DM. I’d love to hear your feedback after you’ve tried it! I’ve used Soundly too. My guess is that the subscription model mainly exists because cloud services come with ongoing costs. Curlo is focused on local search and local processing, so I wanted it to work as a non-subscription option as well.
I'd love to try this and compare / contrast to Samplism and Audio Crucible. EDIT: I should mention that I've got a few hundred thousand audio files to throw at it.
That’s a very interesting use case. I haven’t tested Curlo with a library that large yet, so I’d be very interested to hear how it behaves on your setup. I’ll DM you a lifetime code. If you end up trying it on that library, I’d really appreciate any feedback on indexing time, search behavior, and overall responsiveness.
Man this is awesome, better than soundly from the looks of it and features wise! I've got a darn huge music library I've aquired throghout the years (humble bundle hah) and this might be really helpful to find the right music. Any chance on a discount or a lifetime code?
Thanks, I really appreciate that! The lifetime codes from this post have already all been claimed, but your use case sounds like a very good fit for Curlo, and I’d be happy to give you a 1-month code instead. However, I just found out that Apple has changed the way this kind of App Store offer code needs to be generated and redeemed, so I need to update the app first to support the new giveaway flow properly. Once I’ve done that, if you’re still interested, I’d be happy to send you one.
Hey, congrats on getting your first paid subscribers. That's a big milestone. I've actually been looking for something like Curlo for over a year. As an editor, digging through terabytes of sound files is one of the most frustrating parts of the job, so AI-powered indexing immediately caught my attention. Sadly, my experience wasn't great. The app kept crashing and couldn't even get through indexing a relatively small batch of files. After waiting so long for a tool like this, that was pretty disappointing. That said, I still think the idea is spot on. This is a problem a lot of editors deal with, and if you can get the stability sorted out, I can see people really getting behind it. Wishing you guys the best and hoping to give it another shot down the line.
Thanks for the feedback, and sorry about the crashes. I replied to your DM as well. If you don't mind, would you be able to share the folder that was causing the crashes? In many cases, it's related to specific audio file encodings, and having the actual files would help me reproduce the issue and fix it. Really appreciate you giving Curlo a try.