Frequently Asked Questions

Your iPhone keeps the lightweight proxy gallery locally. You can browse, search, and view photos anytime. Full-resolution originals are only needed when your Mac is nearby — either on the same Wi-Fi or connected via USB-C.

SILO is a one-time purchase app. There is no subscription, no cloud storage bill, and no recurring fees. You own the software and your data stays on your drive.

SILO is not a backup service. We strongly recommend keeping a separate backup of your drive using Time Machine, another SSD, or any backup strategy you prefer. SILO keeps your archive usable — but redundancy is your responsibility.

iCloud is convenient but expensive forever. A 2TB plan costs $120/year — every year. With SILO, you buy one drive once and keep it for years. Plus, your photos never leave your home network unless you choose to back them up elsewhere.

No. All indexing, OCR, transcript generation, and search happens locally on your Mac. The iPhone gallery works over your local Wi-Fi or USB-C. There is no cloud upload, no external API, and no third-party access to your photos.

Mac + iPhone first. SILO requires a Mac to act as the home base for indexing and a nearby iPhone for mobile browsing. iPad support is planned after the initial beta.

Yes. SILO indexes spoken audio from your videos and makes it searchable. You can literally type 'she said happy birthday' and find the exact moment in your archive — all processed locally.

SILO keeps high-quality proxies on your iPhone that are typically more than 97% smaller than full-resolution originals. A 7.8 TB archive can live on your iPhone as an 18 GB searchable gallery.