Eikonaut

Pick, caption, deliver.

The fast photo browser for photographers who caption on the run. For Mac.

Coming soon Tell me at launch: hello@eikonaut.com
Eikonaut’s window in custom colours: a grid of sports photos on neutral grey, the picked photo framed in red, and the caption inspector beside it.
Appearance ▸ Custom: neutral grey around the photos, the pick framed in chinagraph red.

Simple.

Your workflow, nothing else.

Open a folder or a card and start. No catalog, no library to maintain.

Fast.

A folder of over 400 photos on screen in under 1 second.

How we measured

From launching Eikonaut to the first screen of thumbnails: a folder of 414 photos on the Mac's own SSD, pre-release build, 14 October 2026. Warm: opened again, with the files in macOS's cache. Cold: the first launch after a restart.

MacBook Pro, M1 Pro (2021)0.73 s warm · 0.84 s cold

Full screen flips without waiting. RAW files show at once.

Open.

The file is the record.

Captions, keywords and ratings go into the photo itself, in standard IPTC and XMP; for RAW, video and HEIC into a sidecar next to it. Every tool that reads IPTC reads them: your agency’s system, your archive.

Safe.

Nothing is lost.

Every write is read back and checked. The image data of your originals is never changed; RAW files are never written. Everything can be undone, even after a restart.

Seen from a bridge above, the peloton streaks through a concrete underpass in Arch as a blur of coloured jerseys.
Tour de SuisseThe peloton races through Arch in stage 5 of the Tour de Suisse leading from Ossingen to Büren an der Aare, Switzerland, June 18, 2014. Photo: Lukas Spieker

Card in. Out to the desk.

  1. A player in white slides in to block a dribble by a player in red.
  2. A player in white leaps over a sliding tackle by a player in red, the ball between their boots.
  3. A player in white pushes between two players in red to reach the ball.
  4. The same three players a moment later, the ball loose at their feet.

  1. 01 Card in.

    Import copies to your working folder and a backup at once, each file verified.

  2. 02 Pick.

    Stars with one key, full screen, 1:1 to check focus. Neutral grey around the photos if you like.

  3. 03 Caption.

    Templates, variables, batch or one by one.

  4. 04 Deliver.

    Export presets with size, colour, name and watermark; your upload script runs after.

Bring your archive with you.

Eikonaut reads and writes the standard IPTC and XMP fields, so an archive captioned in another photo browser opens as it is, and other tools that read IPTC read what Eikonaut writes.

Guides for switching →

Made for Apple silicon · No account, no cloud, no tracking · Pay once