Forage
A privacy-focused photo library for the memories that matter.
UI/UX Design, App Development
2026
Product, Positioning & Problem
Forage is a bento-inspired, algorithm-free, privacy-focused image organization tool.
Most tools are optimized for discovery and pure time spent in the app, so they utilize algorithms and endless feeds to serve you things you likely don't care about. Forage was built as the antithesis to that.
With Forage, you own your data, there are no algorithms or distractions built in, and you can customize it to your liking.
Forage is a web app primarily, but it has a Chrome extension and desktop Mac app coming.
My Role & Contributions
I handled this entire project solo — from the initial UI designs and mapping flows all through development.
Key Design Decisions
The nature of this app means more sacrifices needed to be made than expected.
One of the biggest concerns was how to run this at low-cost for both myself and the user while not compromising the user's privacy. The compromise I made here was by adopting a bring-your-own-backend (BYOB) model — meaning the only thing I have to host is the frontend code, and it connects to a backend the user hosts.
One of the biggest tradeoffs with this model was the ease of use for users that aren't tech-savvy. I bridged this gap with an elegant, as simple as could be onboarding. I chose Supabase as the backend of choice mainly due to its free tier, but it's also simple enough for the average user to run a singular SQL prompt to set up the entire backend, and connect it to an email login, so they'd never have to look at Supabase again if they didn't want to.
The outcome of this was a setup process that is decently intuitive, privacy baked in by default, and a receptive design behind it.
Another concern that came from this BYOB model was for a lack of storage. Hosting a bunch of photos at varying resolutions could use up storage limits quickly, especially if someone's hosting thousands of photos or is on the free tier. In anticipation of this, two things were implemented:
If saving a photo through the web extension, it would just save the photo link to the database to fetch on load instead of downloading every picture to a storage bin.
On the desktop app, there's an option to connect the frontend experience of Forage to a folder on the user's computer instead of using Supabase.
I decided on using tags as the primary organizational system because they give the freedom to the user of organizing images as tightly or loosely as they desire.
The Outcome
I didn't ever intend for Forage to be more than a place to save images, but users of all kinds have found unique use cases.
I use Forage to organize my creative references primarily, but people have reached out to tell me they use it as an archiving tool, a Google Photos alternative, and even as a personal social media replacement by sharing their backend with a few friends, using a tag for each person.
That's the power of a tool not built for one specific need.
