This tiny open-source app is the best photo organizer you’ve never heard of

I was born before the dawn of the smartphone, but I've been taking more photos than I ever did before since I got my hands on one. Memories of family, friends, pets, and those who are no longer with us reside within the massive 2TB hard drive in my computer. Yes, the same one that I accidentally deleted and almost lost years and years of memories from.

I've learned that open-source software is astonishingly good in many different forms, but I didn't expect it to be so beneficial when it came to organizing all of those pictures I had, too. For the longest time, I used to scavenge through Google Photos downloads like a caveman. But now that I've been using Tonfotos, I can find exactly what I'm looking for in no time.

Tonfotos keeps me organized when I don't want to be

I have almost 60GB of photos and videos, so sorting through all that sounded miserable

While I adore taking photos and videos of just about everything in life to document my journey through it, organization is not one of my strong suits. Especially when I have as many pictures and videos as I do. Rather than doing it myself, I left countless pictures, screenshots, memes, and everything in between to fester within randomly titled folders and figured I would eventually get to it. I never did.

That's the biggest draw of Tonfotos right off the bat — the fact that it will automatically go through and organize my photos. Seeing as I have a CUDA-capable GPU in my PC, it's able to pull everything in quickly and efficiently, and after letting it organize for roughly 15 hours, it was ready to start helping me get my digital life in order.

Tonfotos has facial recognition to organize and sort

All of my family photos can be sorted by who appears in them, and that rocks

The biggest feature that immediately drew me to try Tonfotos in the first place was the facial recognition software it uses. Seeing as this program doesn't have any network capabilities, has the FRS built directly into the software, and the developers have no access to your photos, I figured that I would give this a try to see how it works. While it's not perfect, it's an excellent baseline for organization and gets nearly everything right.

One feature that I was sad to see isn't here: recognition for pets. I have a lot of photos of pets who are no longer with us, and I would have loved to have them split into their own categories, similar to what Google Photos does. But, seeing as this is a much smaller team with a much smaller budget, I can only hope that a talented developer is able to help them out, since the program is fully open-source.

Want to throw something together to show your family during a gathering? Tonfotos can do that

When I was younger, one of my favorite things to do was burn DVDs for my family that contained iMovie slideshows of some of our favorite pictures that we had taken. But, as I've gotten older, finding the time to do things like that has been almost impossible, which is why I'm also incredibly glad that Tonfotos has an option to put on a slideshow of your favorite pictures.

Not only this, but you can filter your photos, sort by location, or create your own sub-albums within the software to house all of your particular pictures. The last thing you want is your slideshow of wedding pictures to get interrupted with a meme that may have been saved on the same day, so I can easily filter that particular image out and ensure that the function isn't ruined. Or maybe I can filter more memes in for good measure. The day is young, and we'll just need to see how things go, you know?

Free is good for me, but paid may be needed for massive libraries

But, unlike other programs, Tonfotos offers a lifetime license for a single purchase price

Now, if Tonfotos sounded too good to be true, there's a chance that it may be. While Tonfotos has a ton of amazing features, some of them are locked behind a paywall. Seeing as I love a challenge, the free version has done enough for me to get me organizing the rest of my photos on my own, but if you're hoping to have it all done for you, or you might consider using it as a professional venture, you'll need to purchase a license.

Seeing as Adobe and other companies are shying away from lifetime ownership licenses and shifting to subscription models, it's refreshing to see an application that only offers a one-time purchase option. For what the program does, it's rather inexpensive as well. While I don't fully condone priority email support being locked behind a paywall, I haven't had to use their support as of the time of this writing, so that benefit is lost on me. For professional users, however? That could be a lifesaver. Ditch the Adobe subscription and try out one of the many open-source alternatives.

At least my photos are easier to sift through now

It's like having a photo album instead of leaving the pictures in the sleeves

Open-source software has slowly started becoming much more commonplace on my PC. From replacing expensive services like Office with an open-source alternative to reinvigorating my photo albums, it seems like these eager developers are always working on something spectacular to make life easier for everyone.

As Tonfotos continues to receive updates, I'm very curious to see what the development team is going to keep adding. While I'm already throwing my hat into the ring for pet identification support, the ability to quickly and easily sift through thousands of pictures and sort them better than I ever had is more than enough for me already. Now, I can soak in the memories without needing to search for hours beforehand.