A lightweight, offline-first creative asset manager for editors and designers — asset organization, usage tracking, fast search, and interactive brand guidelines in one portable workspace.
Stash is a desktop application, not a cloud service. Your files never move, your library is a single file you own, and nothing is uploaded anywhere.
Stash is built by one person, and the builds are unsigned — which is why macOS nags you. It warns on first launch, and because every unsigned build gets a different code identity, the keychain stops recognising Stash after each update and asks for your login password all over again. Signing and notarising fixes both, and that needs an Apple Developer membership at $99/year.
If Stash saves you time, buying me a coffee goes straight at that. Everything else stays as it is either way — same MIT licence, same offline app, no telemetry, no paid tier.
Creative work accumulates assets faster than any folder structure survives: B-roll on a drive, logo variants in Drive, a client's hex codes in a PDF, the font name in a Slack message from four months ago. The questions that actually slow work down are not "where is this file" but:
- What do I have? — across disks, Drive links, and downloads
- What does it look like? — without opening seven applications
- Have I used this already? — and in which project
- What is this brand's blue? — right now, while the timeline is open
Stash answers those in a couple of seconds, offline, from one file you can hand to a colleague.
It is not a file manager, not a Drive client, and not a downloader. Originals are never moved, modified, or downloaded — Stash stores metadata, small previews, and your own notes.
Video editors, motion designers, graphic designers, content creators, and small creative teams — anyone who keeps footage, vectors, templates, sound, fonts, and client brand rules in more places than they can remember.
A library is one file you open. Recent libraries are one click away, and a
.footagedb can be moved, backed up, or handed to a collaborator — the catalog
travels with it.
The library itself. 1,824 items here, every one previewed, tagged, and marked used or unused — with source folders, brands, and tags down the left.
Brand guidelines that answer questions. The Quick Brand Kit up top is the 10% used 90% of the time; every colour carries hex, RGB, and CMYK with a copy button, so "what is this brand's blue?" costs one click while the timeline stays open.
Download for your platform from the
latest release: .dmg for
macOS (Apple Silicon or Intel), .exe/.msi for Windows,
.deb/.AppImage/.rpm for Linux. No account, no API key, no config file.
The app is unsigned, so both macOS and Windows warn on first launch — how to get past that takes one click.
| Document | What's in it |
|---|---|
| Install | Downloads per platform, first-launch warnings |
| Features | Asset library, sources, tags, search, usage tracking, shortcuts |
| Brand guidelines | Brands, colors, typography, logos, rules, elements, Quick Brand Kit |
| The library file | Offline-first design, portable SQLite format, saving, migrations |
| Google Drive | Link mode, connected mode, OAuth setup |
| Development | Build from source, project layout, tests, tech stack |
| Troubleshooting | Common problems and what they actually mean |
| Roadmap | What's next, and what will never be built |
| Architecture | Design decisions and their rationale |
Three states are used throughout the documentation, and they mean exactly this:
| State | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Available | Shipped in the current release. Backed by schema, IPC commands, and UI you can click. |
| In development | Partially implemented. Some of it works today; the section says which part. |
| Planned | Designed, not built. No tables, no commands, no UI. |
| Area | State |
|---|---|
| Asset library — any file type, metadata, previews | Available |
| Sources — local disk, Drive links, URLs, bulk paste | Available |
| Tags, collections, projects | Available |
| Usage tracking and history | Available |
| Library search and filters | Available |
| Source folders with custom columns | Available |
| Brands, colors, typography, logos | Available |
| Logo usage rules and do/don't examples | Available |
| Graphic elements referencing the asset library | Available |
| Quick Brand Kit | Available |
| Universal search — assets, source folders, brands, colors, type, logos, elements, additional info | Available |
| Scoped search — aim the field at one kind before typing | Available |
| Folder tags — tag a folder, optionally covering every file inside | Available |
| Clickable tag/value filters | In development — Source Folders table only |
| Per-asset custom fields | In development — folder-level only today |
| Photography, motion, tone of voice, icon, social guidelines | Planned |
| Brand asset collections beyond logos and elements | Planned |
Offline-first. Every core feature works with the network unplugged. With Drive disconnected and the update check off, Stash makes zero network requests.
Your file, not our format. A library is one SQLite file. Rename it to
.sqlite and any SQLite tool opens it.
Referenced, never duplicated. Brand logos and graphic elements point at rows in the asset library, so a file exists exactly once.
Cloud is optional. Google Drive is one source among several, never a requirement. Stash requests read-only scope and implements no write endpoint, so it structurally cannot modify your Drive.
No telemetry. No analytics, no crash reporting, no tracking of any kind. Stash makes exactly one request on its own behalf — asking GitHub whether a newer release exists — and Settings → General switches that off, after which it contacts nothing at all unless you connect Drive.
Tauri v2 (Rust) · React + TypeScript · Tailwind · Zustand + TanStack Query · SQLite via rusqlite · OS keychain for secrets · GitHub Actions for packaging.
Details in Development.
MIT. Use it, fork it, ship it.