I have no found any simple, lightweight tools for quickly browsing media files on my computer. Sometimes I just want to view a folder of images, videos, or code files through a nice interface without uploading anything to the cloud or processing a lot of files for big directories.
So I built LocalPics, a portable Go application that creates a beautiful local web interface for browsing your media files. Point it at any directory, and it instantly serves a responsive web UI that categorizes and displays your files by type.
Features:
- Zero dependencies - Just a single binary, no installation required
- Fast scanning - Handles thousands of files quickly
- Responsive UI - Works on desktop and mobile browsers
- File categorization - Automatically groups files by type (images, videos, audio, code, etc.)
- EXIF data extraction - View camera details, GPS coordinates, and other metadata for images
- Syntax highlighting - Beautiful code previews with language detection
- Markdown rendering - Preview markdown files with proper formatting
- Local-only - Everything runs on your machine, no data ever leaves your computer
- Video and audio playback - Built-in players for media files
- Optional file deletion API - Can be enabled with a flag for pruning your collection
How it works:
LocalPics uses Go's standard library (no external dependencies) to scan a directory, categorize files, and generate JSON indexes and an HTML interface. It then starts a local HTTP server to serve these files, along with the original media.
The frontend is pure HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, leveraging a few CDN-served libraries like PrismJS for syntax highlighting and ExifJS for metadata extraction.
Usage:
Simply run:
localpics -indir ~/Pictures
And a web server will start at http://localhost:8080 where you can browse your files.
Additional options:
localpics -indir <input_directory> [-outdir <output_directory>] [-delete]
The source code is available at https://github.com/tuxx/localpics. It's under 1000 lines of Go code, making it easy to understand and modify.
