Open Iris → Settings (⌘,) to configure Iris. The Settings window is organized into panes across the top.
General
| Setting | Description |
|---|---|
| Layout | Choose between Classic (fixed‑size grid) and Modern (an experimental fluid layout that preserves you items’ aspect ratios). |
| Color Scheme | Follow System, Always Light, or Always Dark. |
| Show Decades in Sidebar | When on, the Exact Dates hierarchy starts at a decade level (e.g., “2010s”) before drilling into years. When off, it goes straight to years. |
| Guess Date from Filename | When on, Iris will try to parse a capture date out of a filename when the file itself has no date metadata (e.g., IMG_20180524_153012.jpg). |
| Birthdays Must Include Person | When on, the Birthday sub‑node of a person only shows photos that actually contain that person’s face — not just any photo from that calendar date. |
Library
These settings control which background pipeline stages run.
| Setting | Description |
|---|---|
| Enable Face Recognition | Detect faces in photos and group them into people. Turning off skips face detection entirely; existing data remains. |
| Detect Text in Images | Run on‑device OCR to extract text from photos. Required for ⌘⇧C (Copy Text From Image) and for OCR text in search. |
| Tag Items | Run on‑device content tagging. Populates the Magic tab’s content tags and makes them searchable. |
| Transcribe Videos | Run on‑device speech‑to‑text on the audio track of video files. The first time you enable this, Iris downloads a ~460 MB model. Makes video transcripts searchable. |
Turning a stage off keeps existing data but skips the work for new items. Turning a stage back on causes Iris to catch up on previously‑skipped items in the background.
Server
Controls the local HTTP server that powers the companion apps.
| Setting | Description |
|---|---|
| Enable API Server | Starts a local HTTP server on port 8490. Required by the iOS and Apple TV companion apps. |
| Enable Website | Adds a web browser UI at http://<mac>.local:8490. Requires the API server. |
| Enable MCP Server | Adds a read-only Model Context Protocol endpoint for AI tools. Requires the API server. |
See Companion apps and the local server for the full story.
Privacy
| Setting | Description |
|---|---|
| Enable Crash Reporting | When on, Iris sends anonymous crash reports if the app crashes (no photo data, no metadata). |
| Enable Telemetry | When on, Iris sends anonymous, aggregated usage statistics (no photo data, no metadata). |
Both are on‑by‑default to help us improve Iris for yourself and other users, but you can disable them if you’d rather not send anything outside your Mac.
Special
A pane for experimental and advanced settings — what’s here changes from release to release.