rclip 2: raw image search and performance improvements

This week, I released version 2 of rclip. The main breaking change in the major update is that rclip dropped Python 3.9 support, which could affect you only if you are installing rclip using pip in a Python 3.9 environment. Even though no features are associated with the v2 release, I am thrilled about it because it provides a good opportunity to reflect on the changes made to rclip since the release of version 1.

For those unfamiliar with rclip, it is a command line tool that allows you to search your image or photo collection right in your terminal using a natural language query or a reference image. To try rclip, follow the installation instructions on the GitHub page.

I have already blogged about most of the major features introduced to rclip v1:

What I didn’t blog about is the countless performance improvements, from a few noticeable indexation speedups to a 50% search time reduction when performing text-only queries.

I am also excited to announce for the first time that rclip now has experimental support for raw image search. GitHub user @abidkhan484 added this feature to rclip during the last Hacktoberfest (speaking of which, rclip will participate in Hacktoberfest 2025 as well – join us!). The feature was first released in rclip v1.11.0, allowing you to search through raw camera images. Currently, only the ARW and CR2 images are supported. Let me know if you would love rclip to support any other raw formats!

To use raw search, run rclip with the --experimental-raw-support flag, like this:

rclip --experimental-raw-support "orange cat"

With this flag passed, rclip will search through regular and raw images and surface best matches. Terminal previews are also supported for raw photos. It is important to note that rclip will still prefer non-raw versions of the image when they are available. Suppose it finds two versions of the same image in the same directory – for example, IMG_1234.JPG and IMG_1234.ARW – it will ignore the raw version.

Install rclip, try this feature, and let me know if you have any feedback. Stay curious, and enjoy your photo searches with rclip!