KontentManager

Simple, fast, local ingestion of your photo / video / audio rushes from SD cards, USB and SSD.

100% local · no network by default · zero telemetry · macOS

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Why

Coming back from a shoot, offloading cards is a fragile chore: unverified copies, duplicates, scattered files, and the fear of losing something. KontentManager does that job cleanly, without cloud and without an account: plug in a drive, browse its contents, choose what to import and to which project / disk, and let the app copy with hash verification and automatic dedup.

Built for creators juggling multiple cameras and projects who want a fast, readable and safe offload — entirely on their Mac.

Download

The latest macOS app is on the Releases page (KontentManager.dmg).

1. Open the .dmg, drag KontentManager into Applications.
2. First launch (ad-hoc signed, not notarized): right-click → Open.
3. On the first card plug, allow access to removable volumes.

Required for video thumbnails, metadata reading and compression: brew install ffmpeg exiftool. Browsing and importing work without them.

Screenshots

Dashboard — every connected drive and its contents at a glance:

Drives	H.265 compression

Features

• Automatic drive detection (DiskArbitration) — even a card already inserted at launch.
• Browse hub per drive: a Gallery view (thumbnails generated on the fly, before import) and a Files column view (folder/subfolder navigation, Finder-style).
• Preview before import: photos, videos (playback + seek), audio — straight from the card.
• Targeted or bulk import: select individual files or whole folders; everything flows through a single import bar.
• Verified atomic copy: write to .kmtmp, hash source/destination in parallel, double re-read, atomic rename. Group rollback keeps a clip and its sidecars together.
• Hash-based deduplication (never by filename) — already-imported files are flagged.
• Readable destination tree: Client / Project / YYYY-MM-DD / Device, internal or external disk (exFAT-compatible).
• Per-project backup drive: register a hard drive, recognized by UUID and auto-selected when you plug it in.
• Smart project detection (card → project mapping, scoring on camera / dates / GPS).
• Hardware recognition: Sony, Insta360 (.insv/.insp), DJI + .SRT telemetry, GoPro, iPhone, FPV.
• Opt-in H.265 compression (non-destructive, thermal throttling) with per-device presets.
• Manual triage: physically reassign files from one project to another.
• Optional cloud via rclone (Google Drive / Dropbox / MEGA), off by default: nothing leaves the machine without an explicit action.

Privacy

KontentManager is local-first by design:

• No outbound network requests by default. The only possible flow is the opt-in cloud upload that you enable and trigger yourself.
• No telemetry, no analytics, no third-party crash reporting.
• No account, no authentication, no cloud dependency.
• The local server binds strictly to 127.0.0.1 on a random port at startup.
• Your data stays in ~/Library/Application Support/KontentManager/ and your library.

Stack

Backend	Python 3.12+, FastAPI, SQLAlchemy 2 (SQLite WAL), pyobjc, xxhash, exiftool, ffmpeg, rawpy, pillow-heif
Frontend	React 19 + strict TypeScript, Vite, Tailwind v4, TanStack Query, framer-motion
Desktop	pywebview (native window), packaged as a .app via PyInstaller

The UI is served by the FastAPI backend and shown in a pywebview window: no Electron, a light footprint.

Getting started (development)

Requirements: macOS, Python 3.12+ (3.13 supported), Node 18+, and ffmpeg + exiftool (brew install ffmpeg exiftool).

git clone https://github.com/soclosesociety/kontentmanager.git
cd kontentmanager
./scripts/dev.sh        # venv + deps, Vite (5173), backend (8770), pywebview window

Build the app (.app + .dmg)

./scripts/build_macos.sh
# -> dist-app/KontentManager.app  and  dist-app/KontentManager.dmg

Open the .dmg, drag KontentManager into Applications. Ad-hoc signed (not notarized): on first launch, right-click → Open. See packaging/README.md for details and the auto-open-on-plug LaunchAgent.

Quality

.venv/bin/python -m pytest backend/tests -q   # tests
.venv/bin/ruff check backend                  # lint
.venv/bin/mypy backend/app                     # types (strict, 0 errors)
cd frontend && npx tsc --noEmit                # frontend types

Contributing

Contributions are welcome — see CONTRIBUTING.md and the Code of Conduct.

License

MIT © SoClose Society.