What the models do
Relic keeps a few small models on your computer. They look at your items in the background and do five things.
- Sort an item into a group, so links, code, screenshots, receipts and addresses can be told apart.
- Tag what a picture shows, like a person, an animal or a product.
- Read the words inside images, so a screenshot is findable by the text in it. That one has its own page: Read the text in images.
- Let you search by meaning, so a search for the thing about the flight can find a boarding pass that never uses the word flight.
- Write a short title and a few topic tags for photos and for the things you keep, if you ask for it. See Describe items.
It all stays on your computer
The models run on the machine in front of you. No item, and no part of an item, is sent anywhere to be analysed. Once the models are on disk none of this needs an internet connection. The only thing that goes over the network is the download of the models themselves.
What the models write (a title, tags, the text read out of a picture) is part of the item, so it travels to your other devices the same way the item does, locked before it leaves. What that means for the server is on What Relic can and cannot see.
Turning it on
There is one switch, in Settings›Search and AI, and it is on to begin with.
Turn it off and nothing is analysed at all. The rows under it disappear with it. Search keeps working on the words that are already in your items.
Each part has its own switch under the master one: Settings › Search and AI › Image text (OCR), Settings › Search and AI › Smart content tags, Settings › Search and AI › Semantic search and Settings › Search and AI › Describe items. The whole pane is listed on Settings: Search and AI.
The one-time download
The first time you use this, Relic fetches the models. That is about 750 MB, once. It happens in the background and you can carry on using Relic while it runs. Turning on Describe items adds about 666 MB more.
Until the models land, Relic still writes simple tags from the text it already has, so nothing sits completely bare while you wait.
The status line
Under the switch is a short line in small type that says where things stand. It is the thing to read when you are wondering why an item has no tags yet.
- Off
- The switch is off. Nothing is being analysed.
- Downloading models (~750 MB, one-time)…
- The first download is running. It happens once.
- Basic tags now · loading ML models…
- Simple tags are already being written while the models finish loading.
- Ready: semantic search off (embeddings disabled)
- Everything works except search by meaning, because you turned that row off.
- Ready: full local ML
- All of it is on and running.
- Engine not found
- The part of Relic that runs the models is missing from this install. Install Relic again from the download page.
When there is a queue, a second line appears under it, for example tagging 1,204 items…. That is normal after you turn something on or save a lot of items at once.
While it works
A row being looked at right now says Analyzing… where it usually says which device it came from and how long ago. The line goes back to normal when that item is done, and the tags appear.
The work runs in the background, a handful of items at a time, whenever Relic is running. You decide how much of the computer it may take on Analysis speed.
Removing the models
The last row of the pane shows how much disk the models are using, with a Remove button. It only appears once something has actually been downloaded.
You have to turn the master switch off before Remove will work, and the row says so while it is on. Removing the models does not remove tags that are already written. If you turn smart tags back on later they download again.
Phones and tablets
None of this runs on a phone or a tablet. There is no switch for it there, and nothing is analysed on the device.
Your phone still gets the results. A title, tags and the text read out of a picture arrive with the item once a computer running Relic has done the work. If no computer of yours is running Relic, nothing is analysed anywhere.