Review: An App Called Orga Lets You Search Text in Photos

An app called Orga has an optical character recognition (OCR) app that lets you search text in photos, as well as objects. Plus, it offers an encrypted photo vault you can use to stash those dank memes.

Orga OCR

Orga makes use of Apple’s CoreML technology in iOS 11. That means that the app’s machine learning is completely local and works offline. Your photos aren’t sent to someone else’s servers.

This is good, because in addition to letting you search text in photos, you can search for nudes too. The NSFW detection model is an open-source tool from Yahoo. It’s possible to customize the nudity detection AI sensitivity levels. There is bound to be a bunch of false positives, and changing the sensitivity will refine search results.

The app scanned my camera roll fairly quickly, but I also only have about 1,800 images, so results may vary. Once the scanning is finished, you can start searching. You can bulk import photos and screenshots into the photo vault and into customizable folders. Of course, you can also lock the app with a passcode.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like there is a way to import videos, although that may change in a future update. Orga is free and without ads. Unlike a previous app I reviewed, Orga has no subscription model, so I’m not sure how the developers plan to make money.