github.com/hydrusnetwork/hydrus ↗
A personal booru-style media tagger that can import files and tags from your hard drive and popular websites. Content can be shared with other users via user-run servers.
Open this visualization on its own page →
Contributors
4
Lines of Code
12,916
From
2013-02-19
To
2020-12-23
About hydrusnetwork/hydrus
Hydrus Network is a personal file-management application designed for users with large media collections who want to organize and browse files using tags rather than traditional folders. The client can import images, videos, audio files, and various other media types from your hard drive or popular websites, then tag and manage them in a booru-style interface. It includes built-in audio and video playback capabilities and allows users to launch unsupported formats like PDFs with their system's default applications.
The application emphasizes user privacy and control—it never requires internet connectivity for core functionality and gives users complete authority over their data. Users can optionally share tags anonymously through community-run servers if they choose to participate in the public network. The client also supports downloading files and metadata from websites through user-created downloaders and can automatically subscribe to gallery searches to keep collections updated with new content.
Hydrus is a mature, actively-developed solo project written in Python with releases typically published weekly. While functional rather than aesthetically polished, it's designed for technically-inclined media enthusiasts who need powerful organization tools for collections of 10,000 or more files. Executable builds are available for Windows and Linux, and the source code can be run directly on Windows, Linux, or macOS.