How to search a video by description on Mac

What Find by Description does

Find by Description lets you type what you want to see (for example: "red car in the parking lot" or "person opening the door"). The app prepares an on-device visual index for the open video, then matches your wording against sampled frames. Press ⌘F or use the search overlay on the video preview to search as you type. Results appear as thumbnails you can step through and jump to on the timeline.

Everything runs locally on your Mac. Your footage is not uploaded for visual search.

Indexing accuracy options

In Settings → General → Visual Search, choose Indexing accuracy:

• Adaptive (default): Accurate for videos up to 2 minutes, Balanced from 2 to 7 minutes, and Fast above 7 minutes
• Fast, Balanced, or Accurate: lock one mode for every file

You can also override accuracy for the open file from Edit → Visual Search Accuracy. Higher accuracy takes longer to prepare and uses more storage, but finds subtler matches.

Step-by-step

1. Open your video with ⌘O.
2. Wait for indexing to finish if the app is preparing the on-device visual index. Progress appears while the file is analyzed.
3. Open the search overlay with ⌘F or the search button on the video preview.
4. Type what you want to find. Use plain language: "white delivery van," "crowd on the sidewalk," or "laptop on the desk."
5. Browse results. Matching frames appear as thumbnails. Click any result to jump the playhead there on the timeline.
6. Mark segments (optional). Set in and out points around the moments you want to keep, or add them to your selection before export.
7. Export with ⌘E.

What it's good for

• Finding incidents in long security recordings without scrubbing every minute by hand
• Locating specific props, vehicles, or locations mentioned in a creative brief
• Pulling every moment a particular action happens across hours of B-roll
• Jumping to scenes described in a shot list when you only remember what was in frame