Ambiance

Semantic search for documents and code on macOS.

Version 2.0.7

Features

Find passages by meaning, not just keywords. An on-device AI model matches what you mean to what your files say.

Indexing and search happen entirely on your Mac. No account, no cloud, no tracking. Files never leave the device.

Indexes PDFs, Markdown, plain text, source code, and HTML. PDF text is extracted with Apple PDFKit — no external tools required.

Supports around 100 languages, including English and Swedish. Queries and documents can be in different languages.

Each folder gets its own tab and its own index. Shows Git branch and chunk count. Restored on relaunch.

Pin key passages to the top of the results. Pinned results persist across searches and relaunches — useful for drafting and citing.

Hover a result to preview the file in a side panel. Text highlighted at the match, PDFs at the correct page, HTML rendered.

Copy selected results as a ready-made prompt for ChatGPT or Claude, with the relevant passages already included as context.

Double-click a source code result to open it in Rope at the exact line via the rope:// URL scheme.

Install — download, drag to Applications, open.
Open a folder — Ambiance indexes supported files into an HNSW vector index. Two-stage retrieval narrows by file, then by chunk.
Search — semantic, text, or regex. Results show file, line, score, and a snippet.
Use results — hover to preview, double-click to open, pin to save, or copy as a prompt.

⌘⇧O
Open Folder

⌘W
Close Tab

⌘⇧R
Re-index

⌘I
File Scope

⌘⇧C
Copy Prompt

⌘,
Settings

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