refern icon
refern icon

refern

Save anything, organize it your way, and arrange it on an infinite canvas, connected on a graph that maps how it all relates. All on your machine, yours forever.

Organize

Cost / License

  • Freemium (Pay once)
  • Proprietary

Application type

Platforms

  • Mac
  • Windows
  • Linux
Graph
Moodboard
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refern information

  • Developed by

    CA flagRefern Labs

  • Licensing

    Proprietary and Freemium product.

  • Pricing

    One time purchase (perpetual license) that costs from $30 + free version with limited functionality.

  • Alternatives

    4 alternatives listed

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  • Supported Languages

    • English
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What is refern?

refern is a local-first desktop app for collecting, organizing, and working with visual references. The library side gives you folders, hierarchical tags, smart folders, ratings, color labels, color search by hex, image-to-image visual similarity, and more than 14 typed search operators, all running on your machine with no account and no cloud.

The canvas side is a full infinite moodboard with layers, text, shapes, freehand drawing, image filters, and a pin-on-top mode with adjustable transparency and click-through, so it covers the always-on-top reference workflow too.

A relationship graph view maps how your folders, images, canvases, and tags connect. refern never copies your files: a workspace is a normal folder on disk, and it indexes your originals in place.

It imports from Eagle (folders, tags, ratings, sources, notes) and reads embedded EXIF, IPTC, and XMP metadata, so switching keeps your work.