How to Search Your Screen History with AI

You saw it. You know you saw it. Some documentation, a Slack message, a price on a website. It was definitely on your screen — maybe yesterday, maybe Thursday.

Now try finding it.

Browser history? 400 entries, and it wasn't in the browser anyway. Slack search? You're not sure which workspace. Email? Nope. Your Downloads folder? Nope. At some point you give up and just Google it again, hoping you'll recognize it when you see it.

This happens multiple times a day, and it's ridiculous. Your computer displayed the information. Why can't you search what it displayed?

You can. Here's how.

What "Searching Your Screen History" Actually Means

Not video playback. Not scrubbing through screen recordings like it's a VHS tape.

Modern screen history search works like this:

Your screen is captured continuously (every few seconds or on every frame)
OCR extracts all visible text from each capture
Audio is transcribed in parallel
Everything is indexed in a searchable database
You search by keyword, app name, time range, or natural language

The result: you type a keyword and get back every moment that text appeared on your screen, with timestamps and app context. Or you ask "What was that tool someone recommended in standup?" and AI searches your combined screen + audio history.

Option 1: Screenpipe (Open Source, Any Platform)

Screenpipe is what we'd recommend. Full disclosure — it's ours. But it's also open source and the most complete option available.

Setup takes about 2 minutes:

Download from screenpi.pe
Grant screen recording + microphone permissions
That's it — it starts capturing immediately

After a few hours, you'll have a searchable history of everything you've done.

Searching through the app: Open the Screenpipe search UI, type what you're looking for, and filter by app, time range, or content type (screen text vs audio transcript). Results show the matched text, which app it was in, and when.

Searching with AI: You can also just ask questions naturally — "What did I work on yesterday afternoon?" or "What was that website with the pricing table?" Screenpipe works with Claude, GPT, Ollama, or Apple Intelligence to understand your question and search your history.

Searching via API: For developers, Screenpipe also exposes a full REST API. Search by keyword, filter by app or time window, or pipe results into your own tools.

For a deeper dive, see the AI recall tools use case.

Option 2: Microsoft Recall (Windows 11 Only)

Microsoft Recall is built into Windows 11 on Copilot+ PCs. It takes periodic snapshots and runs OCR.

Works well if you already have the hardware. But: no audio search, no API, no way to build on top of it, Windows 11 only, and closed source. It's a good "set and forget" option within its limitations.

Option 3: Browser Extensions (Web Only)

Various browser extensions can save and index page content. They work for web browsing but miss everything else — desktop apps, meetings, terminals, chat apps, design tools.

If your work is 100% browser-based, these might be enough. Most people's isn't.

What You Can Do with Searchable Screen History

Once you have this running, the use cases are surprisingly broad:

"What was that?" — The most common one. You vaguely remember seeing something on screen. Type a keyword, get instant results with timestamps and app context. No more digging through browser history or Slack.

Daily summaries — Ask the AI to summarize what you worked on today. It looks across all your screen activity and conversations to generate a structured recap. Great for standups or end-of-day journaling.

Meeting recall — "What did Sarah say about the budget?" Search across meeting transcripts and shared screens simultaneously. You get both what was said and what was shown.

Pipe to your notes — Automatically send relevant screen content to Obsidian, Notion, or whatever you use. The Obsidian integration guide walks through this in detail.

Track your time — See which apps you used and for how long, without installing a separate time tracker. Screenpipe already knows.

The Privacy Angle

Your screen history is the most sensitive data on your computer. Passwords, bank accounts, private messages, medical info — it's all there.

Screenpipe stores everything locally on your device. No server. No cloud upload. No analytics. The code is open source (16k+ GitHub stars) so you don't have to trust a privacy policy — you can read the code. It costs $400 for a lifetime license, with no recurring fees.

This is the reason we built it as open source. A tool that records your screen 24/7 should be auditable. Period.

Getting Started

Download Screenpipe — takes 2 minutes
Let it run in the background for a day
Search for something you remember seeing

After a week of running, you'll have the "oh, I can just search for that" reflex. After a month, you won't remember how you worked without it.

Get started →