TigerText

TigerText is the easiest way to add alt text to photos on iPhone — and it's now completely free.

Point it at any photo and TigerText writes a clear, accurate description of what's in it. The description is saved into the photo's own metadata, so it travels with the image when you post or send it. Mastodon, Bluesky, and any other app that reads standard image metadata will pick it up automatically.

Everything happens on your iPhone. No internet connection. No account. No ads. No tracking.


WHY ALT TEXT MATTERS

Alt text is how a photo becomes readable to someone using a screen reader. Without it, an image is just "photo" — no content, no context. Writing it by hand for every picture is real work, and that's why so many images go undescribed. TigerText does the first draft in seconds so you can post with a description instead of without one.

FULLY OFFLINE, GENUINELY PRIVATE

TigerText runs a vision-language AI model that ships inside the app. Your photos are never uploaded, never sent to a server, and never seen by anyone but you. It works on a plane, in a basement, or with your phone in airplane mode — because there's nothing to connect to.

Privacy here isn't a policy promise. It's how the app is built. There is no server to trust, because there is no server.

BUILT WITH THE COMMUNITY IT SERVES

TigerText was shaped by feedback from blind and low-vision users, and it's designed to be used entirely with VoiceOver — not merely to pass an accessibility checklist. Every control is labeled, every action is announced, and the whole flow works without ever needing to see the screen.

That includes the parts people usually forget: you can hear the description read aloud before you save it, edit any wording you disagree with, and know immediately whether a photo already has alt text.

WHAT YOU CAN DO

• Describe any photo in your library, one at a time or in batches
• Hear any description read aloud before you commit to it
• Edit the wording — it's your description, the AI just drafts it
• See at a glance which photos already have alt text and which don't
• Add descriptions to animated GIFs without losing the animation
• Send photos straight from the Photos share sheet
• Share a photo with the description already embedded

FREE, AND STAYING THAT WAY

Every feature is free forever. There is no paid tier, no subscription, no in-app purchase, no locked content, and no ads.

TigerText uses the Qwen2-VL model (Apache 2.0) running through Apple's MLX framework. The bundled model is verified with a SHA-256 integrity check on every new version, so you always run the genuine, untampered model.

A NOTE ON THE DOWNLOAD SIZE

TigerText is a big download, and that is the whole point. The entire AI model lives inside the app instead of on a server somewhere. Nothing is streamed, nothing is fetched, and none of the work happens on someone else's computer.

Download it once and it works forever. On a plane. In a tunnel. In a basement with no signal. On a trip with no data plan. There is no server to go down, no API to get shut off, no subscription to lapse, and no spinner while something uploads. Your photos are never part of anybody's dataset, because they never leave your phone.

Most apps that describe images send your pictures away to do it. TigerText carries the whole thing with you instead.

That's what makes TigerText a true offline utility: the big download is the feature. Install it once over Wi-Fi, and describing a photo never needs a network again.