Dhito vs Fenn
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The short answer
This is the closest comparison on the site, and for most people Dhito is the better buy. Both index local files with on-device AI, read images, transcribe audio and video, rename by content and chat with documents privately — the category is genuinely the same. Dhito is 45% cheaper at $4.99/month against $9, and that $9 is billed annually, so the real comparison is $4.99 whenever you like against $108 up front. Dhito also indexes transcripts at segment level so a search lands on the minute rather than the file, publishes the exact model chain running on your machine, and needs no account or card to trial. Fenn's advantage is breadth: 50+ file types including Office, iWork and Adobe, plus connectors for Notion, Bear and Apple Notes. If your work lives in those, Fenn is the only one of the two that can see it.
Dhito vs Fenn at a glance
| Fenn | Dhito | |
|---|---|---|
| On-device AI search | Yes | Yes |
| Audio and video transcription | Yes | Yes, local Whisper |
| Image understanding | Yes | Yes, local vision model |
| AI file renaming | Yes | Yes |
| Chat with your files | Yes | Yes, bundled local model |
| File-type coverage | 50+, incl. Office, Pages/Keynote, InDesign, Illustrator | 100+ extensions, incl. PSD and camera RAW, but no Excel, PowerPoint or iWork |
| Connected apps | Apple Notes, Mail, Notion, Bear, Craft | None — local files only |
| Auto-organising folders | Yes, rule-based smart folders | No |
| Licensing | $9/month billed annually ($108 up front), $249 lifetime, $999 teams (5 Macs) | $4.99/month, true month to month, no lifetime option |
| Free trial | Yes | 14 days, no account, no card |
| Hardware | Apple Silicon | Apple Silicon, macOS 13+ |
Where the two genuinely overlap
There is no useful way to pretend these products are in different categories. Fenn and Dhito are both private, on-device AI file search for macOS. Both:
- index files by meaning rather than by filename;
- read the contents of images;
- transcribe audio and video locally and make speech searchable;
- suggest descriptive filenames based on what a file actually contains;
- let you ask questions of your documents without sending anything to a server;
- require an Apple Silicon Mac.
If you are choosing between them on "which one is the private AI search app", the answer is that both are. The decision is made on the details below.
Where Fenn is ahead
Format breadth. Fenn advertises 50+ file types, including Microsoft Office, Pages, Keynote and Numbers, Adobe formats such as InDesign and Illustrator, and Figma. Photoshop files and camera RAW used to sit on this list too; Dhito now indexes both, so they no longer separate the two. Dhito indexes over 100 extensions — PDF, Word, DOC, RTF, ODT, EPUB, text, Markdown, RST, CSV, TSV and around 33 code and config formats; JPEG, PNG, HEIC, HEIF, WebP, PSD, TIFF, BMP, ICO, AVIF and ten camera RAW formats; 17 video and 14 audio containers — but the categories it omits are specific and important: spreadsheets, slide decks and iWork. No Excel, PowerPoint, Pages, Keynote, Numbers, InDesign or Illustrator. If your work lives in Keynote decks or InDesign files, that gap decides it immediately.
Connected apps. Fenn reaches into Apple Notes, Mail, Notion, Bear and Craft. Dhito indexes files on disk and nothing else — a note in Notion is invisible to it.
Organising, not just finding. Fenn's rule-based smart folders auto-update as files arrive. Dhito renames files and finds them; it does not file them.
A lifetime option. Fenn sells a one-time licence at $249 including a year of updates. Some people will not rent software, and that is a legitimate position with no Dhito equivalent.
Where Dhito is ahead
Price, and the shape of it. $4.99/month against $9/month, which over a year is $60 against $108. The shape matters as much as the number: Fenn's $9 monthly rate is billed annually, so the entry cost is $108 up front for a year you have committed to. Dhito is billed monthly with no annual commitment — if it does not work on your files in month two, you stop paying in month two. If the formats you need are on Dhito's list, you are paying roughly half for the same category of tool, and paying it a month at a time.
Timestamps inside recordings. Dhito indexes transcripts at the segment level, so a search resolves to the minute of a two-hour recording where the topic came up rather than to the file as a whole. If you work with long recordings, that is the difference between finding the meeting and finding the moment.
A shorter model chain to audit. Dhito's pipeline is documented and fixed: Whisper for speech, Florence-2 for vision, BGE-small-en-v1.5 for embeddings, an MS-MARCO cross-encoder for reranking, Qwen3 for chat. If you need to tell a compliance officer exactly what runs on the machine, a short published list is easier than a general "everything is local" claim.
No account for search. The 14-day trial needs no account and no card.
How to actually decide
The honest recommendation is to install both — the trials cost nothing — and point each at the same folder. Two questions settle it quickly:
1. Does it index my formats? If your archive is InDesign, Keynote or Notion, Dhito will not see it and the comparison ends there. 2. How good is retrieval on my own files? Semantic search quality is not a spec you can read off a page. Run five real queries — the ones that failed in Spotlight — against each index and compare what comes back.
Neither of us can answer the second question for you honestly, which is why both products offer trials.
The verdict
For the common case — PDFs, documents, screenshots and recordings on disk — Dhito wins on price, on landing you at the moment inside a recording rather than the file, and on being able to name every model that runs. Fenn wins outright if your files are Office, iWork or Adobe formats, or if your knowledge lives in Notion or Apple Notes, because Dhito simply does not index those. Check the format list against your own disk first; it is the one thing that settles this without a trial.
Who should use what
Documents, PDFs, screenshots and recordings
Dhito
Both cover this well and Dhito is 45% cheaper — $60 a year against $108. Segment-level transcript indexing also lands you on the moment inside a recording, not just the file.
You work with long recordings
Dhito
Finding the meeting is not the same as finding the moment. Dhito indexes transcripts at segment level and jumps to the timestamp where the topic came up.
You have to justify the tool to a compliance officer
Dhito
Whisper, Florence-2, BGE-small-en-v1.5, an MS-MARCO reranker and Qwen3, all on-device. A published, fixed model list is easier to sign off than a general assurance that everything is local.
Office, iWork, Adobe files — or Notion and Apple Notes
Fenn
Dhito does not index those formats and has no connectors. That is a hard stop, not a preference, and no amount of price advantage changes it.
Honest limitations
Where Dhito falls short
- No Excel, PowerPoint, Pages, Keynote, Numbers, InDesign or Illustrator support. Word, PDF, RTF, ODT, text, code, images, audio and video are all covered, but spreadsheets and slide decks are the gap that can rule Dhito out outright.
- No connectors. Notion, Apple Notes, Mail, Bear and Craft are invisible to it.
- No auto-organising or rule-based smart folders; it renames and finds, it does not file.
- No lifetime licence and no team licence — $4.99/month, per person. Fenn passes Dhito's cumulative cost only after about four years.
- No sync between Macs; each machine keeps its own index.
- Apple Silicon only, macOS 13 Ventura or newer — the same hardware constraint Fenn has.
Where Fenn falls short
- $9/month against Dhito's $4.99 — and the $9 rate is billed annually, so getting in costs $108 up front rather than a month at a time. The alternative is $249 for a lifetime licence that includes one year of updates.
- The Flex and Lifetime licences cover one Mac; the five-Mac team licence is $999.
- Apple Silicon only, with no Intel support — the same hardware constraint Dhito has.
- Indexing 50+ formats and connected apps means more to keep current, and more surface area for a format to regress.
- A broader feature set — organising, anonymising, connectors — is a longer learning curve than a search box.
- Published prices and features move; the figures here were checked in August 2026 and should be confirmed on their site.
Frequently asked questions
Are Fenn and Dhito really the same kind of product?
Yes, more than any other pair on this site. Both are private, on-device AI file search for Apple Silicon Macs, both transcribe audio and video locally, both read image contents, both rename files by content, and both let you chat with documents offline. The choice comes down to file-type coverage, licensing model, and how each performs on your own files.
Which one supports more file types?
Fenn, clearly. It advertises 50+ types including Microsoft Office, Pages, Keynote, Numbers, InDesign and Illustrator, plus connectors for Apple Notes, Mail, Notion, Bear and Craft. Dhito indexes over 100 extensions across documents, text, code, images, audio and video — including Word, which people often assume is missing — but no spreadsheets, slide decks or iWork files, and it has no app connectors at all.
Which is cheaper?
Dhito, on a subscription basis: $4.99/month against Fenn's $9/month — and Fenn's monthly rate is billed annually, so the entry price is $108 up front against Dhito's $4.99 with no annual commitment. Fenn also sells a $249 lifetime licence including a year of updates, which becomes cheaper than Dhito after roughly four years and has no Dhito equivalent.
Are both genuinely private?
Both state that processing is local with no cloud uploads. Dhito publishes the exact model chain that runs on-device — Whisper, Florence-2, BGE-small-en-v1.5, an MS-MARCO reranker and Qwen3 — and is specific about the one thing that does leave the machine: licence validation, which sends a hardware ID and your billing email. No file contents, no filenames, no search queries, no usage telemetry. That is a more checkable answer than a general assurance that everything is local, which is what you want when someone asks you to justify the tool.
Can I try both before deciding?
Yes, and you should. Dhito is free for 14 days with no account and no card. Fenn offers a trial as well. Point both at the same folder and run the five queries that failed in Spotlight — retrieval quality on your own files is not something either product can prove to you from a marketing page.
Does either run on Intel Macs?
Neither. Both require Apple Silicon, because both run neural models on the Neural Engine. If you are on an Intel Mac, the practical options are Spotlight or a non-AI tool such as HoudahSpot.
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Try Dhito on your own files
Fourteen days free, no account required to search. Point it at one folder and run the query that made you go looking for an alternative in the first place.