Think about your Desktop.
Mine looks like this tonight:
And it could be just me, but
I’ve mostly stopped using folders?
+
Because our Search got so good.
But Search is only a great hack
as your ‘downloads’ folder becomes a landfill
👀
until a rare cleanup time comes up.
And while there is much talk around how we browse online with AI
It would be funny to be stuck with these options to browse our desktops
The problem
We’ve always built our files around how they were organised on the system directories.
And used ‘folders’ to categorise them.
But each folder had only one ‘name’, while our files had multiple attributes to them
Tags helped, but they were not accurate, tedious to manage, and just not ‘rich’ enough in representation
some promise
Photos have started doing this really well with AI x Search
Made possible since they’re stored on-cloud.
But even that’s not too great.
Because we’re still ‘hacking our way’ into Search.
We know what we want —> we think how would the computer describe what we want --> we look for that
Because our apps detect objects -
not instances, memories, or days
that context remains personal
Privacy and trust is key to tap into that granularity of our data,
and that only comes when our AI sits inside our own laptops and phones, not in a server.
Where do we go?
As AI models become smaller and more powerful to sit natively in our laptops (2026 - 2027)
The biggest OS-level opportunities will be around how we navigate things locally, and privately
File shuffle
The ability to reorganise folders (not just in order of how they appear), but by any contextual ask.
Example:
”show my work assets by client”
Ordering by context
Example:
”order my portraits by cuteness”
Searching via intent, not objects
Example:
”Gather all the docs I need to apply for a European Visa”