Searching by Meaning — Fetchii Docs

Filename search only helps if you remember the filename. Fetchii's semantic search works the way your memory does: describe what was said — "the part where he explains attention mechanisms", "budget travel tips for Japan" — and Fetchii finds the videos and the moments, across your whole library.

It even works across languages: search in English and find the moment inside a Chinese video, or the other way around.

Turning It On

Open Settings → Intelligence → Search.
Make sure Search by meaning is on — it is by default. If the Search model (~470 MB) isn't installed yet, Fetchii downloads it the first time it's needed; click Download Now to fetch it right away.
That's it — Fetchii indexes your subtitles in the background.

Search needs text to work with, so it indexes videos that have subtitles Fetchii generated. The more of your library has subtitles, the more of it becomes searchable — Generating Subtitles fills the gaps, and pairs especially well with Generate subtitles automatically on this Mac.

Searching

Click the search field in the toolbar (or press ⌘F, also Edit → Search Downloads) and type. Results come in two groups:

Titles — downloads whose title or site contains your words.
Said in videos — videos where the transcript matches. Each one quotes the matching line with your words highlighted; a "Searching…" state shows while the index is consulted.

When the quoted line doesn't contain your exact words, it's labeled Matched by meaning (with the line's language when it differs from yours). The timecode button next to a match (▶ 12:34, "Play from 12:34") opens the video right at that moment; files Fetchii can't play itself open in your default player, with the timecode copied. If you've downloaded the same video more than once, the copies are merged into one result ("also in 2 copies").

Some example queries that work even when no title contains those words:

"recipe with mushrooms and cream"
"interview about startup fundraising"
"那段讲拉面的部分" — matching an English cooking video

Meaning matches start at three letters (two characters in Chinese or Japanese). Clear Search brings back the full list.

Keeping an Eye on the Index

Settings → Intelligence → Search shows a live status row:

"All N videos ready" — everything with a transcript is indexed.
"Indexing… X of Y" — Fetchii is working through the queue in the background.
"X of Y indexed" — some videos couldn't be indexed; click the row to see each one and the reason (still waiting for the Search model, no indexable text, an indexing error, and so on), or click Retry.

The … menu at the end of that row offers Rebuild Index (start fresh) and Clear Index (remove all search data). Per-video status also appears in each download's Intelligence popover (for example "Searchable in any language · 42 segments").

How It Stays Private

The index is a local database of text embeddings — mathematical fingerprints of your subtitles — stored on your Mac. Queries are matched locally. Nothing about your library or your searches is sent anywhere.

Troubleshooting

A video never shows up in results — check it has subtitles Fetchii generated; then check its status in the search index row.
Results feel off for very short queries — semantic search shines with descriptive phrases. Two or three words of meaning ("piano tutorial jazz") beat a single generic word.
You want a clean slate — use Rebuild Index in Settings → Intelligence.