TimeIn seeks to unify a given set of file objects into a unified browsing experience providing mechanisms to Cluster visually similar objects and display objects in a timeline view from a local file system or flickr.com. To navigate this content, users are provided with a variety of mechanisms for filtering the set of objects presented.

For text based objects, TimeIn will analyze the content of the file and attempt to extract a set of descriptive phrases. For image based objects, TimeIn will annotate the object with the most frequently used colors of the image. Users have the option of augmenting these automatically generated tags by defining their own descriptive tags

While providing novel features for browsing and searching content, TimeIn retains many of the original organizational features of existing systems. When content is imported from a hierarchical file system, users can still browse by the original hierarchical structure.

TimeIn also retains the PhotoSet structures associated with content imported from flickr.com. Users can also organize content into user-defined "albums" of objects. These albums can then be used to filter the set of objects on the timeline.