retroApple, a friend-focused photo-sharing app with nearly a million users, is adding a new feature that lets you time-travel through your old photo memories from your phone’s camera roll. While the app today offers a way to share photos of what’s going on during your week with a private group of friends or create shared albums, this latest addition, called “Rewind,” is private to you — unless you choose to share the photos with others.
Co-founder of Retro, nathan sharpExplains that the idea of Rewind was inspired by a feature the app already offered and was proving popular.
Today, at the end of the row displaying photos shared by your friends during the week, there’s a card you can tap that will let you see your photos from the same week a year ago.
However, that option was not accessible to new Retro users, as they had not yet uploaded enough photos to the app to take advantage of the photo memory feature.
“If you’re a new user, you don’t really have the opportunity to time-travel through your memories like this,” said Sharp, who spent more than six years at Meta, working on products like Instagram Stories and Facebook Dating, and launched his own photo-sharing startup. Ryan OlsonCTO of Retro, in 2022.
He said, “The other problem we saw was that people take more photos than ever before, but they actually take smaller amounts of photos than before. So it’s almost like those photos go into the ether.”
Additionally, to some extent, there is pushback against the growing trend of AI-generated content and “for you” feed-style algorithms.
“As people engage more and more with those platforms, something that should and will be true is that people will still want to see more of their friends,” Sharp says. “The photos and videos you take need to find a place where they can reach the intended audience.”
Although almost half (45.7%) of Retro’s users participate in the app on a daily basis, the rewind feature could increase that engagement even more.
To try Rewind, you can launch it either from the end of the row of shared photos, right after the “This Week” card, or from its more prominent location as a middle tab in the bottom navigation bar.
When launched, there is a haptic feedback as the screen begins to rotate through old photos pulled from your camera roll. These memories are not being shared, but if you feel inspired to send them to a friend or post them you can tap the share icon. Additionally, you can choose to hide photos you don’t want to see (like photos from an ex), or tap the “dice” icon to move them to a random memory instead.
As the iPod-inspired dial moves back into your past, you’ll feel a subtle vibration as each new memory is loaded. You can rotate the dial to go forward or backward in time, watch photos from past months and years flip through the screen, pause on ones you want to view longer or share.
You can press and hold on any photo to view it uncropped, and when you share a photo, a timestamp is added at the bottom so friends know it’s not a new photo.
Although screenshots will not appear in this photo collection, other photos – like receipts or a whiteboard at work – will, as they may still be interesting memories for you. (And if you come across a photo you don’t need to keep, deleting it from the app will also remove it from your Camera Roll.)
Of course, the idea of looking back at old photo memories is hardly new.
In the past, a startup called Timehop popularized the idea of doing something more with our growing digital photo archives by allowing users to revisit old photos through its simple mobile app. Later, Facebook copied the idea for its “On This Day” feature, and photo-hosting services like Google Photos and Apple Photos added Memories features of their own.
Still, Sharp doesn’t believe these will be direct competitors to the Retro. Facebook has reduced friends’ content over the past few years as its feed has become filled with links, news and ads. Meanwhile, people think of Apple and Google’s Photos apps more as utilities for managing and storing photos, and not as social apps like Retro.
