Do you miss the nostalgia of watching home movies on VHS but find all your personal videos stuck on your iPhone? While you can AirPlay them to the TV, the experience just isn’t the same. This struggle inspired developer Devin Davies to create Cassette, a new iOS app that plays back videos in a VHS-style format, making your iPhone videos feel like old home recordings.
To use the app, you virtually “load” one of the tapes displayed on the screen by selecting the year’s videos you want to watch. The videos are labeled with handwritten-style stickers on the VHS tape’s cover sleeve. Once selected, your life unfolds on the screen without any further interaction required.
This lean-back experience offers a fresh way to enjoy the media stored on your device—content that often goes unwatched after the initial recording. The idea for Cassette came from Davies’ friend and fellow app developer Charlie Chapman, who also works as a senior advocate at RevenueCat. Chapman expressed frustration in a group chat about how modern family movie nights lack the charm of watching old videotapes. He wished for a way to AirPlay videos to the TV and have them play continuously, one after another.
Davies, known for his award-winning recipe app Crouton, embraced the idea and built Cassette from a custom slideshow app he had previously developed for Apple TV. After sharing a test version with the group chat, the response was overwhelming.
Chapman recounted the experience, saying, “I kid you not, the entire group chat had this profound experience with our partners where we stayed up all night watching our kids grow up before our eyes. I’ve never experienced ‘product market fit,’ or whatever you want to call it, like this before.”
The app features a clever and simple design, presenting rows of retro VHS tapes. Tapping one “loads” it into the TV icon at the top of the iPhone’s screen to start playback. With AirPlay, you can mirror the experience to a TV for a bigger, more immersive viewing session.
Videos include location, date, and timestamps displayed in a retro pixel font reminiscent of old VHS tapes. Even if you’re too young to remember VHS, the format evokes nostalgia—likely because old home movies are often referenced in sentimental scenes in modern films and TV shows.
However, the app still faces some challenges. If you frequently save online videos, like TikToks or Reels, they may appear among your “home movies.” Davies has already implemented filters to exclude screen recordings and is exploring ways to filter out TikTok videos as well.
To support its development, Cassette offers an optional premium subscription called “ColorPlus,” which allows users to manually select a VHS tape instead of random playback. The subscription costs $0.99 per month or $5.99 per year, with a lifetime unlock available for $7.99—an affordable way to support indie projects like this.
Cassette is available as a free download for iPhone and iPad.