Retro, a friend-focused photo-sharing app with roughly 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 with a private group of friends or create shared albums, this latest addition, dubbed Rewind, is private to you unless you choose to share the photos with others.
Retro’s co-founder, Nathan Sharp, explains that the idea for Rewind was inspired by a feature the app already offered. At the end of the row showcasing the photos your friends shared during the week, there is a card you can tap to view your own photos from that same week a year ago. However, that option was not accessible to newer Retro users, since they had not yet uploaded enough photos to the app.
Sharp noted that new users did not have the opportunity to time-travel through their memories in this way. He also pointed out that people take more photos than ever but do less with that volume, so it is almost as if those photos disappear. The addition is, to some extent, a pushback against the growing trend of AI-generated content and algorithmic feeds. Sharp believes people will always want to see more of their friends, and the photos they take need a place to reach their intended audience.
Although nearly half of Retro’s users participate in the app daily, the Rewind feature could boost that engagement even higher. To try Rewind, you can launch it from the end of the row of shared photos or from its prominent position as the middle tab in the bottom navigation bar.
When launched, there is a haptic response as the screen cycles through older photos pulled from your camera roll. These memories are not being shared automatically, but you can tap a share icon to send them to a friend or post them. You can also opt to hide photos you would rather not see or tap a dice icon to be taken to a random memory.
As the iPod-inspired dial clicks back into your past, you will feel a subtle vibration as each new memory loads. You can spin the dial to move forward or backward in time, watching photos from months and years past flip by on the screen. You can pause on those you want to view longer or share.
You can press and hold on any photo to see it uncropped, and when you share a photo, a timestamp is added at the bottom so friends understand it is not a new picture. While screenshots will not appear in this archive, other photos like those of receipts or whiteboards will show up, as they could still be interesting memories. If you come across a photo you do not need to keep, deleting it from the app will also delete it from your camera roll.
The idea to look back at older photo memories is hardly new. In the past, a startup called Timehop popularized the idea of revisiting old photos. Later, Facebook copied the idea for its On This Day feature, and services like Google Photos and Apple Photos added memories features of their own.
Still, Sharp does not believe these will be direct competitors for Retro. Facebook has downranked friends’ content as its feed filled with links, news, and ads. Meanwhile, people tend to think of Apple’s and Google’s photo apps more as utilities for managing and storing photos, not as social apps like Retro.