A photo widget that keeps the photos
If you are looking for this, you probably already like the idea — a friend's face on your home screen, arriving on its own — and you want something the app you are using does not do. So here is the honest version, including the parts where the app you have is the better choice.
What those apps are actually for
The category is built around today. A photo appears on your home screen, you send one back, and tomorrow there is a new one in its place. Most of them cap how many friends you can have, and present the cap as a feature — which, for what they are for, it is.
They are very good at this. If what you want is a light, fast, close-friends channel and nothing else, you do not need us and you should not switch.
Where this one is a different thing
Everything in that category is about now. There is no series, no film, and history — where it exists at all — is a paid extra whose extent is usually not stated anywhere you can find before paying.
Selfeed does the same daily arrival and then keeps it. Every day's frame stays for good, on a free account. Each one is cropped so the eyes sit in the same place, which is what turns three hundred of them into something you can watch rather than a folder you can scroll. The original photograph is kept ninety days free and for as long as you keep the account on Pro — and that sentence is the whole retention policy, said in full rather than in a tier list.
The comparison, plainly
| A photo widget | Selfeed | |
|---|---|---|
| A friend's photo on your home screen | yes | yes |
| Arrives without a notification | usually | yes |
| Friend limit | commonly capped, lifted by paying | no limit |
| Kept as a series | no | every day's frame, for good |
| Frames aligned on the face | no | yes |
| A film of the year | no | yes |
| Retention stated as a number | rarely | 90 days free, all years on Pro |
| Send a photo directly to one person | yes | no — you publish, followers see it |
Where they win
Two places, and they are real.
Sending to a specific person. Those apps are addressed: you take a photo and send it to your friends. Selfeed is published: you take today's frame into your own diary, and the people who follow you see it. If what you want is to send somebody a picture right now, a messenger or one of those apps is the correct tool and we are not.
Being tiny. They do one thing and ask almost nothing of you. Selfeed has albums, streaks, a film and a retention policy — all of which exist for a reason, and all of which are more than nothing.
Where we win
One place, and it is the whole reason this page exists: in a year, you still have the photographs, they play as a film, and you know exactly what was kept because we told you before you started.
The daily arrival is the part that makes people take the photo. The archive is the part that makes it worth having taken. Most apps in this category are built to do the first and designed to lose the second.
If you are moving over
You do not have to start from an empty album. On iOS, past days fill from your camera roll — a free account reaches ninety days back, which is about eleven seconds of film, and Pro reaches the whole library. Whatever you shot while using something else is still on your phone.
Try it against what you use now
Nothing to uninstall. Selfeed is open in the browser, and the widget lives in the iOS app.
How the widget works is here; what is kept, and for how long, is here.
Open the app