Hey r/Apple,
I’m the solo indie developer behind AmberTime, a privacy-first app designed to back up your iPhone Photo Library directly to any USB-C flash drive or SSD, without needing a Mac or a cloud subscription.
Recently, I’ve received a lot of great feedback from users, and I just shipped a new update that passed review today.
The most requested feature was handling "Optimize iPhone Storage." With the new v1.0.3 update, I've added iCloud-only photo backup. You can now choose to have the app automatically download and back up photos that only exist in iCloud straight to your external drive in a single step.
A quick recap of what AmberTime does:
• Incremental backups: It only copies new items, so daily backups take seconds.
• True Live Photo support: Keeps HEIC and MOV files together, and you can play them right off the drive.
• Custom albums auto-sync: Backs up your custom albums the moment you plug in your drive.
• 100% offline & local: No accounts, no data collection, and it runs completely offline (unless you are actively downloading iCloud-only items).
AmberTime is available for a $4.99 one-time purchase (no subscriptions ever). If you’ve been looking for a simple, local way to get a hard copy of your memories, I'd love to hear your thoughts.
I'm happy to answer any questions about the app or the tech stack in the comments!
🔗 App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6760618605
🌐 Website: https://amber.reddash.app