u/whittakers

This photo has no business being as good as it is given it was taken on an iPhone 5s in 2017. It's possibly the best photo I've ever taken and it was sitting somewhere in a library of 30,000+ photos I'd basically given up on ever organising.

That's what made me build Curator. Not because I wanted to delete photos, but because I wanted the good ones - the ones actually worth keeping - to be surfaced, saved & printed for my wall or an album. The problem is you can't get there without wading through series of 26 shots of the same thing / scene first, that I'd taken while trying to get the best shot where I only really want to keep 1 or 2.

The app uses on-device AI to identify and group similar photos and suggest which one from each group is actually the best - based on sharpness, lighting, whether people are looking at the camera, whether you've edited it before (a good sign you already knew it was worth keeping). User stays in control was an important principle: you can scroll through, change anything you disagree with before deleting, and then it suggests albums based on your trips and time periods using those curated photos.

If curious, it's still in TestFlight if anyone wants to try it before app store release - free during beta, privacy-centric: nothing leaves your phone. Take a screenshot in the app to leave a comment if you spot anything you think needs adding or improving - I'd love feedback.

https://testflight.apple.com/join/By5zRRpd

Will see if this post abides by the rules.. technically not advertising an editing app per Rule 3, and genuinely wanted to share my goat!

Hey r/showyourapp - I'm Oscar, solo dev, and this is Curator.

The problem I had: 30K+ photos on my phone, wanted to make real printed albums of my kids, couldn't face opening the cluttered library. Tried the existing cleanup apps - they all do the Tinder swipe thing (hard pass on doing that 30,000 times) and charge $10/week hoping you forget. So, like some before me, I built my own - but I truly think mine is better (not yet perfect, but better!)

What it does:

The main feature is an on-device AI scan that groups similar photos together - not just exact duplicates, but groups of different-angle shots of the same thing or scene - and suggests which 1-2 to keep based on quality metrics (sharpness, lighting, whether people are smiling and looking at the camera, whether you've edited it before). You scroll through and change anything you disagree with, then confirm deletion in one tap. User control was important, even I want to review the selections first.

A feature that solves issues with other apps: it marks photos as "reviewed" as you scroll over them, so you can delete just what you've actually looked at. Five minutes of scrolling = five minutes of real progress, not all-or-nothing.

It also does duplicates, videos sorted by size, screenshots, and then suggests albums based on trips and time periods using the best photos selected from the scan.

A future feature that I've draft plans for and I'd like to introduce in a post-launch version update would be a 'live photos' category in addition: I've scoped out that the scan pipeline could quite easily identify all live photos, evaluate whether there's a better 'key photo' than the one selected by default, and then show all the live photos where the app suggests a better key frame to use as the main photo based on the same quality metrics. User would then confirm the changes or modify the frame selection, and then as an optional 2nd step for space-saving, flatten the photos (remove the 'live' aspect) for pretty good space savings. I'm never going to actually review all my live photos, so I think that the app that improves them is a pretty big no-regrets win.

Where it's at:

Still in TestFlight, working toward App Store submission. Core features are solid and tested on real large libraries. Currently ironing out some UI/UX rough edges based on tester feedback - the biggest one being that the "reviewed" state on photos uses a purple border which confuses people, working on replacing it with something that stays within the red semantic family.

Everything is on-device. Nothing leaves your phone. One-time low payment, no subscription. Free during beta.

TestFlight: https://testflight.apple.com/join/By5zRRpd

Happy to answer questions about any of the technical decisions - the AI side (CLIP embeddings + perceptual hashing, all CoreML on-device) was the most interesting problem to solve.

Hey r/UI_Design, Oscar, solo dev here, looking for feedback on two specific interaction/design problems in my iOS photo cleanup + album app

I built Curator, a photo management app for iPhone that uses on-device AI to identify groups of similar/duplicate photos and suggest which ones to keep. It basically does the work for you but leaves you in control of what to delete - and then suggests albums as a bonus. Before I submit to the App Store I've been getting TestFlight feedback, and two UI/UX issues keep coming up. I'd love input from people who think about this more than I do.

Problem 1 : the main one I'm struggling with - the purple transition

The grid shows your photos grouped by similarity. Green border = AI suggests keep, red = AI suggests remove. When you scroll over a red photo, it transitions to purple, meaning "reviewed and marked for removal." This is the core interaction: you can toggle to change the selection to your liking (photos are very subjective to the user), and delete just the photos you've actually covered, rather than bulk-deleting everything the AI flagged.

The problem: testers don't initially understand why photos turn purple. They find it confusing and slightly alarming. The legend currently shows both a red dot and a purple dot next to "Remove" which adds to the confusion rather than clarifying it.

My question: is this a "needs a first-time explanation popup" problem, or is the interaction model itself too subtle? Is there a cleaner UI to communicate the reviewed vs. unreviewed distinction while both being 'remove' suggestions?

Problem 2 — card hierarchy and tappability on the homepage

The homepage has four cards: Best Photos (the main AI feature), Duplicates, Videos, Screenshots. Tapping them brings you into the grid view (see other screenshot). Best Photos is the primary value proposition but it doesn't visually read as more important than the others. I'm also not sure it's obvious the cards are tappable at all - some testers got there and wondered what to do next.

My question: Does it feel like a dashboard you interact with, or a summary you just look at? Does the 'Best Photos' card stand out as more important (main theme colour & subtle amber gradient/glow), or should it be thicker or something too? Are the border-glows around the cards nice or too much mixing of color?

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I'm not asking for a full review, just these two things. If you want to go deeper though, the TestFlight link is below - it's free to use during beta and nothing gets deleted without your explicit confirmation (the app only ever suggests, never acts - and they can only go to your recently deleted anyway).

TestFlight link: https://testflight.apple.com/join/By5zRRpd

Quick background on the app: I had 30K+ photos and wanted to make physical albums of my kids without drowning in groups of basically-the-same photos and giving up. Every other cleanup app I found uses swipe-left/right (no thanks) and predatory weekly subscriptions. I built this to be genuinely different: one-time low-cost payment, transparent, on-device AI only, nothing leaves your phone, and you stay in control of every deletion. The freemium tier covers your last 30 days so users can try it properly before paying anything.