Afterglow
Currently in pre-submission with the App Store. This page is a preview — the listing will go live once it ships.
Why this exists#
Photo libraries quietly grow into a weight you stop wanting to look at. The screenshots, the duplicates, the failed shots, the once-bright moments that now feel heavy — they pile up. Deleting them one by one feels both tedious and slightly sad, so most people don’t. Afterglow was built for that hesitation. It turns letting go into a calm, deliberate act, then quietly turns the act of release into something that grows.
The app has a single thesis: you don’t have to fight forgetting. Let it become a garden you can walk through.
Three Acts: Triage, Grace, Garden#
Afterglow is shaped as three tabs, mirrored after a three-act narrative. You don’t have to use them in order, but most sessions naturally pass through all three.
Triage#
A Tinder-style swipe. Left to forget, right to keep, up to favorite. The Vision framework quietly skips blurs and burst duplicates so the rhythm stays calm — you’re not punished by a wall of near-identical RAW shots from a single afternoon. Smart Sort surfaces similar, blurry, or overexposed shots first, so the early swipes feel productive without feeling brutal.
Grace#
A 7-day grace period. Photos you swipe away don’t disappear right away — recall any of them with a long press. After the 7 days, iOS’s Recently Deleted album then gives you another 30 days, so 37 days of room to change your mind. Grace exists because letting go shouldn’t be irreversible. It is the breath between “I think I’m done with this” and “yes, really.”
Garden#
What you truly release blooms as a 3D abandoned-amusement-park ecosystem. Cool light becomes moss; warm light becomes flowers; high-energy frames become fireflies. Each plant is a quiet farewell. You can walk the garden, watch the seasons shift, and export it as a video to keep — without keeping the original photos.
Why on-device#
Afterglow is 100% on-device. Every Vision analysis, SwiftData write, and 3D render happens on your iPhone. There is no network, no account, no third-party SDK, no analytics, no advertising ID, no telemetry. Your photos never leave your device. We can’t see what you tossed; iCloud doesn’t see it either.
This isn’t a feature. It is the architectural posture of the app. A cleanup tool earns trust by handling sensitive content with as few external moving parts as possible — so we removed all of them.
What grows in the garden#
The garden has 11 archetypes, unlocking gradually as the diversity of your released photos grows:
- Moss — cool, blue-shifted scenes
- Mushroom — low-light or shadowy frames
- Flower — warm, saturated palettes
- Vine — long-form sequences and panoramas
- Firefly — high-energy, motion-rich shots
- Butterfly — colorful, cheerful frames
- Fruit tree — densely populated scenes
- Paper — text-heavy screenshots
- Scrap — failed exposures, technical misfires
- Statue — portrait-shaped compositions
- Wild grass — anything else
Each is a tiny codex entry, a reminder that what you released wasn’t worthless — it was just done.
Quiet farewell#
Afterglow is hobbyist software, written for one person at a time. There is no leaderboard, no streak, no notification asking you to come back. The seasonal recap will tell you what colors your spring or autumn had, and that’s it. You don’t have to fight forgetting. Let it be a garden you can walk through.