Retro is a social app that feels like a joy, not a habit. It’s a friends-only photo journal where you share for yourself as much as your friends. It gently nudges you to find at least one moment each week to remember and then put that moment out there in a post so your friends know what you’re up to.

One early indicator that we’re on the right track is that our friends that deeply value privacy and safety feel comfortable enough to share photos of their kids’ faces and flight itineraries and wild parties — things they wouldn’t feel comfortable sharing elsewhere.

We started working on it when we realized something: after all that has been built in social since the iPhone, we now see less of our friends on social than we did 5 years ago. The apps that have traditionally served this purpose well have pivoted toward entertainment created by people you don’t know, and even though this content is entertaining, it also crowds out the other content that friends share with each other. So now we’re left sorting through a ton of message threads to see what’s going on with friends, or most commonly, we just don’t get that update at all. That’s a superpower lost.

Even though consumer social is insanely hard, we decided to do this together because it’s the app we wanted for ourselves, and we think it’s important that people have a place that remains dedicated to being the best place to catch up with friends and family.

So give it a whirl! If you’ve taken a photo on your iPhone in the last month, you have enough to get started. And as you use it over the course of a couple weeks, we hope it helps you appreciate moments big and small in your own life and in the lives of your friends and family.

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