Retro app revives close-friend photo sharing with weekly journal format

During setup, users can choose to share photos daily, weekly, or monthly. The app then sends reminders to post at the selected interval. The photo picker only allows users to select images captured during the same week, which Engadget said helps reduce decision fatigue and keep posts authentic. The app pulls metadata from photos to show when and where they were taken, and this information can be displayed alongside the uploads.

Once users have a few uploads, they can create albums, customize fonts and cover images, and choose to share them on their profile or keep them private. Friends can collaborate on albums, making it a shared memory collection. Friends added on Retro can view photos from the past four weeks on a user's profile. A user can also hand a "key" to one person, granting that person access to the entire photo journal. The app also includes a direct messaging section.

Engadget highlighted the Memories tab as particularly enjoyable. It pulls images directly from the phone's camera roll, which is useful for users who have only been on the app for a short time. Rather than standard tap-and-swipe navigation, Retro uses a rotating wheel to browse through memories by time period.

The app is free to use and contains no ads. To support itself, Retro offers a paid tier called Retro Premium. Free users can upload unlimited photos but can only share images taken in the current week. Premium subscribers can share photos from any time, can also share short video clips, and are not required to post once a week to see friends' posts. One notable benefit of Premium is that it allows users to hand out keys to as many friends as they want. Pricing starts at $2 per week, $5 per month, or $36 for a year. Users can also get a full year of Premium by inviting five friends, or a lifetime pass by referring ten friends.

The main drawback, according to Engadget's review, is that the platform can feel like a "ghost town" if few friends use it. The reviewer said they only found two familiar faces in the app. Engadget noted that offering premium subscriptions for referrals is a smart way to encourage growth, and that for people in circles where the app is well known, what Retro offers is genuinely refreshing.