Retro. Ad-Free Social 17+

the app I’ve been waiting for

Now that all my other fave social media apps feel like they’ve been completely taken over by memes and ads and random accounts who aren’t actually my social circles, I’ve been SEARCHING for anything that actually helps me keep up with farther away friends and family. I tried so many others but found them pushy or hard to keep up with or not private enough. This app SOLVES IT ALL. It doesn’t try to force you to post daily, but still encourages you to put something from your week so you can look back on your month/year/etc. the default is private and “old” posts are hidden unless you give access (no need to clean out old posts). Going through new posts from friends are always brought to the top and easy to go through or comment. The recaps at the end of each week and month are soooo gorgeous and fun to share with friends off the app too. I truly have loved every second with this app and have told at least a dozen friends of mine to join asap so I can keep up with them. Please please please keep this app as clean and inner circle focused as it is today, it’s MAGICAL

So far so good!

Just started using this and it’s a great little app. It is like a throwback to old days of IG but better: especially love the recap view. I was even tempted to invite a few friends lol but I’m waiting to see how I use it long term. Since you can only have one account/handle (as far as I can see) I went back and forth trying to decide how I was gonna use it: photo dump, visual journal, hobby tracker etc. I wanted to use it multiple ways like I do with IG and the separate accts I have on there but don’t see that option yet. But so far I love the way the app works, it’s smart and intuitive and ad-free. And I love being able to control who sees my stuff and cut the noise of lots of random feeds floating through my own. Great job folks: please don’t junk it up with random access, and ads and filters and reels! Thanks for making this and advertising it on IG so I could find it!

Developer Response ,

Hey knitizen! We're so happy that you're enjoying Retro so far. We launched a feature today called Journals that we think will solve exactly the use case you're describing here. Journals is a collection of photos, to be used however you see fit - it can be for photo dumping from a trip, keeping a private visual journal for hobbies, or having a private place to stay in touch with someone important to you. They're as public as you'd like them to be - so you can keep ones just for yourself, share them with specific friends, or even make it public and share a link out to your journal for others to view. We hope that you like it and that it helps you look back on all the moments you want to remember :)

Almost Perfect

I love almost everything about this app. I LOVE that there are no ads, no suggested content, no algorithms, and especially that it’s not owned by a fascist oligarch. It’s clean and simple and a breath of fresh air. What I don’t like is that your followers can’t see your posts for that week unless they also posted something for that week (and vise versa). This is not doable for a few of my friends and family, like my 93-year old mother. She enjoys seeing everyone’s pictures but she obviously isn’t going to post anything and I think it’s wrong to force people to make a post in order to see posts from those they follow. At the very least give the user the option of allowing or not allowing views based on whether or not a follower also posts. Also, as another user suggested, please allow uploading of multiple photos from different weeks / dates and have the app sort and post them. Also, I could find no way to add any text to my post unless it was by adding a comment. Why??? Give us a way to say something about our photo without having to add a comment, please. Fix these and it’s a 5-star app.

Developer Response ,

Thanks so much for trying Retro! As for the post-to-see nudge each week, we wanted to create a place where everyone shares - no lurkers like on other social apps. But we totally get that your grandmother may never post, and we've got a new feature coming to address that for you. And captions, too! Email us at founders@retro.app if you ever want to get other feature requests on the roadmap.