BabySteps
All features
Growth Timelapse

Same spot,
every week

Same chair, same corner, once a week. The camera lays last week's photo faintly over the live view so this week's lines up with it — and the whole series flips past full-screen, each frame captioned with the week and how old Mia was that day.

Week 12
Off25%40%60%
The aligned camera

Line the chair up with the chair

Open the camera on a series and your previous photo is already there, faint over the live viewfinder. Nudge the phone until the chair sits on the chair and the teddy on the teddy, then press the shutter. That one small habit is what makes the series read as a single continuous shot rather than a pile of photos.

The overlay never takes touches, so the shutter stays reachable with a baby in your other arm. And there is nothing clever happening underneath — no face detection, no automatic alignment. You line it up by eye, which is exactly why it stays yours.

  • Four one-tap overlay strengths — Off, 25%, 40% and 60%
  • A rule-of-thirds grid, already on for the very first photo
  • The slot you’re filling sits in a pill at the top: “Week 12”
  • Flip to the front camera without leaving the series
  • After the shutter: keep it, retake it, change the date, add a note
How strong the ghost is

Four taps instead of a slider. Turn it right down in a dark room, or off entirely.

Off
25%
40%
60%
Rule-of-thirds gridOn for the very first photo, when there is nothing to line up against yet.
Then: keep it, or retake it

“First time she grabbed the bear.”

The slot grid

A missed week is just a gap

A series is a grid of slots — weekly or monthly, three columns, newest first, running all the way back to the very first one. Weeks you filled show their photo. Weeks you missed are soft dashed placeholders, and that is all they ever become: no red mark, no broken streak, no tally of what you owe.

Tap an empty week and the camera opens already dated inside it, so catching up is one tap rather than date arithmetic. Been doing this by hand for months already? Pick a batch from your camera roll and each photo's own date drops it into the week it belongs to.

  • Tap a filled slot for its note, to retake it, or to empty it again
  • Photos from your library that don’t fit are skipped, with a count — not twenty questions
  • One photo per slot, and replacing one always asks first
  • The “Play” button arrives as soon as there are two photos
  • A weekly series and a monthly one can run side by side for the same child
Weekly photoMia · every weekPlay · 14 photos
Week 15
Week 14
Week 13
Week 12
Week 11
Week 10
Week 9
Week 8
Week 7
Add Week 15's photo
Playback

Watch three months go by

Press Play and the photos flip past full-screen like a flipbook, each one captioned with its week and how old Mia was that day — “Week 12 · 3 months”. Frames cut rather than dissolve, because a timelapse should cut: the change between one week and the next is the whole point, and a cross-fade would smooth it away.

It plays inside the app, on your phone, with nothing to render and nothing to wait for. Weeks you missed are simply skipped, so a patchy series still plays beautifully, and it stops on the newest photo instead of looping — the story has an end, and it is the newest photo. Any single frame can go to the grandparents from the share button without leaving playback.

  • 2×, 4× or 8× — slow enough to study, fast enough to feel like growth
  • Drag anywhere along the track to jump, or step one photo at a time
  • Tap the photo and the controls fade away, leaving just your child
  • Frames load ahead, so the very first play never stutters
  • Ages read the way you’d say them: “Newborn”, “3 weeks”, “5 months”, “1 year 2 mo”
Week 12 · 3 months
9 of 14
No streaks

A ritual that never keeps score

There is no streak to break here, no “you missed three weeks”, no percentage of a year completed. Some weeks a baby is teething and nobody is photographing anybody. The grid leaves a quiet dashed square and waits.

If you do want help keeping the rhythm, each series has one reminder you can switch on: a single nudge on the day a new photo is due, at most once for that slot, and never a word about one you missed. It stays off until you ask for it, and tapping it opens the aligned camera. On the Keepsakes tab the series card shows a soft “photo day” hint when this week's photo is still missing — and no hint at all on a series that hasn't started, because it is there to invite you, not to scold you.

Weekly photo
Week 14 · 14 photos
Photo day
Photo-day reminderOne gentle nudge when a new photo is due — never a reminder about a missed one.
The small things

Set up in a minute, safe for years

The details that make a weekly habit survive bad signal, dark rooms and the everyday chaos of a house with a baby in it.

One screen to begin

Pick a child, choose weekly or monthly, give it a name, set the day it counts from. If there's a birthday on file it fills the start date in for you, so “Week 12” really does mean twelve weeks old.

The rhythm stays put

Once a series is running, its cadence and start date are fixed — photos can never shuffle out of the weeks they belong to. The name, who can see it and the reminder stay editable.

A shutter that never just does nothing

If the in-app camera can't deliver a photo, the app says so in plain words and offers your phone's own camera instead — warning you honestly that the alignment overlay won't be there.

Also in your camera roll

Every photo you take here lands in your normal camera roll too, full size and uncropped — unless you turn that off in Settings. The matching portrait crop is the shape of the series, not a replacement for the picture you just took.

A dead spot can't lose a photo

Take one with no signal and it's kept on your phone and uploaded the moment you're back online, with a small spinner in its slot meanwhile. Its date, note and week are stored alongside it, so even closing the app can't confuse it.

Private until you say otherwise

A new series is visible to your journal's members only, and you can open it to the whole family whenever you like. Anyone invited to look rather than add simply doesn't get the camera or delete buttons.

Coming soon to iPhone

Their first years only
happen once

BabySteps is nearly ready. Leave your email and we'll tell you the day it lands — nothing else, ever.

Prefer to write to us yourself? hello@ourbabysteps.com