The key facts
- Sundrop was created by the developers of the read-it-later app Matter: Ben Springwater, Sky Lan, and Rob McKenzie.
- Photo processing occurs on-device using Apple Vision and Core ML, without relying on cloud servers.
- The subscription costs $39.99 per year, includes a one-week free trial, and supports Family Sharing.
A new app for parents of infants
Parents of newborns take a huge number of photos, which, after the first viewing and posting, usually remain unused in the gallery. The new Sundrop app offers to make use of these archives: it automatically creates weekly collections, highlights, growth timelapses, and 'scenes'—for example, a photo of the child on a magazine cover or on a sports rookie card. TechCrunch reports on this.
Niche and creators
The app targets a narrow audience—parents (usually of their first child)—who take so many photos that the built-in tools of Google Photos and Apple Photos are no longer sufficient. Sundrop was developed by the same team behind the read-it-later app Matter: Ben Springwater, Sky Lan, and Rob McKenzie, each of whom is a father themselves, worked on the product for several months.
Privacy and rejection of generative AI
The key distinction of Sundrop is privacy: all photos are processed locally on the device. The app uses the Apple Vision framework and on-device Core ML models, without sending photos to cloud servers or third-party AI services. Both parents can link their accounts and sync shared photos via iCloud—according to the company, the photos do not end up on its own servers. Additionally, the team emphasizes that generative AI is not used when creating scenes and highlights—unlike many photo editors, including Google products, which increasingly employ generative models to create new versions of photos.
How it works and how much it costs
Sundrop scans the Camera Roll of both parents on iPhone, skipping screenshots and duplicates, and creates 'drops' from the photos: a weekly overview delivered as a notification to the lock screen every Sunday, a comparison of two children at the same age, a timelapse series of photos or videos showing growth, cutting out the child and inserting them into a multi-layered template. Parents can manually edit the photos used, and the app automatically gathers the best shots into galleries based on similarity. The subscription costs $39.99 per year, with a one-week free trial; the annual plan includes Family Sharing, so only one parent needs to pay.
