Sundrop, a new app from the team behind read-it-later service Matter, helps new parents transform their phone photos into weekly recaps, time-lapses, highlights, and creative scenes like magazine covers or rookie cards. Founders Ben Springwater, Sky Lan, and Rob Mackenzie built the app to address parents overwhelmed by the volume of baby photos they accumulate.
The app processes all photos locally on the device using Apple's Vision framework and on-device Core ML models, avoiding cloud uploads. Both parents can link accounts and sync photos through iCloud without sending images to external servers. Sundrop does not use generative AI to create its scenes or highlights.
The app automatically scans Camera Rolls, skipping screenshots and duplicates, to identify highlights and generate what it calls "drops." Features include weekly recaps announced via Lock Screen notification, side-by-side photos of siblings at the same age, time-lapse videos of a child growing up, and cutout templates. Parents can manually edit photos used in creations or have the app organize the best shots into galleries.
Sundrop costs $39.99 per year and includes a one-week free trial. The annual plan covers Family Sharing, so one parent purchase covers both accounts.