PicWay is coming to the App Store soon; it isn’t there yet. What we care about is the time you spend looking through your photos. Below, each part of the app gets a short summary taken from the current version, and the Journey and video sound get a closer look at what they do and why.
What is it like to scroll the PicWay photo grid?
The grid is where you browse your photos, so it’s built to feel immediate.
Scrolling the grid stays smooth, and once you stop, cells that are still soft can sharpen up (not in Low Power Mode, Low Data Mode or offline). For fast scrolling there is a knob: hold and drag it and year labels appear; pause on a year and that year opens into its months.
How do Review, Journeys and widgets pick the right photo?
Review, Journeys and widgets all bring old photos back, so each one has to be right about which photo it is showing.
Tap the photo you see on the On This Day widget and the set of photos that opens starts with that exact photo.
How does PicWay recognize a real trip as a Journey?
What it does. A Journey is worked out from where and when your photos were taken. It isn’t just “photos from the same stretch of time stuck together”. These are the rules:
- Your home comes first. How far away you are is measured from where you usually live. There can be more than one place (say you live in two cities), and going to either one doesn’t count as “away”.
- “Far” means more than 50 km from home.
- A day away. If at least 60% of that day’s located photos are far from home, it’s a full day away. If the share is lower but there are at least 2 far photos, it’s a partial day, which is how a departure morning at home and an afternoon landing, or the day you come back, still count.
- From days to a Journey. At least 2 days away, at least 1 of them a full day, and at least 6 far photos in total. With 2 or more full days, 3 far photos are enough.
- Days without photos. Up to 2 days in a row with nothing to go on don’t break a Journey. If the days on both sides are in the same city (within 30 km), up to 5 days are allowed, for a drive into the mountains with no signal or a hotel stay spent mostly on the phone with few photos. For different cities it stays at 2 days, so two unrelated trips don’t get stitched into one.
- Several places. Days away that are within 30 km of each other are merged into one stop, and a Journey can have several stops.
- Photos you skip. The city names and the start and end dates are worked out again from the photos that remain. If every photo in a Journey is skipped, the whole card disappears.
Why it works this way. The numbers are chosen to keep out noise: day trips and a single stray GPS point shouldn’t become a Journey. One limitation is known: for the first few weeks after you move, the new home hasn’t been recognized yet, so those weeks can be mistaken for a trip.
All the Review, Journey and widget details →
What’s behind video sound and Live Photos?
Sound and motion are easy to get slightly wrong. These are two places where PicWay tries not to.
Watching videos while music plays: PicWay only takes the sound when you turn it on
What it does. Suppose music is playing in another app. If you watch a video in PicWay with the sound off, your music keeps playing. If you turn the video’s sound on, PicWay takes over the sound and the music stops. When the video ends, you pause it, you swipe to the next card, you mute it again or you leave, PicWay hands the sound back and your music carries on. This applies to videos in Review, in the Photos viewer and in the video feed. In Review, pressing and holding a Live Photo to hear it works the same way: the sound is taken while you hold and given back when you let go.
Why it works this way. Before a silent video starts, PicWay doesn’t claim the audio session. It switches the audio to a mode that mixes with other apps, and switches back only when something actually needs sound. Giving the sound back also tells the other app it may continue.
Video to Live Photo. By default the finished clip can be at most 3.9 seconds long, after any speed change. Turn on “No Time Limit” and the selection can take in the whole video.
All the video sound and Live Photo details →
How can you check a compression for yourself?
A compression is only worth keeping if you can see what changed.
After a video compression, the comparison view stacks the two versions on the same picture and you drag a divider across it: the original on the left, the compressed version on the right, the same frame side by side.
What happens when you save a collage that moves?
When a collage contains Live Photos, you can export it as a Live Photo: a still image plus a paired video, tied together by one shared ID, and both saved to your library in the same save request.
All the collage and editing details →
What happens when you delete?
When you tap delete, iOS shows its own deletion confirmation first. What you delete goes into Recently Deleted, where you can get it back for 30 days.
All the tidying and deleting details →
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