Sprout: One Second a Day

One second a day. In a year, a film.

Record one to three seconds — or take a single photo — and Sprout quietly strings the days together. Nothing to edit. Nothing to upload.

Everything stays on this iPhone. No account, no server, no network requests at all.

WHAT IT'S FOR

Things that change too slowly to notice, and are startling to watch back. A baby learning to sit, then stand, then run. A plant on the windowsill through four seasons. Yourself, after the run, every evening.

One day on its own is worth almost nothing. Four hundred of them in a row will stop you where you stand.

HOW A DAY WORKS

Tap the shutter for a photo. Hold it to record up to three seconds. Keep it, or shoot another — a second take doesn't overwrite the first. The old one waits underneath and you can swap back with one tap. Tomorrow, they're gone and only the one you chose remains.

That's the whole habit. Come back tomorrow.

THE FILM IS ALWAYS ALREADY MADE

Your days are joined in order the moment you record them. Press play and watch what you have so far, any time. Export it as an MP4 to your Photos library, or send it to whoever it's for.

If you want them: a date in the corner, an opening and closing card, a soft cross-dissolve between days. The dissolve is off by default — a hard cut has more rhythm.

SMOOTHING THAT LEAVES YOUR FACE YOUR FACE

The reason people stop doing this isn't forgetting. It's "I look terrible today."

So smoothing is on by default, at a natural strength, and it runs on this phone's GPU. What you see in the viewfinder is exactly what gets recorded — there's no surprise later. Pores stay. Bone structure stays. Face slimming and eye enlarging sit at zero in every preset; if you want them, you move the slider yourself.

Off / Natural / Refined / Custom, five sliders, and five colour looks. Or switch the whole thing off in Settings and keep just the colours.

MISSING A DAY COSTS YOU NOTHING

Every empty day, however far back, has a + on it. Tap it and pull something in from your photo library. A video gives you a filmstrip to drag — choose which three seconds. A photo goes straight in.

Fill in a day earlier than where you started and the start date moves back to meet it. Filled-in days count toward your total. They don't count toward your streak, so the streak stays honest.

Nothing turns red. Nothing tells you what you've lost.

MORE THAN ONE THING AT A TIME

Start from a template — a baby, a plant, yourself, a pet, or anything else — and each album keeps its own film, its own reminder, and its own day one. If you only ever make one, the album switcher never appears.

There are no folders, no tags, and no search. This isn't a place to organise things.

IT NEVER LEAVES THIS PHONE

No account. No sign-in. No cloud. No analytics. No ads. No third-party code of any kind. There is no networking in this app — not for backup, not for crash reports, not for anything.

That cuts both ways, and you should know it before you start: delete the app and it is all gone, and nobody has a copy to hand back to you. Export the films that matter.

A daily reminder is optional, set per album, and it skips any day you've already recorded.

iPhone, iOS 17 or later. Portrait. Everything is recorded and stored at 1080 × 1920.