A Timehop Alternative That Never Runs Out
Timehop found a genuinely good idea: show people what they were doing on this date a few years back, every morning, as a small daily pleasure. Millions of people still open it for exactly that.
It can only work with what you gave it, though. Timehop looks back through your photos and your connected accounts, so the years it can show you are the years you were posting. As social accounts get quiet or get closed, the mornings start coming up thin, and the days it finds are the photogenic ones — the parties, the views, the food. The Tuesday you’d genuinely like to have back was never photographed by anyone.
exactly 4 years ago
Friday, Jul 8, 2022
★
Drove out to the valley. Stood there a while.
Your memories come back
Write one line tonight and that’s your journaling for the day. Seven days on it turns up again, and after that it keeps turning up.
- a week later
- a month
- three months
- six months
- a year
- every year after
little memory
now
Exactly 1 year ago
Walked the long way home for no reason.
Have it come to you at an hour you pick, or leave notifications off and find them waiting the next time you open the app.
The same pleasure, from a supply you make
Little Memory is built entirely around the looking-back, and it makes its own material. You write one sentence about today, about fifteen seconds, and then it comes back to you: a week later, a month later, and on this date every year after.
Because you wrote it, the resurfaced day isn’t limited to what a camera could see. Sam’s first day at the new job. Fixed the gate finally. Argued about the thermostat, then laughed about it. A photo of that Tuesday wouldn’t have existed. The line does, and it brings the whole day with it.
Little Memory vs. Timehop
| Little Memory | Timehop | |
|---|---|---|
| Where the memories come from | One sentence you write each day | Your photo library and connected accounts |
| Days you didn’t post or photograph | Still there, if you wrote a line | Not there |
| Starts working | Within a week | Only for years you were already posting |
| Depends on social accounts | No | Yes |
| A day’s entry | One sentence, photo if you like | Nothing to write, it collects |
| Resurfacing | A week, a month, a year, then every year | On this date, from past years |
| Plans | $0.99, with one optional premium subscription | Free, with ads and an optional subscription |
| Platforms | iPhone | iPhone, Android |
Everything is private by default, with no accounts to connect and no feed. The basics are here too — search across every entry, streaks, most used words, emotion trends, automated nightly backups to Dropbox, and full export anytime. The little tour has the whole list.
Little Memory has been quietly running since 2011, and support comes straight from the developer.
This is the first thing I check every morning! Simple but a wonderfully effective drop of joy every day. And being able to compare how our life was a while ago and today is really interesting.
Nikcin15, App Store Review
Who should stay with Timehop
If your good years are already sitting in old photos and old posts, Timehop can reach back into them and Little Memory can’t. Nothing here imports your past. A journal you start tonight begins tonight, and the first little return arrives within the week.
Honestly, they’re not really the same kind of thing, and a lot of people keep both: Timehop for the archive you already have, and fifteen seconds a night here so that five years from now there’s something to look back on that isn’t only photographs.
(If it’s the auto-collecting diary you’re after, there’s a Momento comparison as well, and if you’d rather your looking back were video, there’s 1 Second Everyday.)
