Sundrop turns baby photos into recaps without generative AI

Created over the past few months by Ben Springwater, Sky Lan and Rob Mackenzie—the dads behind read-it-later app Matter—Sundrop targets parents who take more baby photos than they can easily revisit. Apple Photos and Google Photos offer broad photo-management tools, while Sundrop focuses on turning family pictures into ready-made collections and playful creations.

The app scans parents’ iPhone Camera Rolls for images, skipping screenshots and duplicates. It produces a weekly recap every Sunday and sends a Lock Screen notification when it is ready. Other “drops” can place siblings side by side at the same age, arrange photos into a time-lapse or video of a child growing up, or cut out a child’s image and place it in a layered template. Examples include magazine-cover and rookie-card designs. Parents can edit which photos are used or have Sundrop organize similar shots into galleries.

Sundrop says it processes photos locally using Apple’s Vision framework and on-device Core ML models, rather than uploading them to a cloud server or hosted AI service. Parents can link accounts to share photos through Apple’s iCloud; the company says this does not send the images to its own external servers. The team also says it uses no generative AI to make the app’s scenes or highlights.

A subscription costs $39.99 a year and includes a one-week free trial. The annual plan supports Family Sharing, so only one parent needs to pay.