Every year, one screen
Every photo and video taken on today's month and day, across every year in your library, in collapsible year sections — 2019, and under it, five years ago.
In development · iPhone
Every year, it blooms again.
Every photo you took on this day, in every year. Perennial opens on today's date and shows you what you photographed on it — going back as far as your library does, grouped by year.
- iCloud Photos
- Synology NAS
- Any folder in Files
Features
Built around one habit: open it, and see the day.
Any date, not just today
Step back and forward a day at a time, jump straight to a date with the calendar picker, or snap back to today with one tap.
Filter by source, or by camera
Narrow the day to one source, or to a single camera. The camera list isn't a fixed menu — it's built from the EXIF of your own photos as they load.
Everything the photo remembers
Full-screen, pinch to zoom, swipe to dismiss, video playing inline. The caption reads the file's own metadata: place, camera and lens, aperture, shutter, ISO.
Select by dragging across the grid
Long-press to start selecting, then drag to paint over a run of photos — or down the trailing edge to take whole rows. Share the selection as a batch.
A Home Screen that knows the date
A full-bleed widget, no black bezel, showing a photo from a past year — and rotating through the rest of today's as the day goes on. Tap it to open on today.
Sources
Three libraries, one day.
Turn on the ones you use. They sync independently and in parallel, and land together in the same timeline, sorted by when the photo was actually taken. If one of them can't connect, a slim bar says so and the rest of the app carries on.
iCloud Photos
On-device, through PhotoKit.
No network calls at all, except to fetch a full-resolution photo or video that isn't already on the phone.
The only source Perennial can delete from.
Synology NAS
The same API the official Synology Photos app uses.
Enter your QuickConnect ID and Perennial resolves it to whatever is actually reachable — direct WAN, LAN, or Synology's relay. Two-factor is asked once; the trusted-device ID is kept in the Keychain after that. Or turn on Local Network Only and it will never leave your network at all.
Shared/Team Space only, JPEG only. Team Space has no incremental diff API, so a sync walks the whole tree.
Any folder in Files
On this device, iCloud Drive, or an SMB share.
Point the system document picker at a folder and Perennial scans it for images and reads their EXIF capture date and location — the same way it reads everything else. No per-provider integration to wait for.
Dropbox, Google Drive, and OneDrive are browsable in Files but can't be picked as a folder — an iOS limitation on their extensions, not this app. Google Photos has no Files-app provider at all; export via Takeout or a Drive backup, then move the files into a folder that can be picked — on this device, iCloud Drive, or an SMB share.
How it works
Five minutes of setup, then a minute a day.
The whole app is one screen and a settings sheet. There is nothing to organize, tag, or curate — the calendar decides what you see.
- 01
Open it
There's no feed and nothing to scroll into. The app starts on today's date and shows you the photos you took on it, from any year in your library.
- 02
Turn on the sources you use
iCloud Photos, a Synology NAS, folders from the Files app — each one independent, each one off until you turn it on. Everything you add lands in the same timeline, grouped by year.
- 03
Tap, swipe, explore
Tap any photo for a full-screen viewer you can swipe through, from every source at once. Pinch the grid to make the thumbnails larger or smaller.
- 04
Step through time
Arrows move a day at a time and the calendar button jumps anywhere. Tap refresh whenever you want the sources re-checked.
- 05
Tidy up, one day at a time
While you're already looking at today's photos, clear out the duplicates and the near-misses — a few a day instead of a whole afternoon. Deleting is iCloud only; the other sources are read from, never written to.
A look inside
The app, on your day.
Every screen below is Perennial itself, not a mockup.
Privacy
Your photos stay where they already are.
Perennial reads from the sources you connect and shows you what it finds. Nothing is uploaded, copied to a server, or shared with anyone, because there is nowhere for it to go.
- No account
- Nothing to sign up for. There is no Perennial server to hold an account on.
- No analytics
- No telemetry, no crash SDK, no advertising identifiers, nothing measuring what you open.
- Keychain
- Your Synology password and trusted-device ID live in the iOS Keychain — never in UserDefaults, never in a file on disk.
- Caches stay local
- Thumbnails, metadata, and reverse-geocoded place names are cached on the device so navigating dates doesn't hit the network twice.
- The widget sees a snapshot
- It never touches PhotoKit, your NAS, or the network. The app writes a few thumbnails and a manifest into a shared container, and that is all the widget can read.
Also in the box
The small settings.
- A daily reminder at a time you pick, or none at all.
- Light, dark, or whatever the system is doing.
- How often each source is re-checked, set per source.
- Scope Synology sync to specific Shared Space folders instead of the whole tree.
- Pinch the grid to resize the thumbnails, the same gesture Photos uses.
- A first-launch walkthrough, and a Help section that answers with specifics.
Not there yet
What it doesn't do.
- Background refresh, so a sync runs before you open the app.
- An iPad layout. The grid works; there's no split-view treatment.
- Lock Screen and StandBy widgets — Home Screen small and medium only.
- Deleting from a NAS or a folder. Those are read from, never written to.
Pricing
One app, three ways to pay for it.
Every tier is the whole app — there's no feature held back for a higher one, and nothing is metered.
Monthly
7-day free trialEvery source, the viewer, and the widget, billed month to month. Cancel from Settings whenever.
Annual
7-day free trialThe same access as Monthly, billed once a year. The better deal if you're still opening it in March.
Lifetime
One-time purchasePay once and keep it. No trial, no renewal, nothing to remember to cancel.
Waitlist
One email, on the day it ships.
That's the whole list. No newsletter, no build updates, no drip.
or just email us