What Boxlapse does
Boxlapse is a timelapse app for iOS and Android built around one habit: you photograph the same subject once a day — a building site, a garden, a face, a recovery — and the app keeps the series in order and stitches it into a video you can watch and share. Everything below is in the app as it stands.
Daily capture with a ghost-alignment viewfinder
The camera screen fades your previous frame over the live preview, so you can stand in the same spot and match the shot, and it can stabilize each new frame against the last one automatically. An optional reminder nudges you at the time of day you usually shoot.
Camera control
Shoot on full automatic, or dial in exposure compensation, ISO, shutter speed and white balance by hand and save the combination as a preset for the next day. There is also an interval mode for scenes that move faster than one frame a day.
Per-frame editing
Any frame can be re-cropped and colour-corrected after the fact, and the original is kept so you can always restore it. Frames can be re-dated or deleted, and existing photos can be imported from your library into a project.
Three transition styles
Cut for hard frame-to-frame changes, fade for a crossfade, and morph, which interpolates real motion between consecutive frames for a fluid result. The video is rendered on the phone itself — no frame is uploaded anywhere to be processed.
Timer overlays
Burn a running counter into the video — "Day 1", "Day 2" for a daily project, elapsed time for a faster one — and drag it to where you want it on the frame.
Music and intros
Add a soundtrack from the in-app music library, or open the timelapse with a video clip of your own.
Export
Render up to 4K, then save the video to your photo library or share it anywhere your phone can share a file.
Backups
A whole project can be exported to a single backup file and restored later, or onto another device. Optional cloud backup keeps a copy in your own Google Drive or iCloud instead — it stays off until you turn it on, and what it uploads and why is set out under Your data below.
Your data
Boxlapse is designed so your photos stay yours. There is no Boxlapse account, no Boxlapse server holding a copy of your pictures, no advertising, and nothing recording which screens you open or which features you use. The privacy policy is the full version of what follows.
On your device by default
Your projects, your daily photos and the videos stitched from them are stored in the app's own storage on your phone. No photo leaves the device unless you turn on cloud backup yourself: backup is off until you choose a destination and switch it on for a project, and it is part of the optional Pro subscription. The contents of your frames are never analyzed, profiled or shared.
Google Drive backup, if you turn it on
Cloud backup exists for one reason: a phone that is lost, wiped or replaced takes a
years-long series with it, and there is no copy anywhere else. If you choose Google Drive as
the destination, Boxlapse asks you to sign in with Google and requests a single permission,
the drive.file scope. That scope grants access
only to the files Boxlapse itself creates in your Drive — the app cannot see, open,
list or modify anything else you keep there, and it never asks you for a broader scope.
What gets uploaded, for each project you enable backup on, is that project's frames — the photos themselves, plus the originals kept behind your edits and an intro clip if you added one — together with a small manifest describing the project (its name, dates and per-frame details) and an index of what has already been uploaded. The files go into a normal, visible Boxlapse Backups folder in your own Drive, and your account is the only owner. Boxlapse uses this data for exactly one purpose: backing your projects up and restoring them onto a device. It is not used for advertising, it is not sold, it is not transferred to anyone, and no human reads it. You can disconnect the account at any time, which stops any further uploads, and you can delete the folder from Drive yourself whenever you like.
iCloud backup, if you turn it on
On iPhone the alternative destination is iCloud, and the bargain is the same. Boxlapse copies the same project files into its own app container in your iCloud Drive, where they belong to your Apple account, and iCloud uploads them in its own time. Boxlapse does not read anything else in your iCloud Drive, and turning backup off stops further copying.
Crash reporting
When the app crashes or hits an unexpected error it sends an anonymous diagnostic report — the error and its stack trace, your device model, its operating-system version and the app version — through Sentry, hosted in the European Union. A report never contains your photos or your projects, and file paths that could reveal a name are stripped before it leaves the device.
The same crash reporting also sends an anonymous session record when the app starts, when it stops, and when you come back to it after a while away — the app version, an identifier tied to the installed copy of the app rather than to you, how long the session lasted, how many errors happened in it, and whether it ended normally or in a crash — so we can see what share of sessions crash. It carries no photos, no project data, and no record of what you did in the app, though it does show how often that copy of the app is opened. The privacy policy describes both in full.
Subscriptions
If you subscribe to Boxlapse Pro, the purchase is handled by the app store; Boxlapse never sees your payment details. Only a purchase receipt and an anonymous app user ID are processed to tell whether the subscription is active.
Support
Questions, bug reports or feedback? Email support@boxlapse.com and a human will answer.