Looking for Locket, the Latest Trendy Photo Sharing App?
The latest popular photo-sharing app, Locket , recently raised $12.5 million in funding , making it potentially worth a look, though it’s still relatively unknown. After launching on the first day of this year, it has been downloaded over 20 million times, but is still not as famous as its peers, Instagram or BeReal . (Instagram has switched to video sharing , of course, while BeReal remains firmly committed to one-day unfiltered photos .) But what sets Locket apart?
What is a medallion?
Locket lets you take pictures and send them directly to your friends’ mobile home screens. For this to work, you and your friends must:
- Download the app (called “Locket Widget” on the App Store)
- Add each other to the app
- Add widget to home screen
You can’t navigate the app without adding a widget to your home screen, but that’s the whole point. And if none of your friends use the locket, you’ll have to convince them to get it. (One of my friends had trouble adding the widget to their home screen; another downloaded it after I submitted my referral link and didn’t ask questions; another replied, “Please God no. I’m already ignoring BeReal.” Yes I’m the person who made her download BeReal.)
The whole point of this app is to send your photos directly to someone’s home screen so they can view them by opening their phone. If your friends are not aligned, this won’t work.
How do you use the medallion?
After adding friends, you can take real-time photos and send them directly to their home screens. You can’t edit photos at all, there are no augmented reality filters or overlays, and you can’t add photos from your existing camera roll. These are just real-time photos taken by the front or rear camera. (In this sense, it is very similar to BeReal.)
You can also choose which people on your friends list will receive the photos. You can send a photo to a group of friends or to one person; and you can also add multiple Locket widgets to your home screen if you want a special place for your “lover” or “best friend” filled with photos while another Locket widget can show you everyone else’s photos. When your friends send photos to your locket, those photos will be displayed in widgets on your screen so you can see them when you open your phone or navigate to other apps.
Is the Locket Widget app worth downloading?
Locket is available for download on the App Store and Google Play , but you don’t need it in the same way that you don’t need BeReal or Dimensional . However, in the few minutes I played on the app with G/O Media producer Justin Rodriguez and Gizmodo’s Kevin Hurler, I had enough fun. If more of my friends end up downloading it, I can imagine us spending a few days sending ugly selfies or inappropriate photos to each other, but eventually forgetting about it. Basically, it’s like a more intimate, grown-up version of Snapchat and a more evolved version of BeReal: you can share with your friends what you’re doing at the moment without having to edit or think about anything.