I Tried Yope, Gen Z’s New Favorite Photo-Sharing App

I’m always willing to try a new social app (the face I made so clear ), especially when it involves photo sharing. And the hottest photo sharing app at the moment is Yope (available on iOS and Android ). Launched in September 2024, it currently has 2.2 million monthly active users and 800,000 daily active users, many of whom are in the investor-coveted Gen Z demographic.

I’m not part of Generation Z, but I’m one of the millions of people who have used the app this month to date. It’s fun and all, but I’m not sure I’ll be among the 800,000+ daily users. Here’s why and what you need to know about Yopa.

So what is Yop?

The easiest way to describe Yope is to say that it’s sort of like private Instagram mixed with group chat. (I’ve never understood the appeal of a private Instagram account, so I also don’t see the appeal of posting to an app designed to hide your content from most users, but that’s me.) You can create and name groups, add friends to them, and then post your photos to those groups. And that’s basically it. The images create a stream that can be viewed by anyone in a small group, and you can choose to have them appear on the lock screen. In that sense, it reminds me of Locket , an app I tested three years ago that also sent your photos to your friends’ lock screens.

The problem for me was the lack of friends who could be united in a group. I synced my contacts straight away, but of the 1,500 people on my phone, exactly zero were already in the app, which suggests that all the hype about it being a big Gen Z might be true – although I definitely have a few Gen Z cousins ​​saved in my phone, and none of them had them either.

In order to try out the app, I had to send my referral link to a group of my friends and beg them to download it, which they were tired of doing considering I get them to use a new app every two weeks or so. Only one, my beloved friend Danielle, agreed to this. This at least allowed me to create my first group.

I called it “buddies” and Dani and I spent some time uploading photos to the stream. It was cool for a few minutes, but when there were only two people it got old quickly. Honestly, it wasn’t much different from how we used Snapchat years ago: Here’s a picture of what I’m looking at. There’s a photo of your face. Okay, here’s one of my faces.

You can reply to a photo without sending it, so the thread also functions like a regular chat. You can send live photos or images from your camera roll, but that’s about it.

Is Yope worth downloading?

I’ve read a lot of discussion over the past few years about how the pendulum has swung away from the cultural desire to post to the masses and back to the compulsion to post and interact with more cohesive groups. Instead of tweeting or posting to public Instagram, many people seem to enjoy being in small, niche Discord or Telegram channels, reminiscent of an earlier Internet era when you had to search chat rooms to find like-minded people.

Personally, I’m not one who desires a more thorough, interactive online experience, so I don’t really like Yope. Even if many of my friends used it, I’d rather see everything in disarray than browse carefully curated group feeds. But maybe it sounds good to you.

Yes, the pros:

• Setting up an account is easy

• The contacts sync feature works without issue (provided you have contacts that actually use the app).

• There are no filters, and there’s minimal risk of your photos being seen by people you don’t want them to be seen, unless your friends take screenshots and share them (taking a screenshot doesn’t trigger a notification in the group).

• Screen lock feature works well and updates immediately

• The lack of features means it doesn’t feel overwhelming; all you can do is post photos to your group feed.

• It’s free

Yes, cons:

• It gets a little boring if you don’t have many people to share photos with.

• This is another photo-sharing app to add to the list of ones you already have, all of which probably already include the same group of friends you’d share with on Yope.

Bottom line: No

Personally, I won’t continue to use Yope, at least not in the same way I used the similar BeReal for a long time in the summer of 2022 . That doesn’t mean it won’t continue to gain popularity among users who really want an app that combines Instagram with group chat. It appears to have enough momentum to attract investor capital , which could lead to increased visibility and attract more users. Someone you know might even be using it next month, even if you’re over 27 years old.

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