Heard Of The New Lapse App? Here’s A Comprehensive Guide Of What You Need To Know
This article was written by The Zillennial Zine’s fall editorial intern Hannah Yarrington. Find her on Instagram at @513hny. If you would like to share an article with The Zillennial, send us an email at thezillennialzine@gmail.com.
In the digital age of 2023, social media like Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube are trying to ride the waves that TikTok has created with the popularity of short videos that audiences scroll through for hours. But recently, other creators, like BeReal, have made an effort to go back to picture-based social media that are more intimate and not about how many followers you can get. The newest edition to these types of apps is Lapse, which is inspired by the days of disposable cameras. So today, we’re going to give you our Lapse app review, discuss the Lapse invite process, and much more!
What is Lapse?
Lapse is a new iPhone app (which means it only works using IOS devices, unfortunately not Androids yet) where you take disposable camera-like photos to share with your friends in a social feed, where others can then react to your photos. Unlike other social media, Lapse likes to encourage a “friends,” not “followers” approach, where you focus more on what your friends are up to instead of seeing influencers, ads, and other clutter. The unique thing I mentioned earlier about Lapse is how the photos are taken and processed like a digital disposable camera, giving you your own darkroom to develop your photos and a journal to store them.
After using the app for about a week, it’s actually been really fun, and the photos you take have a lovely vintage filter that really makes colors pop. I also enjoy the fact that I can only see pictures from my friends, and I’m not overwhelmed with ads, news, and accounts that I don’t even follow.
How to get invited
Another interesting factor about the Lapse app is that it is on an invite basis, where in order to be able to access the app, you need to be invited by a friend. Then, once you’re invited, the app will open, prompting you to complete a number of tasks to get you acquainted with how it works. It will also ask you to invite five other friends before you can continue; however, this is not a necessary step. While I was trying to sign up, I was having difficulty finding friends who weren’t on the app already, but if you tap the help icon in the upper-left corner when you come to the five friends screen, you can opt-out and “Skip Invites” and add friends later.
How to navigate
With all new apps, the onboarding process can be quite confusing, so here are the steps the app will ask you to complete.
- Set up notifications: The first thing they will ask you to do is allow notifications for the app to send to you. In my experience, these notifications haven’t been the annoying type and only go off to tell me when one of my friends has uploaded something or when my photos are finished developing. But if you do not want to get into a notification mess, you can always go to your settings and change your preferences.
- Invites and contacts: Then, it’ll next ask you to sync your contact and photo library. While syncing your contacts makes it easier to add your friends, you do not have to if you do not wish to, but the app will make you allow access to your camera if you want to continue using the app. For invites, you can invite your friends to partake in the app, or as I mentioned earlier, you can also choose to skip over that and move on.
- Profile set up: Next, the app will ask you to choose your username and display name. The difference between the two is that your username functions as a typical username that people can use to look you up and find your profile. Your display name is just what your friends see when they look at your feed and doesn’t have to be unique; it can just be your name if you’d like. You can also include cute emojis around your profile picture, which is such a cute addition, in my opinion.
- Widget: The app does ask you to create a widget on your lock screen so you can easily access it without having to open your iPhone. In order to access the rest of the app, you can go ahead and add it, but if widgets aren’t really your thing, then you can always remove it later after you’ve gotten full access to the app.
- Journal: After all that, you can finally create your journal and albums and start taking photos!
There are many cool features to the journal, like how you can add music to it as it flips through your photos on your page and sees your monthly recaps.
Overall, I’ve found this app pretty fun to use, and I’m always for documenting my life through photos and having another place to store them that doesn’t drain my storage is always a bonus. Though I wish there were fewer hoops you have to jump through to use the app, it’s pretty worth it once you get through, and it can be loads of fun.
What did you think of our lapse app review? How was your experience with the Lapse invite process? Let us know!