How to make a photo recap of your year on iPhone

If you have thousands of photos on your iPhone and no clear way to see “your year” at a glance, you’re not alone. A photo recap is exactly that: a summary that turns your library into a story — how many active days you had, which places you visited, who showed up most often, and what your best moments were.

What you need to build one

You don’t need to export anything or upload your photos anywhere. On iPhone, everything you need is already built into the system:

Your Photos library, with the dates and locations your photos already carry.
On-device analysis (Vision, Apple Intelligence) to recognize categories, faces, and text without anything leaving the device.
A bit of time — analyzing a large library can take a few minutes the first time.

The process, step by step

Grant full access to your library. A real recap needs to see your entire photo set, not just a selection — otherwise stats like active days and top categories end up incomplete.
Let the analysis run in the background. Categorization, face detection, and text detection on screenshots — all of it happens locally on your iPhone, with no internet connection.
Review your summary. At minimum you should see: your most active day, your most-photographed categories, the places where you took the most photos, and your favorites already flagged.
Share it if you want. A good recap can be exported as an image or a video, without depending on an account or an expiring link.

Why on-device processing matters

A recap touches sensitive data: where you were, who you were with, which photos you kept. Doing all of it on the device — without a single photo ever reaching a server — isn’t just a privacy preference; it’s the difference between trusting an app with your entire year or not.

WrappedMe is built on this idea: all analysis runs with Vision and Apple Intelligence directly on your iPhone. You can read the technical detail in our privacy policy.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need internet to generate my recap? Not for the analysis — it runs 100% on-device, even in airplane mode.

How long does it take? It depends on your library size: from under a minute to a few minutes for large libraries. You only need to do it once.

Can I revoke photo access afterward? Yes, anytime from system Settings. The app keeps working with what it already analyzed.