1
Start with 3–10 friends
Share an invite code that expires after 7 days. Every member reviews and consents to the group's rules before joining. Once 3 people join, the timer starts at 48 hours.
Close friend groups · 3–10 people
One photo a day keeps your group alive.
thebutton is a private corner for your inner circle. Open the app to see what your friends just snapped, drop one daily photo to add hours together, and hold the Big Red Button before the clock hits zero.
Native SwiftUI & Kotlin Compose apps are in release preparation. No ads, no public feed.
✓ Ages 16+
✓ Invite-only groups
✓ Photo location EXIF stripped
Close Friends
Still alive
47:59:58
Group time remaining
Save button · hold 1.5s
3 members
Sunset after class 🌇
Simple rules, decided honestly by the server.
Every deadline, credit, and turn is verified server-side — never guessed by a phone's local clock.
2
Post a photo, add time
Your first photo each day adds hours to the group clock (up to a 72-hour photo cap). Even at the cap, your photo still posts and counts for the day — with no blame on anyone who didn't post.
3
The Button & Recovery
Hold the Big Red Button for 1.5 seconds to extend the timer up to 96 hours (monthly per-group turns). If time runs out, you get 48 hours to reopen together by sending recovery photos.
Built for friends, not feeds.
Open directly to your group's photos and moments — no algorithm, no public discovery feed.
📷
Quick capture, short captions, 6 reactions
Snap a moment, add a caption up to 80 characters, and send to one or multiple groups at once. React with 6 emojis and reply inline.
⚡
Pulse
Send a short custom haptic rhythm (up to 5 seconds) and keep a private pair dictionary of patterns between two friends.
🛟
Safety & full control
Report content or block users in two taps. Leaving a group lets you keep or remove your own photos, and account deletion removes your live data.
🗂️
Export & Memory Card
When a Normal-mode group ends after its recovery window, members have 7 days to export photos as a ZIP and share a summary memory card.
Plain-spoken privacy
Clear about what happens to your photos.
- No ads, no data sales: no ad SDKs and no public profile or feed.
- Metadata stripped: uploaded photos are re-encoded to strip EXIF and GPS location data.
- Server-managed encryption (not E2EE): photos, captions, replies, reports, and birth dates are encrypted at rest with AES-256-GCM using server-managed keys — not end-to-end encryption — so safety moderation and reports work.
- Real deletion limits: deleting your account removes live server records immediately; encrypted backups cycle out within about 30 days, and copies downloaded by friends cannot be recalled remotely.