Like in the VHS era, you’re craving the nostalgia of watching home movies, but are you stuck with all the personal videos saved on your iPhone? Certainly, you can play them in the air on TV, but the experience is not the same. This struggle created developer Devin Davies a new iOS app, Cassette, that plays videos in a VHS-like format, making iPhone videos feel like old home recordings.
To use the app, you effectively “load” one of the tapes laid out on the screen by selecting the year video to display. The video is labeled what appears to be a handwritten sticker from the year attached to the cover sleeve of the VHS tape.
After that, you can see your life unfold on screen without needing any further interaction on your side.
This lean back experience introduces a new way to consume media stored on your device.
Cassette’s idea was inspired by Davies’ friend and fellow app developer Charlie Chapman. CharlieChapman is also a senior advocate at RevenueCat, a platform that helps mobile app developers manage in-app purchases and subscriptions. Chapman complained in group chat about watching home movies as a family today wasn’t the same as watching old family videotapes.
He said he hopes there’s a way to broadcast the video on television and play it one after the other right away.
Best known for the award-winning recipe app Crouton, Davies jumped at the idea and hacked the cassette from a custom slideshow app he created for Apple TV. He later shared group chats and test builds.
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“I don’t make you a child, the whole group chat had this deep experience with our partners, where I was awake all night watching the kids grow up right in front of my eyes,” Chapman told TechCrunch. “I have never experienced a ‘product market fit’.
The app itself offers a clever and simple design. Here you will see a column of VHS tapes with retro splendor. Tap one to effectively “load” the TV icon at the top of the iPhone screen to start playing the video. AirPlay also allows you to mirror your device to your TV and watch the full experience play on the big screen.
The video itself contains the location, date and timestamp that appear in the retro pixel font, which looks like the old screen font used on VHS tapes. (Even if you don’t remember the VHS tapes, you can pull old videos with your heart in this format, as old home movies are regularly referenced in modern films and TV shows during sentimental moments and scenes.)
In reality, there were some challenges that the app still had to overcome.
If you have a habit of downloading online videos such as Tiktoks and Reels, these will appear in your “Home Movies”. However, Davies has told TechCrunch that the app is already filtering screen recordings and is checking if Tiktok videos can also be filtered.
To support development, Cassette offers an optional premium subscription (called “ColorPlus”) that allows users to manually select VHS tapes, rather than randomly playing videos into the app. This can cost $0.99 a month or $5.99 a year. You can also unlock an affordable lifetime lock for $7.99.
This app is a free download for iPhone and iPad.
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