Personal Instruments
Active development

Expired

A local-first iPhone app that gives recent utility screenshots a review date and brings them back when they may no longer be useful.

Category: Personal Instruments
Platform: iPhone · iOS 17+
Status: Active development

What if temporary photos could expire without becoming an automatic deletion risk?

Bounded on-device suggestions, local expiration metadata, quiet reminders, and review-first PhotoKit deletion keep every decision with the owner.

User value

Give temporary screenshots a review date.

Expired helps you remember what to revisit without turning cleanup into automatic deletion.

Find likely temporary items

Review suggestions from a bounded set of recent screenshots analyzed locally on the iPhone.

Remember at the right time

Track selected items with a review policy, see their lifecycle, and enable one quiet daily reminder.

Delete only after review

Choose the expired items, confirm inside Expired, and continue through the Photos deletion boundary.

Expired Inbox showing tracked items separated into expiring-soon and active sections with their review dates. — **Lifecycle**Current simulator fixture showing local expiration states.

Features

A calm cleanup lifecycle.

The current app connects on-device suggestions with explicit decisions, reminders, review, and deletion.

01
Recent screenshot scanning
Load a bounded recent-first candidate set through PhotoKit and keep the production path limited to screenshots.
02
Local signal analysis
Use Vision text and barcode geometry plus deterministic rules without persisting image bytes or recognized text.
03
Four visible decisions
Track an item, keep it permanently, stop future suggestions, or hide it for the current session.
04
Expiration lifecycle
Group tracked items as active, expiring soon, or expired from local dates and review metadata.
05
Optional quiet reminders
Schedule one local daily summary when expired items are ready, with reminder sound off by default.
06
Review-first deletion
Offer deletion only for reviewed, expired, still-linked Photos items and represent cancellation, failure, and partial results.

How it works

Suggest, decide, remember, review.

Detection begins the process. It never owns the final action.

01
Grant Photos access
Choose full or limited library access through the iOS permission flow.
02
Scan recent screenshots
Expired examines a bounded recent set and skips items that are unavailable locally or not confidently classified.
03
Make the decision
Track, keep, ignore, or temporarily hide each visible suggestion.
04
Follow the lifecycle
Tracked items move from active to expiring soon and then to expired using local metadata.
05
Return for review
Open the Inbox directly or use an optional local reminder when items are ready.
06
Confirm any deletion
Review the eligible set before Expired asks Photos to remove anything from the library.

Current interface

The cleanup loop on iPhone.

Privacy-safe simulator fixtures show implemented interface states. Scanner fixtures include broader designed categories than the current screenshot-first production filter.

Expired Home screen explaining that Photos access is ready, analysis happens on the iPhone, and local review metadata is stored.

Private from the start

Explain Photos access, local analysis, no account requirement, and metadata-only tracking.

Expired Scanner fixture listing synthetic temporary-photo suggestions with confidence, review policy, and tracking controls.

Review suggestions

See the proposed category, confidence, review policy, and available decision for each fixture item.

Expired Inbox fixture showing expired, expiring-soon, and active tracked items.

See what is ready

Separate expired, expiring-soon, and active items before entering the deletion review.

Expired confirmation dialog asking whether to delete reviewed expired photos from the Photos library.

Confirm removal

Review the eligible set and acknowledge the app-level warning before Photos receives a deletion request.

Product concept

A review date, not a deletion command.

Expired treats temporary screenshots as items with a lifecycle instead of permanent clutter or immediate waste.

A suggestion is not an action

Detection can propose a category and review policy, but only the user decides whether an item becomes temporary.

Usefulness changes over time

A screenshot can be essential today and disposable next week. Expiration metadata remembers when to reconsider it.

Photos remains the source of truth

Expired stores asset identifiers and review state while the original media stays in the Photos library.

Architecture

Local analysis around a Photos boundary.

Apple frameworks provide permission, image signals, local state, reminders, commerce, and deletion without an application account or backend.

01PhotoKit permission boundary
02Bounded recent screenshot set
03Local Vision signal extraction
04Deterministic suggestion rules
05SwiftData lifecycle metadata
06Reviewed PhotoKit deletion request

Pixels remain transient

Scanner image requests disable network access. Image bytes and recognized OCR text are not persisted as review metadata.

Metadata stays local

SwiftData stores the Photos identifier, category, policy, status, disposition, expiration date, and timestamps.

Deletion has two controls

Expired presents its own destructive confirmation before PhotoKit performs the change and iOS may ask again.

Smart Suggestions stay separate

The guarded Foundation Models adapter accepts only coarse signals, but normal app wiring currently keeps it in fallback mode.

Technology

Apple-native and local-first.

Application

Swift
SwiftUI
iPhone
iOS 17+

Photos and scanning

PhotoKit
Vision
Deterministic suggestion rules
Network-disabled image requests

Local state

SwiftData
UserDefaults
Asset identifiers and review metadata

System services

UserNotifications
StoreKit 2
App Intents

Experimental intelligence

Foundation Models on iOS 26
Coarse signals only
Conservative fallback

Development

The core cleanup loop is implemented.

Scanning, decisions, lifecycle tracking, reminders, review-first deletion, purchase service paths, and privacy-safe test media exist. The latest test run has one model-dependent failure, while real-device, TestFlight, StoreKit, accessibility, and distribution work remain incomplete.

Stage: Active development
Automated suite: 400 passed · 1 failed · 1 skipped
Live scanner: Screenshot-first
Distribution: Not yet public

Implemented

SwiftUI onboarding, Home, Inbox, Scanner, Settings, and Photos permission states
Bounded recent screenshot loading, local Vision signals, deterministic categories, confidence, and review policies
Track, keep, ignore, session-only hide, local expiration metadata, and lifecycle grouping
Optional local daily reminders plus navigation-only App Intents for review, scanner, and settings
Review-first PhotoKit deletion, app and system confirmation boundaries, failure handling, and metadata reconciliation
StoreKit purchase and restore paths plus guarded Smart Suggestions architecture that remains in fallback through normal app wiring

Before release

Restore a deterministic green test suite, align the public scope with the screenshot-first scanner, complete supported-device and real-library validation, verify notifications, deletion, StoreKit, App Intents, and accessibility, then finish signing and App Store requirements.

Expired lab notes

The project, over time.

Notes about the thinking, architecture, development, and decisions behind this work.

Give temporary screenshots a review date.

Find likely temporary items

Remember at the right time

Delete only after review

A calm cleanup lifecycle.

Recent screenshot scanning

Local signal analysis

Four visible decisions

Expiration lifecycle

Optional quiet reminders

Review-first deletion

Suggest, decide, remember, review.

Grant Photos access

Scan recent screenshots

Make the decision

Follow the lifecycle

Return for review

Confirm any deletion