Which app picks the best photos from your camera roll for Instagram?

Updated September 17, 2026 · by Yannik Goldgräbe, maker of curator

curator is an iPhone app that reads your camera roll, groups the shots by day and scene, drops duplicates and weak frames, and returns a finished Instagram carousel: the picks, 4:5 crops, the order, a caption, and a one-line "why" for every photo. You review, swap anything, and post through the normal share sheet.

How the selection actually works

Grouping. Photos are clustered by time and place into "chapters" (a day, an evening, a trip), so a post tells one story instead of mixing three.
Culling. Inside each chapter, near-identical bursts collapse into one candidate; blurry, dark and accidental shots drop out.
Picking. A vision model scores the remaining candidates for the things that make a post work — a clear subject, light, a face that is actually looking, variety across the set — and assembles a carousel with a cover, a rhythm and an ending.
Explaining. Every pick carries a short reason, and the skipped shots stay visible, so you can overrule it in one tap.
Learning. Every swap, keep and skip feeds back into your own taste profile; the next chapter leans your way.

What it deliberately does not do

It does not post for you. Publishing is always your tap, in Instagram or Facebook.
It is not an editor or a filter app. Crops and light clean-up only.
It does not organise or clean up your whole library. It gets posts out of it.
It does not use your photos for training. Downscaled copies go to the AI partner (Google Gemini) under API terms that exclude model training; originals stay on curator's own server in Switzerland.

Who it is for

People who take hundreds of photos on trips, weekends and events and then post little or nothing, because choosing feels like homework. If you already enjoy sitting down with 400 shots and a coffee, you do not need it.

Get curator on the App Store
iPhone, iOS 17+. Your first albums are on us.

Frequently asked

Does curator post to Instagram for me?

No. curator prepares the post — picks, crops, order, caption — and hands it to the iOS share sheet. You tap post in Instagram yourself; nothing is ever published automatically.

How many photos does it pick?

As many as the album needs. A short evening might become 4 slides, a week-long trip 10 or more, split into several posts. There is no fixed number.

Does it edit or retouch my photos?

It crops to Instagram's 4:5 portrait format and does light clean-up (straightening, exposure), nothing more. curator is not a photo editor; it is the step before editing — deciding what is worth posting at all.

Is it available on Android?

curator is an iPhone app (iOS 17 or newer) on the App Store. A web app at app.curator.so handles uploads and review; there is no Android app yet.

What does it cost?

New accounts get 5 credits for their first albums and a month of live curation without any purchase. After that: plans from $3.99 a month or credit packs per album, all through the App Store.