The right shape for every subject.
Pick a tool in the glass dock, then tap to place or drag to draw. Your choice is remembered for next time.
- Ellipse & rectangle — tap to place, drag to size. Resize from anywhere on the edge; each side moves on its own.
- Polygon — trace roughly and it straightens into clean edges. Add or remove points as you refine.
- Freeform — trace any outline; Annotyze smooths it into a clean curve.
- AutoDetect — tap a subject and its real outline is traced for you.
- Smart Selection — tap an object with any shape and it fits snugly around it. Prefer a fixed size? Turn it off in Profile.
- Precise placement — a crosshair mode for dropping a shape exactly where you aim.
- Take a photo — tap + and Take Photo, or press and hold the Annotyze icon on your Home Screen, to capture something and start marking it straight away. It's saved to your Photos library like any other picture.
Tap a subject. Get its silhouette.
AutoDetect uses Apple's on-device Vision framework to find the subjects in your photo and trace their actual outlines — no rough box, no cloud processing.
- See what it can find — press and hold the photo and every detectable subject glows.
- One tap — the traced outline flashes, then settles into an editable freeform Annote.
- Private — detection runs entirely on your iPhone or iPad.
Edit with your whole hand, see every pixel.
No handles cluttering the photo: the open Annote has a soft border that fades into the image, with four grips built in, and the whole edge is the handle. While you drag, the rest of the photo frosts over and the shape stays crisp.
- Grab the edge — drag anywhere on the border to stretch that side, or near a corner for two; the spot you grabbed lights up.
- Magnifier loupe — a zoomed view floats above your finger while you drag.
- Snapping — resizing clicks into a perfect circle or square, and moving snaps flush to the photo's edges, each with a gentle haptic tick.
- Pinch to zoom — up to 5×, with two-finger pan, so one finger always stays free for marking.
Nothing moves until you say so.
Move, resize or reshape an Annote and a ✓ appears in the dock. Tap it to keep the change — the Annote tucks back into its marker at the new spot. Tap ✕ or pick another Annote, and it returns exactly where it was.
- ✓ saves the new shape and closes the Annote.
- ✕ reverts every move, resize and point edit since you opened it.
- Focused while you decide — until you choose ✓ or ✕, only delete stays available; everything else waits.
A clean photo, with everything one tap away.
Annotes you're not working on collapse into small black-and-white markers that read on any photo. Tap one to Peek at a preview in a glass callout; tap the callout to open it.
- Peek — its newest detail (metadata first) and a count of each kind, at a glance.
- Clusters — markers close together stack into one, with a count. Tap it for one bubble listing each Annote, and open just the one you want.
- Readable anywhere — callouts and badges are frosted glass with a fine black-and-white rim.
Three kinds of detail, saved together.
One sheet holds metadata, a tag and a note. Fill in any of them and they're all saved at once. An Annote is kept as soon as it has data — empty ones simply disappear when you close them.
- Metadata — up to 250 characters, for the specifics.
- Tags — up to 100 characters; "Robin" and "robin" are the same tag.
- Notes — up to 1,000 characters, for longer observations.
- Add from anywhere — the + in the dock, or the + in a Tags, Metadata or Notes list.
- Tidy up — swipe to delete any entry, or clear a whole list at once.
Tags connect your whole library.
The Tags tab lists every tag with how many photos carry it and how often it's used. Tap one to see those photos right in the list; tap a photo to jump straight in.
- Rename or merge — rename to an existing tag and Annotyze offers to merge them, everywhere.
- Safe deletes — if removing a tag would leave photos with no data, you'll see exactly which ones first.
- Albums — named, reorderable groups of photos. They hold references only, so deleting an album never deletes a photo.
- Album timeline — an album's whole story: one row per photo, dated when it joined, opening onto that photo's own history with its original dates.
- Combine two photos — two records of the same scene become one: the Annotes move onto the photo you keep, you check them against the other photo with an overlay and adjust anything, then Finish. The other photo leaves Annotyze, never your Photos library.
- Copy to another photo — copy every Annote, or a selection, onto another photo at the same spots, keeping or resetting their dates. Profile settings can remove a fully copied original from Annotyze and open the new photo for you.
Search everything you've written.
Search right from your photo grid. Match across all your annotations, or narrow it to Tags, Metadata or Notes — and choose which scope searches start with.
- Instant — results filter the grid as you type.
- Scoped — All, Tags, Metadata or Notes.
- Bulk actions — long-press photos to select several, then add them to an album or delete them.
See how your understanding grew.
Every Annote keeps a timeline — when it was created and each detail you added — with the newest at the top. Open it for one Annote, a selection, or the whole photo.
- Timeline — a clear record of every observation.
- Multi-select — select several Annotes to add the same tag to all of them, review their data together, or delete them in one go.
Glass, light and dark — at home on your iPhone.
Annotyze is built natively with SwiftUI and embraces Liquid Glass on iOS 26: floating glass panels, plain glyphs and one clear action at a time. The interface stays black and white so your photos supply all the color.
- Light, Dark or System — dark by default; your choice applies everywhere.
- Photo size — Small, Medium or Large tiles on Home, in Albums and under Tags, chosen once in Profile.
- iPhone and iPad — one universal app, portrait and landscape, Split View included.
- Tuned for your eyes — choose the callout glass tint and how much it blurs the photo behind.
- Your selection color — pick the color of the border and handles in Profile, from presets or any color you like. White by default.
Yours to keep, yours to move.
Never uploaded
Annotations live on your device. Annotyze makes no network requests and has no account system.
Export & import
Save everything to a JSON file in Files or iCloud Drive, and import it later — duplicates are skipped.
Originals untouched
Your photos are never edited. If a source photo is deleted, its Annotes stay readable instead of vanishing.