Press kit.
Everything a writer needs to check SpectraSort: the facts, the screenshots and one contact. Updated 31 October 2026, with version 3.2.
What SpectraSort is, in one table.
SpectraSort is an on-device AI photo picker for iPhone that ranks your camera roll by quality and your own taste. It also culls, dedupes and cleans up. $19.99 once, no subscription.
| Name | SpectraSort |
|---|---|
| What it is | An on-device AI photo picker for iPhone. It ranks a camera roll by quality and by a taste profile learned from what the user keeps and rejects. It also culls, dedupes and cleans up. |
| Platform | iPhone, iOS 18.5 or later. No iPad, Mac, Android or web version. |
| Languages | English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese (Brazil). The Mainland China edition is 光谱挑片. |
| Price | Free download. Five actions a week are free forever; $19.99 once for unlimited actions and Studio. No subscription, no account, no credit card to start. |
| Privacy | 100% on-device. The search, scoring and taste profile run on the iPhone's Neural Engine. No photo uploads, no account, no SpectraSort server. |
| Speed | Up to 100 photos a second on recent iPhones. The index is built on the first sort, then kept current automatically. |
| Tools | Six one-tap tools: Your Taste, Best Shots, Find a Subject, Like This Photo, Dedupe, Photos of a location. Studio adds seven quality axes, up to three subjects and saved profiles. |
| First released | January 2026. Version 3.2 shipped November 2026. |
| Maker | Mike Lu, independent developer. |
| Contact | spectrasortapp@gmail.com |
Five languages. Less paper.
Version 3.2 adds French, German, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese (Brazil) to the whole interface, and to the App Store listing. It also adds a Documents & receipts switch to Filters → Exclude: screenshots, forms and photos of paper are held back before a sort, so the review is the photos the user meant to keep.
Sharing was fixed in the same release: Instagram, WeChat and Xiaohongshu now accept the photo, upright, for single and multi-photo shares. The full 3.2 notes →
Made by Mike Lu.
Mike Lu is the independent developer behind SpectraSort. He built the app around a question most photo tools skip: not “is this a good photo?”, but “would you keep it?” The app learns from the keep and reject decisions a person already makes, then ranks the library the same way.
SpectraSort first released in January 2026. It is made without a server, an account or a subscription — the app and the business model are both deliberately small.
Three real captures.
Full-size files are in the press kit. The app runs on device; the screenshots are from a real library.
Three stories in the app.
- The anti-subscription utility. One $19.99 purchase, no subscription, no account, no server. A photo app that does not need a cloud.
- On-device AI with no Apple Intelligence requirement. The scoring, search and taste profile run on the Neural Engine, offline, on iOS 18.5 and later.
- Five languages at once. Version 3.2 localizes the whole interface and the App Store listing into French, German, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese (Brazil).
- No “better than Apple Photos” claim. They are built for different jobs: Apple Photos browses and stores; SpectraSort picks and ranks.
- No accuracy percentage for the documents classifier. It is a filter, not a promise.
- No cloud, no account, no training on user photos — those are architecture facts, not marketing lines.