The latest messaging app rising up the iPhone App Store charts is Explode. Explode helps you send disappearing (or “exploding”) photos to your contacts on iMessage, designed to vanish after a few seconds. Like BeReal and Snapchat, the emphasis is on quick, one-to-one sharing that you don’t have to think about too much.
There’s another important feature here, too—your friends don’t need to have the app installed to see what you’re sending to them. They do, however, need to be on iMessage—this isn’t something that’s going to work on Android (you can’t even jump to the web to view the message).
Credit: Lifehacker
You’ll need to provide your phone number and name to get started, and you can then add Explode to iMessage. All you need to do then is snap a picture (or pick one from your gallery), choose the time it’ll be on screen for (between one and 10 seconds), and dispatch it. You can add some text on top of the image, or overlay some scribbles, and there’s an the option to send a text-only image with a blank background.
The recipient gets to tap on the image to open it, then once the allotted time has run out, the picture shatters into pieces and is gone forever—it’s quite a cool effect. There is, of course, a premium subscription available: Pay $7.99 a month or $39.99 a year, and you get extra features like screenshot blocking and photo replays.
There’s very little in the way of settings and options here; Explode is designed to be as straightforward as possible. There is a history page where you can view pixelated versions of the images you’ve sent, and check up on who’s viewed them, but that’s it outside of the main photo-taking capabilities.
Credit: Lifehacker
Be warned, though, that the app is quite aggressive when it comes to using Live Activities on the iPhone: It will display a persistent activity on screen offering a month’s premium subscription if you send three photos within an hour of first installing the app. You can disable Live Activities access for Explode (or any app) via the Apps menu in Settings, but it still feels a little intrusive as default behavior.
Explode is the work of Nikita Bier, who is previously responsible for the apps Gas and TBH—both of which let you send compliments and ask questions anonymously, before they were shut down after being acquired (by Discord and Meta respectively).
Disappearing photos are nothing new: It’s what Snapchat is built on, and it’s something you can do in apps like WhatsApp, Signal, and Instagram. However, the simplicity of Explode has a certain appeal, because there’s nothing else to the app at all—and no need to nag your friends to download the app as well. But then, if it continues to be successful, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a host of extra features start to be bolted on.
