Glass - Photography Community

Update: 3 years after launch. This is a wonderful tight knit community. The app has become wonderful. The team is small but actively works to make improvements. - Initial review on launch: The premise of the app is great. I’m happy to pay for a community that isn’t overrun but ads, product ambassadors, and influencers. But the functionality at its initial release is far more basic than I had hoped for. No ability to curate what you see in any capacity. There’s a search field for photographers only, not photos. I’m starting to see mature content with no way to hide it, so I haven’t been opening the app in public. No way to favorite, like, or bookmark. The quality of work on the app isn’t quite there yet either. I see more snapshot style photos than I do carefully crafted photos. Not to say that’s a bad thing, but since there’s no search functionality you have no way to change what you see. It’s all up to Glass. I’m hopeful they’ll improve given time—the team has a forum for suggested improvements and I’ve seen them on Twitter being fairly receptive. I spent $30 for the first year with high hopes, so we’ll see how it goes.

I think this is a solid first step. The issue is I’m not sure the founders have established an identity for Glass outside of it not being Instagram. That’s reflected in the incredibly small feature set and some of the design decisions that feel a little aimless. The discovery tab is awful, full stop. Avatar icons are too big, photos are too small, sideways scrolling on all these tiny photos with no way to preview isn’t fun. Zooming into landscape images by default is also strange. Launching this app without a way to view a user’s full collection of images at a glance feels like a mistake. How did it launch without a way to edit captions? The app was in private beta for a minute and it makes me curious what it was like then. There’s a lot of workshopping happening in their support pages and I worry they’re going to design this by committee and turn it into a hodgepodge of conflicting ideas. The work I’m referring to that needs to be done isn’t expensive. It doesn’t cost you anything to establish a set of concrete desires for your product. Does Glass want to foster a photography community and get people conversing with one another or does it want to be a portfolio site with some engagement functionality? I’ve already subscribed for the year, I’m rooting for you all to turn this into something. Figure out what you want to be and pls god get more women on your platform.

I know I’m not alone in feeling like Instagram just isn’t doing it for me anymore - the ads, the influencers, the reels. Need I say more? It’s just not a place for photos anymore, and that makes me so sad. I’ve been looking for a replacement for a while and recently found Glass. At first, I thought there’s no way I’m paying to use it. But after reading about the team and their mission, I figured it was something worth supporting. It’s still in it’s early days, but the more photographers who use it and support it, the better it will be. I actually feel excited to use it - something I haven’t felt about a social media app in a long time. There’s beautiful content and folks are excited to share their thoughts. It’s the start of a great community, and I’m excited to be a part of it!

This app showed a lot of promise and there was a ton of hype when it launched but it’s a miss for me as it feels like a ghost town lately. I follow at latest count about 200 people and I’m lucky if I see 5-10 new photos a day total. That seems like extremely low usage. On the plus side, the addition of categories and improved Exif info has helped a little but you still cannot allow the location of the photo to be posted from Exif data and the categories are limiting. I’m just not seeing much community engagement as it’s missing a lot of features that help build a community, especially since this app bills itself as a photo community. Beyond commenting, there really is not much else for people to engage in with each other. I subscribed for a year and I’ll keep posting but not sure I’ll renew unless some new community features arrive. Noting that I also opened a UX / accessibility issue in their feature requests but as of yet that has not been addressed. Update, December, 2021 - Now that the app has “appreciations” or “likes”, it’s gone even quieter than before. Folks appreciate a photo but that’s dramatically reduced social interaction via commenting so perhaps its had an opposite effect than what the app owners were intending. 🤷 Now it sort of feels like an Instagram wanna-be.

Over the years photographers have tried to find a place to share work together. There was Flickr (which turned into a train photography community instead), 500px (mysteriously purchased by Chinese Corp), and Instagram (devolved into memes, selfies, and influencers after Facebook purchase). For the past few years, we had nothing. Glass proposed a simple idea - photography community paid by subscriptions. It’s brilliant. I’m happy to pay to be a part of photography as art community and think this is the start of something good. The first pass at the app isn’t perfect but I know reception has been great and Glass will work out the kinks and eventually scale to other platforms. Glass team - I wish you all success and big paydays ahead, thanks for hard work to bring this idea to life.

As a photographer who has been frustrated with Instagram’s algorithm, it’s great to be in a community with kind hearted photographers who lift each other up and discuss the technical parts of photography. It’s clear that the team cares about safety and inclusivity by making sure that there’s an easy way to report and block users - not the case in a lot of other photo communities out there who have told me that my community wasn’t for them if I felt unsafe! I love that you can upload full res photos (thank you for not making me crop or add white borders!) and you can see EXIF data. The team really focuses on photos over likes or reels, which is really what we’re actually here for.

I started using Glass one year ago and I absolutely adore it. It is exactly the photography app I have been looking for since well, Instagram went down hill years ago. It is a minimally designed app that doesn’t throw a millions things at you at once. It is just for photography, that is it, nothing else. Professional or amateur photographers alike can display their work. Instead of likes they have appreciations. Glass does have a feature to follow people, but you cannot see the follower count or the appreciation count. It is not about numbers, or advertising it is about community. The Glass creators seem incredibly passionate about what they do. I am rooting for you guys!

Is Glass perfect? Not at all. But I’ll support the effort to have some sort of “community” for photographers that isn’t full of ads. What could be better: faster feed loads - I can see the same five images at the top of my feed all day. Maybe a means to shuffle your feed? Easier commenting might encourage more to comment. Sure the “like” is lame but it sure was quick and easy. So rather than being a hater, be a supporter and since these guys are willing to do the work for our benefit, I’ll pay, happily.

Where to begin… 1. It’s a walled garden. No one outside of the Glass community can see your work. 2. Everything is done via the iPhone app. There’s no web alternative that might bring extra and much needed functionality like direct upload of photos from your computer. 3. Uploads within Glass don’t work. Save your images to your iCloud Drive on your computer. Open the Files app, select an image, hit the Share icon, select the Glass app and watch it go through the motions of uploading the image to Glass. Fire up Glass and, you guessed it, nothing uploaded. Not sure what the point of an image sharing service is when you can’t share images. Glass is a great concept poorly executed and rushed to market. I hope they get their act together. We need this alternative to Instagram, etc. but it’s got to work. Glass can’t even handle the basics.

If the curators don’t follow you, you may as not well bother - there’s a lot of evidence that there’s an “in” group - if you’re not in that “in” group, or if you don’t immediately cater to their specific tastes (and I believe there are only like, 2 curators so tons of room for bias for sure), then you’ll basically get no discovery. Very difficult to find other people you like as well, that goes both ways. I’m not a big fan of algorithms, but relying on such a small team of curators who seem to have conflicts of interest isn’t a great solution, either. And if you don’t post often, good luck getting seen by a larger group of people because the timeline feed is a slog to go through. If you want an audience, you have to be as addicted to this app as you would with Instagram.

Good app. I like what they’re doing to get away from how terrible IG has become. But no EXIF data is ever displayed for any of my photos. They say they have lens info now, but it doesn’t show for me yet. I download my pics from Lr to my iPhone, but it doesn’t preserve my EXIF data, so when I upload from the app, no EXIF data. I paid for the year because I really want to encourage some real competition for IG and I want a place to see and connect to other photographers, both professional and other amateurs like me. I would ask for there to be a feature that allows saving photos in collections/mood boards. And please allow us to upload from other devices other than iOS so my EXIF data shows.

I’ve joined every photo/creative app I’ve ever come across, and so far Glass is my favorite (with Ello being a close runner up, RIP) There is emphasis only on what we post as work, with a very open and friendly community to go along with it. The way the app is constructed, it is so easy to enjoy how many ways there are of seeing the world, and this life, through the eyes of different photographers—which is a deep and true pleasure. I never write reviews—this might be my first? But Glass deserves to be praised with enthusiasm!

Until they added appreciations… forcing people to comment was a great way to build a community and have meaningful small conversations about our shared photography. Now, it’s like Instagram again. Random people come around and leave appreciations. What do I care about you appreciating my photo? They should only be allowed to appreciate after they got anything to say on the subject. So, I don’t know, it really discouraging me to use it.

I’m loving the idea: no popularity contests, or data selling with a focus on privacy and photography and limiting addictiveness. That said, it really needs tags or hashtags so you can browse by interest and/or follow and allow sharing/browsing at least via http so non glass users can see your photos (and see what they’re missing). Right now browsing content is tricky. Also a “heart” would be nice so you can create a favorites list. I assume some of this is on the roadmap and launching an app like this has to be mega complex.

Glass is great for photographers who want a platform to both showcase their portfolios, but also experiment. The community is strong and you can get real feedback, well beyond the superficial feedback from IG and other social media sites. Having hi-res photos is truly in spiring as well. If you’re interested in joining a community of photographers and being part of the building process (the app developers listen to the users feedback very often) then this the best app for you!

This app is like a photography coffee table book that you can pick up at any time and scroll through and see edge-to-edge photography. No additional information unless you click an image, otherwise it is a pristine photography experience. There is nothing else even close. The community of photographers are supportive. This is an app full of inspiration and worth every penny of the subscription price for an ad-free experience.

Glass is reminding my why I fell in love with photography in the first place. The app is beautiful, has been phenomenally stable since day 1, and has received regular meaningful updates that make my time on Glass better. It’s the best of what social networks used to be, and importantly, has a fair business model to ensure incentives are aligned to allow Glass to keep making such a great product. I’m excited about photography again, and it’s because of Glass.

Finally! An app for photographers that looks amazing, makes our photos look amazing, and works beautifully whether on mobile or desktop. I love that there’s no downgrading of our image quality yet upload is quick. And I’m a big fan of the preserved meta data so you can see settings a photographer used to create an image you’re digging. Can’t wait to see where they go from here.

But as others have mentioned, discovering who or what to follow has a long way to go. As a start I would love to be able to find pictures easily based on a location or near me, shot on a certain camera, with a tag etc. The app is designed pretty well and it’s nice to use to look at pictures, especially on the iPad, but there are just too many lacking features. I’d like to pay for a year to support the effort but for now there’s no value in the subscription for me. Perhaps soon?

I’ve been off of IG for nearly a year and had resorted to just sharing the photos I’d taken with family and friends through the photos app and shared albums. But my circle of other photography lovers was small. This app is a nice middle ground for that. The layout is beautiful, and I love that I can financially support the developers so there are no ads or intrusive tracking.

I came and went early-on through the Glass world…but eventually came back and stayed. Love the platform. It has subtly and quietly lifted me out of the world of followers and likes and algorithms such that I post and share and expect nothing more than getting my work out there—and, along the way, have built, and am building, a nice little network of like-minded image makers. It’s my new online photographic home.

A refreshing approach to social media that feels nothing like social media. Glass is a healthy and supportive photo sharing app for those that enjoy genuine connection and prefer to move away from like counts, endless ads and the pressure of a *perfect feed*. I’d strongly recommend and you can expect developers to be engaged and interested further improvement of the app.

I wish you the very best of luck with this, I really do, it sounds like a tremendous app and service… but an iPhone only app (does not work on iPad) is not enough. Bare-bones iPad support isn’t hard… anything would be better than NO support. I can’t even signup on my iPad Pro 12.9 because the controls are offscreen… I’ll watch and join when you move beyond the phone.

This app has no algorithm designed to keep you hooked, rather a simple labeling method to find photos that interest you along with an ai powered search for more specific searches. It’s simple clean and worth the cheap subscription. Don’t use this if your looking for followers but rather if you want inspiration for photos and somewhere to share your own.

I had previously rated the app one star for its launch without any discovery features at all — no categories, no tags, no functional search — but with a recent release they’ve followed-through with categories and in doing so, greatly improved the app. The existing categories are fine (if limited) for discovery. Right now, it’s realistically the only way of finding someone you may like to follow outside of refreshing a list of random users. What’s needed to make the app truly great is a functional search to locate subjects and areas of interest and perhaps even check out a camera or lens before you buy it. Hopefully, they deliver on a feature like this soon. Oh, and please bring geotagging back (but make it functional to find photos in the same area this time!).

Oh! An app for sharing photos! What a great idea. What?! It’s not junked up with ads and shopping and weird social-engineering nonsense? What a breath of fresh air! The subscription fee is a small price to pay and is the best way to go. We’ve seen what happens otherwise. Even better that it’s constantly improving and feedback is taken into account. 💕

No quest for monetization, no fighting the algorithm. Find people who’s photos you like, start a conversation, post your photos. WITHOUT the need to crop them. What 500px was supposed to be and what you wish Instagram was. Everyone is friendly. No trolls, no bots, no scams, NO ADS and no videos. Love it. Long live Glass (hopefully). Try it and tell your friends.

Glass is exactly the kind of beautifully visual app that photographers have always wanted. The attention to detail that Tom and the entire team have exhibited is truly next-level and it’s renewed a sense of community in photography for me. If you’re tired of Instagram’s misaligned incentives and want some good ol’ fashion photography, this is the app for you.

This app is supposed to be photographer first, but it locks an excellent iPad app, or a Mac app, which is where most of us processor photos. Would love to see for support for this in the future. Not sure if I’ll go past the free trial to be honest. Also, design is okay. The two gestures on photos, pulling a photo to the right or the left, aren’t ideal. One just takes you to what would happen if you press the photo, seems pointless. And the other is for reporting a photo, which should really be tucked away behind some … menu. But instead is front and center.

Beautiful app, thoughtfully made. This is what community looks like when we tell the truth: it takes a little effort, takes a little patience, grows slowly rather than exponentially. Glass isn’t a social network; it’s a digital tool—you bring the network (or cultivate it over time). I like it a lot. I like that it feels sane and safe and creative and honest and warm. I hope others do too.

Glass is wonderful, the only social app that I still have because it every time I use it I feel better, I want to go out for more pictures, I want to learn from better photographers. And the more times goes on the better the app and the community gets. I love Glass!

Just like it says: It shows you beautiful, inspiring images from photographers and allows you to see details of the shots, camera and artist and nothing else. Aside from the amazing images, the people are just as great and friendly. Come over to the light side with your photos!

It’s so wonderful to find a photographers app that fully focuses on photos. The community here is wonderful and the photos are amazing. I’m just an amateur photographer but the community has been great and I don’t feel bad posting my inferior work. Thank you for finally replacing the likes of instagram. Glass is so much better.

The app started off well designed and continues to add new and useful updates. It’s very refreshing to be a part of a photographer community that isn’t interested in selling you stuff or becoming a popularity contest for likes. I look forward to seeing Glass evolve!

Although I am on board with apps charging subscriptions to use an app, I really dislike when you downland the app, create an account only to then be surprised with the fact you need to pay to use the app you just created an account for. It’s deceptive to ask for my personal info then say “oh btw you need to pay. I should be greeted with a page with prices BEFORE I decide if I want to give away my personal information like my name and email.

Good place to post, explore, and find photos. Improving all the time. Dig the fact that it works on web and has public profiles you can link to without app. Worth the fee to join.

Glass is so clean, pure and therapeutic. Photographers from all over the world submitting their work. This is a app for photographers, where your work will be displayed in high resolution and truly appreciated. This is my preferred platform, where I feel safe and proud to showcase my photography. Glass is home.

Glass emphasizes reducing toxicity in the photo sharing space - no more obsessing over follower or “Like” counts. And they emphasize community - I get more useful and friendly comments on Glass than anywhere else. This is a healthy ecosystem. The app is young but growing, and they’re off to a great start.

Thank you for making this app. I get to see random art each day and show more of what I love. Digging that you can only comment. Forces us to stop lurking in the shadows and finally communicate with each other ♥️♥️

Lacking features (like uploading more than one photo at a time) and doesn’t seem reliable. My third upload didn’t get the full res - just the preview thumbnail so it was blurry/pixelated and I can’t fix it to get it uploaded. You have to force refresh every time something changes - even if you just changed it in the app, navigation is opaque, first time setup was annoying.

I understand you are going for a paid model, but it’s difficult for me to try the app or even recommend it to someone when I know that it puts up a screen that requires you to start a free trial to use it. Why not just offer a very very limited version for free?

This app is such a refreshing photo sharing platform in the age of hyper social media. Love the simplicity in design and intent and how you can showcase your own and view others photography in a meaningful way. Keep up the great work Team Glass!

I’ve been really enjoying the experience so far. I’ve made some good connections and the community is great. The app needs some further development and polish, but will come with time. My advice is to not do what so many before have done, try to make it have everything for everyone. Focus on photography and people.

If you want to connect with genuine photographers, this app is for you. It’s still in early stages but you have a chance to link with people over content and not vanity metrics, and I think that’s pretty neat.

This is NOT an app for finding photography clients or being tracked and spoon fed ads every 4th image that comes through. This is an app for photography inspiration in many different genres, very much like Flickr was back in the day.

App does nothing. I get a splash screen telling me 14 dYs free and how great the app is but then nothing. No movement no nothing. Ive rebooted, deleted and reinstalled. Nothing. Correction: Response from team was quick. Identified the problem and we made changes that got app to work. Seems like good app.

What if there was social app that truly delivered the best experience around showcasing photographs and not all the other things that don’t really matter like clout, likes, and endless advertising? Well, Glass is that wonderful place.

I had high hopes for an Instagram replacement. No ads, etc. unfortunately most of the photographers on Glass just upload snapshots, and it’s just not interesting enough to visit on a daily basis. If good content is hiding somewhere - it is hard to find. The overall feel is of a miss. I signed up for a year but most likely will not renew my subscription.

Need an invite? What do I have to prove to get that? And how can someone prove they’re a photographer without access… or review? By who or what? Subscription required, before you can test the app. Tried too many of these vapor ware, invitation only, no capacity things to go down this rabbit hole! No iPad support. Why? Who can appreciate a photo taken at 24 MP on a teeny phone screen? Call me back when you’re serious!

This app feels like it’s in alpha. It’s seemingly missing very basic features that I would consider necessary for a photo sharing platform. There’s no discovery features really. How do I find work other than by searching someone’s name? The UI for displaying photos is weird. Why on earth would you stretch a photo out and make me scroll through it, especially when it’s not a panoramic shot?? I honestly don’t know why you’d pay for this currently. It’s not interesting or useful enough to warrant a subscription fee, and this is coming from someone who ditched Instagram years ago and misses having a photo sharing platform.