App Turns Smartphone Chaos Into “Photo-Zen”

By John Jeffay, NoCamels January 22, 2023 2 minutes

Smartphone clutter: Screenshot from the GoodOnes website

An app that brings order to your chaotic collection of smartphone pictures is being developed by an Israeli startup.

GoodOnes uses machine learning to sift out bad photos and recommend the good ones. The user can then swipe left or right to save or delete.

“We focused on building a fun and easy-to-use platform to help people go from cluttered camera roll to photo-zen,” said the company’s CEO Israel Shalom.

He says their technology will allow users to enjoy scrolling through their pictures, without a random screenshot, receipt or eight of the same photos getting in the way.

GoodOnes announced today that it has raised $3.5 million in seed funding to fund further research and development of the product.

The app is in “early access mode”, which means paying customers can try it out while it’s still being polished.

The company was founded by Israel Shalom and Aparna Pande. Shalom served in 8200, the elite IDF intelligence unit and worked as a product and engineering leader at Google and Dropbox. Pande recently sold her first startup, Kidstir, a kids’ cooking platform.

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Shalom said: “Like so many parents, having children turned my phone into a blackhole of thousands of photos.

“Capturing your children’s special and everyday moments should be a positive experience – but it can quickly become overwhelming and impossible to navigate.

“As a product and engineering leader from Google and Dropbox, I was surprised a solution hadn’t yet been developed.

“The industry to date has been focused on cloud storage, yet we knew there was a better way.”

Brian Sack of TLV Partners, the Israel-based venture capital that led the funding round, said: “When most people open their photo apps on Apple or Google, they experience anxiety rather than delight.

“Instead of seeing the photos they care about, their gallery is scattered with rubbish. GoodOnes creates a clean photo experience, where every photo they look at has significance and meaning.”