PicWay requirements: iOS 17 or later, iPhone and iPad

The short answer

PicWay requirements: you need iOS 17.0 or later, and it works on iPhone and iPad. It comes in Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, English, Japanese, Korean, German, Spanish, and French, and follows your iPhone’s system language. There are Home Screen and Lock Screen widgets, and you can also start from the Share menu, Shortcuts, or Siri.

Last updated: November 1, 2026

PicWay requirements: system and devices

Item	Details
System	iOS 17.0 or later
Devices	iPhone, iPad
Orientation	iPad works in portrait and landscape. iPhone stays in portrait, and you can turn it sideways for videos
Account	No sign-up. Just open it and start
Life photos only	In the Photos tab, switch from All to Life to hide screenshots, screen recordings, animated images, and non-camera images that look like receipts, IDs or documents. Nothing is deleted (more)

Languages

Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, English, Japanese, Korean, German, Spanish, and French: 8 in all. PicWay follows your iPhone’s system language.

Widgets

Where	What’s there
Home Screen	Random, Videos, Daily streak, and Review progress, plus one-tap Collage, Make a card, Creations, and Edit photo
Lock Screen	Review activity, Streak, and Review progress

PicWay’s settings have the steps under Widgets.

Use it without opening PicWay

From	What you can do
Share menu	Collage (pick 2 to 30 photos; see the limit for each ratio below), Live Photo (one video), Compress
Home Screen widgets	Collage, Make a card, Creations, Edit photo
Shortcuts or Siri	Search for “Collage,” “Make a card,” or “Edit photo”

Numbers people often ask about

Item	Number
Collage	Up to 20 photos in standard ratios, up to 30 in Long strip
Video to Live Photo	Up to 3.9 seconds by default, or No Time Limit
Large video downloads	Videos of 500 MB or more download from iCloud over Wi-Fi only by default
Recovering deleted photos	They go to Recently Deleted, where you can recover them for 30 days
On This Day reminder	9:30 AM by default, and you can change the time
Private Vault	12 words to recover it if you forget the pattern; locks after 2 minutes without a touch by default
Video editing	After you split a video, each section gets its own speed (0.5× to 3×) and volume (0 to 200%)
Custom filters	Up to 60, with names up to 40 characters
Format conversion	Photos to JPG, HEIC, or PNG; videos to MP4 or MOV, in H.264 or HEVC

Search

Search for	How to type it
One day	May 1, 2025, or 1 May 2025
A range of days	Two dates joined by a hyphen, like 20240801-20240921
The same day every year	May 1, with no year
Places, journeys, albums, tags	Type the name; searching a place shows journeys first
Words in a photo, everyday things	Found in the background, only while your iPhone is charging
Where it runs	On your iPhone

Appearance

Choose System, Light, or Dark. There are also several accent themes, which change both the accent color and the app icon.

For more, see the FAQ, and the privacy page for privacy details.