Cassette’s new app turns your videos into retro, VHS-like home movies

Summary

Longing for the nostalgia of watching home movies, like in the VHS days, but stuck with all your personal videos saved on an iPhone? Sure, you can AirPlay them to the TV, but the experience is not the same. This struggle inspired developer Devin Davies to create Cassette, a new iOS app that plays back videos in a format similar to VHS, making your iPhone videos feel more like old home recordings. To use the app, you virtually “load” one of the tapes laid out across the screen by selecting the year’s videos you want to view. The videos are labeled with what look like handwritten stickers with the year attached to the VHS tape’s cover sleeve. You can then watch your life unfold on the screen with no further interaction required on your part. Image Credits:Cassette This lean-back experience introduces a new way to consume the media you have saved on your device, which is often left unviewed after the initial recording. The idea for Cassette was prompted by Davies’ friend and fellow app developer Charlie Chapman, who is also a senior advocate at RevenueCat, a platform that helps mobile app developers manage in-app purchases and subscriptions. Chapman complained in a group chat about how watching home movies as a family today just wasn’t the same as it used to be when watching old family videotapes. He said he wished there was a way to AirPlay videos to the TV and then have them immediately play one after the other. Davies, best known for his award-winning recipe app Crouton, jumped on the idea, hacking together Cassette from a custom slideshow app he had made for Apple TV. He later shared a test build with the group chat. Techcrunch event San Francisco | October 27-29, 2025 Image Credits:Cassette “I kid you not, the entire group chat had this profound experience with our partners where we stayed up all night watching our kids grow up before our eyes,” Chapman told TechCrunch. “I’ve never experienced ‘product market fit,’ or whatever you want to call it, like this before...