ebblink is a free iPhone app to unshare shared photos. Sounds confusing? I know it is. We have covered a lot of photo sharing apps for iPhone, but this is really the first one I have seen that lets you unshare the photos you have shared. Essentially, it lets you create a link to share a photo, and lets you expire that link anytime you want. So, no one will be able to see that shared photo anymore, because you have essentially unshared that photo.
Before I arouse your interest in this app, let me take a minute to vent out my frustration. The app makes tall claims about letting you password protect the photos that you share. In any world, that would mean that recipient would need to have a password to access those photos. But guess what, that is not the case. Anyone who has the URL can see the photo without requiring any password. The developers claim that the password is included within the link, so that your friends don’t have to manually enter the password. That has to be one of the most BS statements I have ever read. What does the password protection even means if no password is required? The link to my photo might somehow land on a social network, and everyone will be able to see that, because only thing they would need to do is click on the link. No password is actually required, remember?
That felt better.
Now, let’s talk about something that this app does right.
This app lets you share photos with others, and also allows you to unshare them such that the recipients will not be able to view the photos anymore. Instead of sharing the photo directly as the normal messengers do, it creates a unique URL for each photo that you want to share. Once the unique URL is generated, you can share it via Facebook, Email, Twitter, WhatsApp, and more. The recipients will be able to open the link with any browser on phone or PC. The photo will appear as dark grayscaled, and the recipient can view it by simply clicking the “Show Image” button.
In addition to that, it also lets you define a self-destruction time for every photo you share. Whether you want others to view your photos for only half an hour, a day, a week, or even a year, simply set the self-destruction time before sharing the image. And of course, you can also manually expire the link whenever you want.
Let us talk about the steps to unshare shared photos (password protected), such that the recipients will not be able to view them anymore.
How to Unshare Shared Photos Using iPhone Photo Sharing App “ebblink”:
Step 1: To make this app work, the first thing you’ve to do is allow access to your iPhone’s camera roll. After that, at the bottom of the main screen, all your photos will be visible along with a camera option to capture photos.
Step 2: You can either select any photo you want to share from the camera roll or capture photos using the app’s built-in camera, as shown below.
Step 3: As soon as you select a photo or capture one, it will ask you to define a self-destruction time. It has various time intervals like 30 minutes, 1 hour, 2 hours, 4 hours, 12 hours, 1 day, 2 days, 4 days, 1 week, and a year. Select any time interval before sharing the photo. After the time limit is over, the photos will get self-destruct and the recipients will not be able to access the photos.
Step 4: Once you’ve defined the self-destruction time, tap the “Next” button to proceed. A unique URL for the photo will generate automatically. You can use this link to share the photo with others. Simply copy the URL to clipboard or directly share via Facebook, Twitter, WhtasApp, Email, etc.
Step 5: When the recipient clicks the URL, the browser will open up with a dark grayscaled photo with a “Show Image” option at the top. They can view the photo by simply tapping the “Show Image” option before it self-destructs.
Step 6: Now, the last but the best part of this app is that it lets you unshare shared photos. All your shared photos will be visible on the main screen with the number of views, expiry or self-destruction time, and an “Unshare” option, as shown below.
Simply select the Unshare option to make the shared photos not accessible by others. That means if you don’t want to let others view your shared photos, then you don’t have to wait till the self-destruction time and simply choose the unshare option. As soon as you do that, the recipient will not be able to see that photo anymore. When anyone tries to open the URL, they will get a message that image expired.
My Final Verdict:
As you might have guessed by now, I have mixed feelings about the app. On the one hand, I like it because of the feature to share photos that I can unshare anytime, and the fact that that feature works pretty nicely. On the other hand, I was quite frustrated by the fact that the app claims that it has password protected photo sharing, despite that being not the case. I still suggest you use this app if all your are looking for is option to share photos that you want to unshare later.
