7 Best Locket Alternatives in 2026 (Privacy & Couples)

If you opened this looking for an app to replace Locket, here's the short version. Ekko is the closest clone, NoteIt wins for doodles, Retro and Stampling win if you want the photos to actually last, and Widgetsmith is for people who care more about a pretty home screen than sharing. The rest of this post is the honest detail behind that, because "best" depends entirely on whether you want a quick daily glance or a private album you'll scroll back through in a year.

Locket is a lovely little app. It puts a friend's latest photo straight on your home screen, no likes, no algorithm, no feed to perform for. The reasons people go looking for an alternative are usually specific: the 20-friend limit, the fact that older photos vanish behind the newest one, or the wish for something built for exactly two people instead of a small crowd. Below are seven apps that solve one or more of those, scored on the four things that matter.

How we scored them

Every app here gets judged on the same four axes, plus price:

• Privacy, Is sharing 1-to-1 or broadcast? Is there a public profile or directory? What happens when you unpair?
• Permanence, Does a photo stick around as something you can revisit, or does it get replaced by the next one?
• Couples fit, Is it actually good for two people, or really built for a friend group?
• Free tier, How much works before the paywall?

One honest caveat up front. Any app that syncs photos between phones in real time has to store them in the cloud, so none of these are fully end-to-end encrypted. The real privacy gain over Instagram or Snap isn't encryption; it's the absence of a feed, an audience, and an algorithm deciding who else sees your day.

The comparison table

App	Privacy	Permanence	Couples fit	Free tier	Price
Locket	Good (no feed, 20 friends)	Low (newest photo wins)	OK	Generous	Free; Gold ~$3.99/mo or $36/yr
Ekko	Good (albums, no feed)	Low–medium	OK	Generous	Free + optional paid tier
NoteIt	Good (pairs with partner)	Low (notes overwrite)	Strong	Generous	~$6/yr for extras
Widgetsmith	N/A (solo, no sharing)	Medium (your own photos)	Weak	Generous	Free; Premium ~$2/mo
Retro	Good (private circle, no algorithm)	High (weekly journal)	Medium	Good	Free + paid extras
Widgetshare	Good (Android Locket-style)	Low	OK	Generous	Free + ads/paid
Stampling	Strong (1-to-1 pairing, leave-wipes)	High (dated stamp board)	Strong	Yes, freemium	~$19.99/yr, covers both partners

Read across and the pattern jumps out. The widget-clone apps are excellent at the live glance and weak on permanence. The journal-style apps flip that. Nothing is best at everything, so pick by the job.

1. Locket itself (the one to beat)

Worth saying plainly: a lot of people don't need to leave Locket. It nails the thing it set out to do. You take a photo, it lands on your friend's home screen, and there's no scroll to fall into. In 2026 the widget has grown up a bit, with versions that can surface a friend's current weather, the song they're playing, or a short video clip instead of a still.

The honest limits. The free tier caps you at 20 friends. Locket Gold (about $3.99/month or $36/year) lifts that cap, adds widget styles, and hands you early access to new features. But the deeper limit isn't the price. It's permanence. Locket is built around the newest image, so the photo from three weeks ago that made you laugh is gone from easy reach. If you want a glance, stay. If you want a keepsake, that's exactly why people read on.

2. Ekko (the closest clone)

Ekko is the app to try first if you simply want "Locket but a bit more." The core loop is identical: download, add friends, send a photo that pops onto their widget. Where it stretches is the extras. Ekko lets you sort shared photos into different albums, supports likes and comments, and has a "gift-wrapped" touch where a picture arrives inside a virtual envelope you open.

Tradeoff: those social touches (likes, comments) are the very things some people left Locket to escape. Ekko is friendlier and a little more playful, but it nudges back toward feed behavior. Permanence is slightly better thanks to albums, though it's still organized around the live widget more than a lasting timeline. Best for: friend groups who want a richer Locket.

3. NoteIt (best for doodles, not photos)

NoteIt swaps photos for drawings and scribbled notes. You link with one person, then push a quick doodle or a "miss you" straight onto their home screen. It comes with proper drawing tools (pencil, highlighter, marker, ruler, color picker), which is why couples love it. It's the most spontaneous of the bunch, and the one people describe as feeling closest to a real peek into someone's day. Pricing is gentle, roughly $6 a year for the extras.

Tradeoff: the note overwrites the last one, so there's basically no archive. It's a live love-letter, not a memory book. If your partner's morning doodle is the whole point, NoteIt is unbeatable for the price. If you want to look back through a month of them later, it isn't built for that. Best for: couples who want spontaneous notes over a saved album.

4. Widgetsmith (the home-screen tinkerer)

Widgetsmith is the odd one out here, and I'm including it because people genuinely search for it as a Locket alternative. It isn't a sharing app at all. It's a customization powerhouse that lets you craft widgets showing your calendar, weather, photos, and text with precise styling. If what you actually liked about Locket was having a rotating photo on your home screen, Widgetsmith does that beautifully with your own camera roll, plus a Premium tier around $2/month for the fancier widgets.

Tradeoff: there's no partner, no pairing, no sharing. Zero couples fit. It's a solo aesthetic tool. Best for: people who wanted the pretty widget, not the connection.

5. Retro (best for permanence in a small circle)

Retro is the first app on this list that takes permanence seriously. It's a weekly photo journal built to bring you closer to a small circle of people you actually care about, deliberately without the pressure of big social media. You can backfill past weeks with photos already in your camera roll, print and ship a shot as a real USPS postcard, and a "Rewind" feature walks you privately back through old moments from your phone.

Tradeoff: Retro is friend-circle shaped, not strictly two-person, and the weekly rhythm is slower than Locket's instant ping. There's no live home-screen widget feeding you a partner's latest face. But for actually keeping and revisiting photos with people you love, it's far ahead of the widget clones. Best for: small friend groups who want a lasting, low-pressure journal.

6. Widgetshare (the Android-friendly Locket-style pick)

Android users often get the short end of the Locket-clone world, since several of these apps are iOS-first. Widgetshare is one of the options that comes up specifically as a Locket-and-NoteIt-style widget that works well on Android, letting you send photos to a linked person's home screen.

Tradeoff: smaller app, smaller polish, and the usual free-tier-with-ads model. Permanence is low, same as Locket. But if you're on Android and the iOS darlings feel second-class, it's a reasonable, no-fuss substitute. Best for: Android users who want the basic widget glance. (Worth a quick check of current reviews before committing, since smaller apps change fast.)

7. Stampling (the keep-it-forever pick)

Here's the lane none of the widget apps fill. Stampling treats one everyday photo a day as something to keep, not something to replace. Each photo becomes a little collectible postage stamp that lands on your Board, a private timeline grouped by day, with paper texture and perforated edges and a stamp-shaped viewfinder when you shoot. It's built to feel like a keepsake you'd want to flip back through, which is exactly the thing Locket's newest-photo design can't give you.

For couples and best friends, the part that matters is the private 1-to-1 pairing. You invite one person by code or QR (no directory, no username to look up), choose an album to share, and it syncs in real time across both phones. One Pro plan covers both partners instead of charging each of you, and if the pairing ever ends, leaving wipes the shared album from both devices. No feed, no followers, no algorithm. It won't replace Locket's instant home-screen glance, and it isn't trying to. The two even pair nicely; many people run a widget for the glance and a board for the memory.

If you're weighing the two head to head, we did a full breakdown in Stampling vs Locket. And if your reason for leaving Locket is really about a partner rather than a friend group, the private couples pairing guide goes deeper on how 1-to-1 sharing actually works.

So which one should you pick?

Skip the agonizing. Match yourself to a sentence:

• "I just want Locket but with more than 20 friends." Pay for Locket Gold, or try Ekko.
• "I want spontaneous notes and doodles with my partner." NoteIt, easily, and it's cheap.
• "I only liked the pretty home-screen photo." Widgetsmith, using your own camera roll.
• "I want to actually keep and revisit photos with a few close people." Retro.
• "I'm on Android and the iOS apps feel like an afterthought." Widgetshare.
• "I want a private, two-person album that lasts, with the days kept forever." Stampling.

The deciding question is almost always permanence. Widgets are wonderful for the glance and quietly bad at memory, because they're designed to forget. If the photos are meant to be a record you return to, especially across distance, lean toward an app built to keep them. We made that case in more detail for long-distance couples, where the gap between a glance and a keepsake gets very real.

Whatever you choose, the habit beats the tool. One honest photo a day, sent to the people who matter, kept somewhere you'll want to look back on. That's the whole thing Locket got right, and the only real question is how long you want those photos to stick around.