Getting more from your Bubbles In Time setup.

Installing Bubbles In Time and adding a few photos gets you started. The experience you end up with depends on decisions that aren't obvious until you've used it for a while. Here's what people find works — and what doesn't.

Curate, don't dump your entire gallery

The temptation when you first set up BIT is to add everything — select all, import hundreds of photos, let the randomness do the work. This usually produces a worse experience than a smaller, intentional library.

When the library is too large, the photos you actually want to encounter get diluted by photos that don't mean much to you. A candid from a trip five years ago that you've never looked at twice isn't a good ambient photo. It surfaces, you see it, you feel nothing, you dismiss it. That's the opposite of what BIT is for.

Most people find a library of 20 to 50 photos creates the best experience. Small enough that you encounter meaningful photos with regularity. Large enough that the rotation stays fresh. Read more about the curation philosophy behind keeping memories close.

Choose photos of people, not places or things

This isn't a rule, but it's a pattern. Photos of people — faces, moments with someone specific — tend to create stronger ambient encounters than photos of places, food, or objects. The neurological response to seeing a face is different from the response to seeing a landscape. A photo of your daughter's face creates a felt moment. A photo of a mountain you hiked creates a pleasant memory but not the same quality of encounter.

Photos of moments work well too — a photo from a specific occasion that carries weight. Photos that remind you of a feeling rather than just a fact. Here's more on why photos of the people you love are particularly effective.

Match your interval to your usage pattern

The right surfacing interval depends on how you use your phone. Someone who has their phone in hand for six hours a day will want a less frequent interval than someone who uses it for two hours. The goal is to encounter two or three photos a day that create a genuine moment — not to be interrupted every few minutes.

Start with hourly. If it feels like too much, increase the interval. If you forget BIT is even running, decrease it. The setting is easy to adjust from the main settings screen.

Use BIT as a photo reminder system

One of the less obvious uses of BIT: adding a photo of someone you've been meaning to call. When their face surfaces as a bubble, it's a more effective trigger than a text reminder. Read the full guide to using BIT as a photo reminder.

This works because the emotional recognition triggered by a face bypasses the part of your brain that's learned to ignore text notifications. You've trained yourself to swipe away calendar reminders. You haven't trained yourself to swipe away an unexpected photo of your dad.

Add text threads alongside photos

BIT supports text threads — screenshots of conversations, specific messages that meant something. Adding a few of these alongside photos creates a more varied experience. Some bubbles are faces. Some are words. The mix changes the texture of what surfaces throughout your day.

The thread feature lets you add multi-turn conversations as a single memory item. A complete exchange — the kind of conversation you'd want to remember — surfaces as a readable thread rather than a cut-off screenshot.

Refresh the library periodically

After a few weeks, even a well-curated library starts to feel familiar. The photos that surprised you in week one are expected by week four. Spend five minutes every month or two swapping some photos out — removing ones you've gotten used to, adding photos you haven't looked at in a while.

The freshness of the encounter is most of the experience. A photo you haven't seen in months lands differently than one you've seen thirty times. Rotation at the library level keeps the ambient quality alive.

What's coming that will change how you use it

The current version is the foundation. The features in development will change how people customize their BIT experience significantly — time-based reminder bubbles, person bubbles triggered by incoming messages, shared memory scheduling. See what's on the roadmap and suggest what you want prioritized.