Press information
Two weeks of holiday, four phones, 5,000 photos: ShortlistBuddy picks the best
Smartphones have made taking photos effortless – sorting them has not. In a German survey, 44 percent said they hardly ever look at their photos and videos again; only 9 percent delete regularly. After a family holiday, thousands of shots pile up, often the same scene taken on several phones.
The web app ShortlistBuddy takes on that first pass. Users pick their photos in the browser – from several folders one after another, or from Dropbox. The app collapses bursts and near-duplicates, even across different cameras, rates sharpness and visual appeal, and proposes a selection. How big it gets and what matters – people, animals, landscapes, food – is up to the user, via sliders. Every photo stays checkable; nothing is deleted.
The originals never leave the device. Only downscaled previews (at most 512 × 512 pixels) are sent for the AI analysis, and they are not stored permanently. An optional person search runs entirely on the device. No account is needed to analyse and see the result – only to download the selection.
A demo with 101 sample photos shows the principle without uploading anything. ShortlistBuddy is in public beta and free for up to 250 photos.
Source of the figures: Bitkom Research, 13 May 2022
See the demo →Facts
- What
- a web app that proposes a checkable selection from large sets of holiday and family photos
- Where
- in the browser, no install; in English (shortlistbuddy.com) and German (auswahlbuddy.de)
- Photos
- JPEG, PNG, HEIC (iPhone) and WebP; several folders one after another or Dropbox in one job
- Selection
- collapses bursts and near-duplicates, also across cameras; sliders for amount, similarity, sharpness and motifs
- Privacy
- originals stay on the device; only previews up to 512 × 512 px are analysed, not stored permanently; person search on the device
- AI
- image analysis with Google Gemini (paid tier – per the provider’s terms, inputs are not used for training)
- Price
- public beta, free for up to 250 photos
- Survey
- Bitkom Research (Germany), press release of 13 May 2022, over 1,000 respondents aged 16+
Video and images
Explainer video (under a minute, no sound)
Download MP4 (16:9)·Download MP4 (9:16)
Screenshots
Free for editorial use in connection with ShortlistBuddy. The sample photos are partly AI-generated (fictional people and places); the Japan photos are real.
Contact
For questions, interviews or test access, write to us: contact@auswahlbuddy.de
Phone: +49 155 61229658
As of 28 September 2026