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How to Clone Locket

Photo widget that sends pictures straight to your friends' home screens

iOS easy to clone Freemium (free core photo loop, Locket Gold subscription for history, quality and extras)
Est. monthly revenue
$200Kโ€“$600K/mo
rough estimate, 2025
MVP build time
1โ€“2 weeks with AI builders (PWA version)
full version: 2โ€“3 months including native widgets
Clone prompts
5 builders
Lovable ยท Bolt ยท Cursor ยท v0 ยท Base44
Briefing

What is Locket?

Locket exploded in January 2022 with one perfect idea: a home-screen widget that shows live photos from your closest friends. You snap a picture, it appears on their phone's home screen instantly - no feed, no likes, no strangers. The founder built it as a gift for his girlfriend, posted a TikTok, and hit #1 on the App Store with tens of millions of downloads. It remains the canonical example of a one-feature app riding a native platform primitive (iOS 14 widgets) to virality.

The business is freemium: the core send-photos-to-widgets loop is free (that's what fuels the K-factor - every photo recruits the recipient), while Locket Gold sells unlimited photo history, higher quality and bonus features for a few dollars a month. Third-party estimates put revenue in the modest hundreds-of-thousands-per-month range - small next to its download numbers, which is the honest lesson: pure viral social apps monetize thin unless they own a paying niche.

That's exactly why the clone opportunity is strong. Don't out-viral Locket - own a segment where people will actually pay: long-distance couples (shared widget + countdown + private journal), new grandparents (kids' photos auto-appearing on grandma's tablet/TV frame), or close-friend groups abroad. The build is small - camera, friends, photo delivery, a feed of history - and a mobile-first PWA proves the loop before you invest in native WidgetKit for the true home-screen magic.

Who it's for: Gen Z close-friend groups, long-distance couples, and families - anyone who wants ambient presence with a handful of people rather than an audience. Clone opportunities: couples (premium-friendly), grandparents and family frames, deployed military families, international students.

Revenue model

How Locket makes money

Revenue estimate
$200Kโ€“$600K/mo

Rough estimate based on third-party app-store data; Locket is private and does not disclose revenue, and estimates for small-subscription social apps vary widely. CloneMRR is not affiliated with Locket; figures are for educational purposes.

Spec sheet

Features to build

MVP ship this first

  • โœ“ Friend pairing
    Invite via personal link or code; cap at ~20 friends to keep the graph intimate - the cap is a feature, not a limit.
  • โœ“ Camera capture & send
    In-app camera with front/back flip and flash; one tap sends the photo to all friends (or a picked subset) instantly.
  • โœ“ Live widget view
    The recipient's 'widget' - on web, an installable PWA home view that always shows the latest photo from friends, updating in realtime.
  • โœ“ History feed
    Reverse-chronological scroll of every photo received and sent; free users see the last 25, Gold unlocks everything.
  • โœ“ Reactions & replies
    Tap an emoji reaction or fire back a quick photo reply - the loop that turns one photo into a conversation.
  • โœ“ Push notifications
    Web push when a friend sends a photo ('Maya sent you a Locket'); the re-engagement engine.
~ 1โ€“2 weeks with AI builders (PWA version)

Full version add later

  • + Native home-screen widgets
    React Native app with WidgetKit (iOS) and Glance (Android) widgets - the real product magic and the reason to go native.
  • + Gold subscription
    Unlimited history, full-resolution downloads, exclusive widget frames and icons, priority delivery.
  • + Captions & doodles
    Text overlays and finger-drawing on photos before sending.
  • + Video moments
    2-second looping clips that play in the widget - higher emotional bandwidth, Gold-gated.
  • + Frame mode
    A tablet/TV fullscreen slideshow of incoming photos - turns grandma's iPad into a live family frame, and a wedge into the family niche.
  • + Moderation & safety
    Report/block, hash-based image scanning and rate limits - non-negotiable once strangers can exchange images.
~ 2โ€“3 months including native widgets
Architecture

Recommended tech stack

Layer Our pick Why
Web app / PWA Next.js + Tailwind The camera (getUserMedia), realtime feed and installable home view all work on the web - validate the loop and the niche before writing native code.
Mobile app React Native (Expo) + native widget modules WidgetKit/Glance widgets are the soul of the product and require native targets; Expo dev-client keeps the rest of the app shared.
Backend & realtime Supabase Auth, Postgres, storage and realtime channels in one box - photo delivery is just an insert that fans out over a realtime subscription.
Image storage/CDN Cloudflare R2 + Images Photos are the cost center; R2 has zero egress fees and Cloudflare Images handles resizing for widget/thumbnail/full sizes.
Subscriptions Stripe Billing (web) + RevenueCat (mobile) A small monthly Gold tier needs frictionless checkout on web and proper StoreKit handling once native ships.
Notifications & analytics Web Push / Expo Push + PostHog Send-to-open latency and invites-per-user (K-factor) are the two numbers that decide whether the loop is alive.
The payload

AI prompts to clone Locket

Pick your builder, copy the prompt, paste it and iterate. Enter your email once to unlock all prompts on every page - we'll also send you this full prompt pack.

locket-lovable.md
Build a private photo-sharing web app called Keepsake, modeled on Locket.

## Core concept
An anti-social-network: you add up to 20 close friends, snap photos with an in-app camera, and they appear instantly on your friends' 'widget' - a beautiful installable home screen view that always shows the latest photo. No likes, no followers, no public anything. Free core loop; Keepsake Gold ($3.99/month) unlocks unlimited history and full-resolution photos.

## Pages
1. Landing page: warm cream background, a phone mockup showing a live photo widget that cycles through demo photos, headline 'Live photos from your favorite people.', subline about home screens not feeds, invite-only energy, Gold pricing section, FAQ
2. Onboarding (after signup): set name + avatar photo, then a 'Add your people' screen with a personal invite link to copy/share and a code-entry field to accept someone else's invite; explain the 20-friend cap proudly
3. Widget home (the default view): one huge rounded-square photo card filling most of the screen showing the newest photo from any friend, sender name + time-ago pill, swipe/arrows to flip through the latest photo from each friend, subtle 'install this app' prompt for the PWA
4. Camera: full-screen viewfinder using the device camera, flip + flash buttons, big shutter, after capture choose 'Send to all' or pick specific friends, optional one-line caption
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Loadout

Tools to build your Locket clone

Exit strategy

How to make money with a Locket clone

01

Own the couples niche

Long-distance couples already pay for relationship apps. A Locket-style shared widget plus countdown-to-reunion, private journal and anniversary features can charge $5โ€“8/month where generic friend-sharing struggles at $3.99.

02

Sell the grandparent frame

Frame mode (tablet/TV slideshow of incoming family photos) turns the app into a digital photo frame grandparents never have to touch. Families pay for hardware-adjacent gifts: a $39/year family plan sells itself at Christmas.

03

Gate memories, not the loop

Locket's playbook is right: keep sending free so growth compounds, and charge for the past - unlimited history, full-res exports, printed photo books of your year. Nostalgia is the willingness-to-pay.

04

Premium expression packs

Exclusive widget frames, seasonal borders, doodle brushes and custom app icons bundled into the paid tier. Cheap to make, high perceived value with a young audience trained by Snapchat+.

Intel

Frequently asked questions

How much money does Locket make?

Locket is private, but third-party estimates put consumer spend in the low-to-mid hundreds of thousands per month from the Locket Gold subscription - modest against its tens of millions of downloads. The lesson for cloners: viral reach and revenue are different games; a paying niche beats a big free audience.

How hard is it to build a Locket clone?

The core loop - camera, friends, instant photo delivery, history - is a 1โ€“2 week build with AI tools; it's mostly CRUD plus realtime. The genuinely native part is the home-screen widget (WidgetKit on iOS), which needs a React Native or Swift app. Validate the loop as an installable PWA first, then go native for the widget magic.

Can a web app put photos on someone's home screen like Locket?

Not as a true widget - that requires native WidgetKit (iOS) or Glance (Android). A PWA gets close: an installable app whose opening view is always the latest friend photo, plus web push notifications on every send. That's enough to prove retention before investing in native widget development.

Is it legal to clone Locket?

Yes - the concept of sending photos to friends' home screens isn't protectable, and BeReal, Locket and friends all borrow from each other. Don't copy the Locket name, logo, marketing assets or code. With user-generated images you must also handle DMCA, reporting and CSAM-scanning obligations seriously from day one.

What tech stack should I use for a photo widget app?

Next.js PWA + Supabase (auth, Postgres, storage, realtime) + Cloudflare R2/Images for cheap photo serving, Stripe for the Gold tier, then React Native with native widget modules for the home-screen play. PostHog to track K-factor (invites per user) - the metric this whole category lives on. The prompts on this page scaffold exactly that.

What does it cost to run a Locket-style app?

Photos are the cost center. At small scale, Supabase storage plus Cloudflare R2 (zero egress fees) keeps you under $50/month for thousands of users if you resize aggressively - serve 600px widget images, not originals. Costs scale linearly with photos sent, which is why the full-resolution tier is paid.

Next targets

More apps to clone

CloneMRR is not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to Locket. Revenue figures are rough estimates based on public reports and are provided for educational purposes only. "Cloning" here means building an original product inspired by a proven business model - never copy a brand's name, logo, content or code.