Your favourite photos 
In your mailbox every month 

On your iPhone, in Safari. You sign in with your email address (we send a six-digit code, there is no password), add our shortcut to Apple’s Shortcuts app, let it run once, and tell us where the envelope goes. Then your page shows your first envelope filling up.

The page shows every tap on pictures of the real iPhone screens, and shows your first photos the moment they arrive. It takes about five minutes.

Not yet. favprints is built on two things only an iPhone has: the heart in Apple’s Photos app, and Apple’s Shortcuts app that sends the photos by itself. For now it is iPhone only.

No app. Shortcuts is Apple’s own app and is already on your iPhone. A shortcut is a short list of steps the phone carries out by itself. Ours has about twenty, and you can open it and read every one of them.

Once a day, at a time you pick, it asks your photo library for photos you have marked as favourite. Photos only: no videos, no screenshots. It takes up to five it has not sent before, makes a JPEG copy of each, 2,400 pixels wide, and uploads the copies.

It works while the phone is locked and in your pocket. It never touches a photo without a heart, and it changes nothing in your library.

The first time the shortcut runs, iOS asks whether it may connect to favprints, then whether it may send photos to favprints; that question can come a few times. Choose Always Allow every time. The daily run happens while your phone is locked, and a locked phone cannot ask you anything. The permission covers this one shortcut and nothing else.

A run takes about a minute and sends at most five photos of a megabyte or two each. It uses whatever connection the phone has at that moment, so pick a time when you are usually on Wi-Fi, at night for example.

Switch off the automation in the Shortcuts app and nothing more leaves your phone. To remove everything we hold, use “Delete my account” on your rules page. There is no subscription to cancel.

The ones you gave a heart. When you start, favourites from the last 60 days are included, so your first envelope is not empty. After that, every new favourite.

Your envelope fills up with what has arrived, oldest first, up to the size you chose (20 to start with). On the 1st it is ready: you look through it and tap Print, or, if you switch to Automatic, it prints by itself. Anything beyond the size waits for the next envelope.

No. You set the size of your envelope, 20 photos to start with, and we never print more than that. If you hearted more, the oldest go first and the rest wait for the following months. You can change the size any time on your page.

Then the envelope is smaller and so is the bill: you pay for the photos in it, plus the postage. The postage is the same for a small envelope as for a full one, so 10 photos or more is the better value. With no favourites at all, no envelope is sent and the month costs nothing.

Yes, that is how it starts. Your page shows the envelope as it fills up, and on the 1st it waits for you: look through it, tap Print, and it goes to the lab. Nothing is printed or charged before. If you would rather be surprised, switch to Automatic and it prints by itself every month.

Take the heart away before the next daily run and the photo never leaves your phone. Once it has been sent it counts as chosen and will be printed.

Most likely it was too small. A print needs about 900 × 600 pixels to look sharp at 10 × 15 cm, and pictures saved from chat apps are sometimes smaller. We skip those instead of printing something blurry. They cost nothing, and your page lists which ones were skipped.

A little. iPhone photos are a bit squarer than photo paper, so about a tenth of the picture is trimmed, half from each long side. Upright photos are printed upright. The page of each order shows what the crop removed from every photo.

Real photographic prints, 10 × 15 cm, on lustre paper: the slightly satin finish between matt and glossy. They arrive in an envelope, ready for the fridge door, a frame or a shoebox.

A professional photo lab in the United Kingdom prints them and Royal Mail carries them. Orders go to the lab on the 1st of the month. Allow about two weeks for the post; there is no tracking number.

Anywhere in the European Union, and in Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland. Not yet in the United Kingdom.

€0.79 for each printed photo, plus the postage for the envelope. With the postage, an envelope of 10 photos comes to about €13 and one of 20 to about €21. There is no setup fee and no subscription, a month without favourites costs nothing, and the prices include VAT.

Like a prepaid account. You put money on your balance in advance: a small amount to try it out, or a bigger one that simply lasts longer. When an envelope goes to the lab, its bill is taken from the balance, and your billing page shows every envelope with its photos, its postage and its total. The balance does not expire.

The prints pause, and that is all. Your new favourites keep arriving and wait. If the balance does not cover the next envelope, the whole envelope waits: we do not split it, because you would pay the postage twice. Top up and it goes out with the next run, or leave it for as long as you like.

Then you get your money back. Tell us, and the whole bill of that envelope comes back to you in full.

No. favprints is in its first weeks and your first top-up is free. You can also skip it at the end of the setup: your favourites keep arriving, and nothing is printed until there is a balance. Once paying starts, you see the price before anything is charged.

No. There is no gallery, no sharing and no public link. Your photos are kept in private storage, and the only way to open one is a link that expires: after five minutes for the small pictures on your own page, after a week for the lab that prints them.

favprints is run by one person, who can reach the storage when something needs fixing and does not look through anyone’s photos. The overview of all accounts shows how many photos are waiting, never the photos themselves.

In Frankfurt, Germany. A photo is deleted 30 days after the lab reports your envelope as complete, and photos too small to print are deleted as well. What stays is a list of file names and dates, so that nothing is ever printed twice, and the record of each order. Your email, address and settings are stored in the EU.

The lab that prints your photos and the postal service that carries the envelope. Your email address passes through our email provider when we send you a sign-in code. Nobody else gets anything: no advertising, no selling, no sharing.

On your rules page, “Delete my account”. That removes your photos, your address, your settings and the code that connects your phone, straight away. The lab keeps its own record of past orders, as the law requires of it.