# Flow Shot — Hands-Free, Motion-Activated

> Motion-activated camera app for automatic, high-resolution action photography. (iPhone/iPad app by James Thomas.)

- Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/flow-shot/id1170799793 (this page in markdown: same URL + `.md`)
- Developer: [James Thomas](https://appshunter.io/developer/1170799792)
- Category: Photo & Video, Lifestyle
- Price: $2.99 with in-app purchases
- Rating: 4.05/5 from 20 App Store ratings · 14 written reviews indexed
- Age rating: 4+
- Requires: iOS 11.0 · 15 MB
- Languages: English
- Released: 2016-12-02
- Data updated: 2026-06-10
- Monetization: paid
- User reviews in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/flow-shot/id1170799793/reviews.md

## What is Flow Shot?

Flow Shot is the ultimate motion-activated camera.  Just sit your phone down and let Flow Shot take the photos.  Flow Shot will automatically capture full-resolution pictures with Live Photos at over 10 shots per second.  The result will be amazing action shots of you, your friends, animals, motorsports, action sports, or anything else you can imagine.  

MULTIPLE USES
- Perfect for mountain bikers, cyclists, runners, races, animals, motorsports, off-roading, motocross, and more.
- Wildlife photography of birds, insects, animals, or anything that moves!
- Action selfies of you and your friends
- Automatic photos at any event (races, rocketry clubs, airplane fly-ins, etc.)
- Family & group photos with everyone included

PERFECT SHOTS
- Pre-set options for simple first time shooting
- Advanced controls for experienced photographers
- Full support for ALL Front and Rear cameras (wide, ultra-wide, and telephoto)
- Full resolution photo capture (up to 12MP images with Live Photos)
- Choose from burst rates of 10+ shots per second all the way down to 60 second delay time lapses
- Adjustable motion detector sensitivity
- Custom Intelligent Exposure (IE) mode prioritizes high shutter speeds to eliminate motion blur in good lighting conditions
- Full-featured manual camera controls are built-in.  These include a custom Shutter Priority mode, Exposure Compensation control, full manual shutter & ISO control, a typical auto-exposure mode that prioritizes ISO in low-light conditions, a full-time exposure status display, tap-to-focus and manual focus support, focus peaking, exposure histogram display, and more.
- Full GPS & location metadata for all photos

SMART DESIGN
- Handling detection prevents unwanted photos by preventing motion activation when you handle your device
- Quickly adjust or disable the handling detection for unstable supports, high winds, or when your activity will jolt the camera (like when setting the camera up on a ramp you are going to hit, or when taking hand-held automatic selfies)
- Adjustable start delay timer to prevent unwanted captures while you setup for your shot
- Advanced GPU-based image processing algorithms give high-speed motion detection with the lowest possible battery consumption
- All photos are saved directly to your iOS Photos library
- Works in any device orientation (portrait, landscape, upside-down)

INCREDIBLE FUN
- Share your awesome photos with me on Facebook (@FlowShot) and Instagram (FlowShotApp)
- Get photos perfect for sharing with your friends or posting on sites like Strava, Pinkbike, MTB Project, many different forums, and more.
- Get creative using custom long or short exposures, advanced shots in low-light conditions (including night shots with light trails), and more.
- Invent uses for Flow Shot no one has ever thought of!

Flow Shot is my contribution to making action photos of yourself and others simple and convenient by bringing motion-activated DSLR "camera trap" functionality to the iPhone you already carry in your pocket.  It is in a completely different league from all the other "motion cam" style apps on the App Store and was designed from the ground-up to take the highest quality photos possible.  Please let me know if you have any feedback, comments, or suggestions.  I’d love to hear them!

Privacy Notice:  Flow Shot does not contain any ads, has no kind of user behavior tracking, and does not keep or transmit any information on its users.  I value my privacy and yours, and since I do not track any of your information I have nothing to sell to ad networks or anyone else.  Flow Shot is supported entirely through the purchases made by its awesome users.  It's that simple.

P.S.:  People always ask what my favorite tripod/stand for the iPhone is.  The smallest and lightest one I have found is the Stance made by Kenu.  Just make sure you get the iPhone version!

## Key features

- Motion-activated photo capture
- Automatic full-resolution pictures
- Live Photos support
- Adjustable motion detector sensitivity
- Manual camera controls
- Handling detection to prevent accidental shots

## Pricing and in-app purchases

Base price: $2.99.

**One-time purchases**

| Purchase | Price | Type |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Watermark Removal | $1.99 | one-time |
| ProMode + Watermark Removal | $3.99 | one-time |
| Pro Mode Upgrade | $1.99 | one-time |


## Recent user reviews (10 of 14)

All indexed reviews: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/flow-shot/id1170799793/reviews.md

### 4/5 — Instruction Manual?

*2023-11-19*

Hello,

Is there an instruction manual for this app?  I know the app is supposed to be intuitively obvious, but I would find it easier to use if I didn’t have to figure out everything.  For example, what is the purpose of the Live Off and On button?  I have obtained some impressive pictures, but the yield, number of useful photos/number of useless photos, is small.  If I knew more about controls, I think I could improve my yield.  I am not a photography doyen, so a manual would certainly help.  Thanks for the app.

Regards,
Tom

**Developer response:** Hi Tom,

You are not alone!  I get asked similar questions every so often, so I compiled my responses into a Google doc with tips on how to get the most from Flow Shot (including your Live Photo question and another on how to manage the large number of photos that motion triggering at extremely high capture rates can often create).  Here’s the link:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-LEm9eJNGIGXRvYP861lQXZYv75sdkaeHxVONUmB6ok/

### 2/5 — Needs work

*2022-03-18, version 2.0.1*

I set it up to capture birds coming to a birdbath.. Long story short, I got 1250 false positive shots when leaves in background trees rustled in the wind and only one shot which coincidentally had a bird in it. I sat and watched as it missed about 15-20 other birds in the first hour but got lots and lots of shots of an empty birdbath.

It piled all hose useless rejects into my photos folder and so it took me 15-20 minutes at least to sort through them all and delete the bad ones.

 There are many ways the app could be improved to actually be useful, ranging from better use of ai, to allowing users to identify active/ignore regions. But the ui has a lot to be desired and needs plenty of work also, to make this app worth more than free and certainly as much as the few dollars it costs.

### 4/5 — Works flawlessly

*2020-12-05, version 2.0.1*

I’ll add that fifth star when the app can take full advantage of Deep Fusion,  HDR and any further camera improvements in the current hardware and software.

### 1/5 — Broken as of 4/2020

*2020-05-31, version 2.0.1*

This was a great app but appears to be abandoned. Will update to 5 stars if a fix comes out but dev is MIA and this hasn’t worked correctly in months.

**Developer response:** Hi, what specifically isn’t working for you?  I take it that it was working for you at one time?  Does the app open up?  Will it attempt to take photos when you hit the record button?  What version of iOS are you running?  Have you tried deleting the app and reinstalling it?  

I haven’t had any reports lately of Flow Shot being broken (yours is in fact the first I have heard in a long time!), but if yours isn’t working I’d love to get to the bottom of it.  

Thanks,

James

### 4/5 — Great app

*2020-04-17, version 2.0.1*

This app is absolutely fantastic! Exactly what you want in an app like this. Great work Mr. Thomas for all the work you put in this. One gripe though, is that I don’t really like how your pictures automatically go to your camera roll once you are finished taking pictures. I wish there was a way to import the pictures you want instead of every single picture going to your camera roll. But besides that minor gripe, this app is THE app to get if you want to take great burst photos.

Edit: Oh wow! Thanks for the reply Mr. Thomas I will try out your advice. Like I said this app is THE number one app to take great burst photos with. You’re awesome. Stay safe during these uncertain times.

**Developer response:** I’m glad you like it!  On your comment about having a separate location where the photos are stored first:  That was actually the way Flow Shot worked for the first couple of years, but honestly it was just a nightmare to maintain the image viewer / selection / export tool.  It also introduced confusion and also bugs that led to lost photos in some cases, which was obviously a really bad experience for the users it happened to.  

My only advice is to come up with a workflow to go through the photos quickly in iOS Photos when you’re done taking them in Flow Shot.  I personally just hop into Photos, go into the main “Photos” view on the bottom-left, select the last photo to view it and then begin scrolling backwards on the bar at the bottom.  If I see a photo I like I hit the heart icon to favorite it as I go along.  Then when I’m done I exit out of the single photo view and into the overview of the photos.  From there you can hit the “Select” button in the top right corner and then slowly begin swiping from the first photo and drag down to end on the last photo.  Once you have all of the photos selected, quickly tap to unselect each of the pictures with a heart icon (the ones you favorited earlier) and then hit delete to delete all of the rest.  Remember that you can pinch to zoom in and out on the overview so you can see more photos at once (which can reduce scrolling when you’re going through to unselect a few photos from hundreds of recent photos).

The process looks worse written out than it actually is after you do it a couple of times.  Hopefully that helps a little bit with your annoyance, and helps understanding how we got here.

Enjoy taking photos in a new way!  I am always surprised at the cool photos I get with the app.  Take care!  :)

### 5/5 — Must Have Camera App

*2019-11-07, version 2.0.1*

Finally a camera app that does it right. This app crams loads of must have camera settings into an incredibly intuitive, easy to use format.  I'm actually surprised that apple hasn't built some of these features into the app that comes on the phone! 

I plan on using it for group pictures, kids sporting events, and taking outdoor action shots.  It would be good for taking pictures of my dogs or setting it out by my bird feeders, too.  The possibilities are endless! You can set the phone almost anywhere and get a photo from perspectives that make people think "how'd you get that shot?"

### 5/5 — Yess!!!

*2019-10-17, version 2.0.0*

This is the update we’ve been waiting for. Being able to use the telephoto camera (finally) makes this app a five-star product.

**Developer response:** Hi!  I have finished an updated 2.0 version of Flow Shot today that now supports all of the available cameras on every device.  Just keep pressing the camera switch icon in this new version and you will get each of the lenses available on your phone.  The update for Flow Shot should be available on the App Store later today.  Happy photo taking, and thanks for your feedback and support!

### 3/5 — Good idea but crashes

*2018-12-04, version 1.1.0*

Worked ok until I had several thousand photos, now it crashes on start and I have no way to get those pictures saved. Also is there a save all feature?

**Developer response:** Hi.  I'm sorry to hear about the problem you have had with thousands of photos in the original version of Flow Shot.  A few other people had reached out with somewhat similar problems, but the random crashing issues turned out to be elusive and difficult to solve across all devices.  Instead of just guessing and hoping to fix the problems with the old code, I actually have went a different direction and took out all of the internal image storing and viewing functionality within Flow Shot that was responsible for the crashing issues and replaced it with a much simpler architecture.  The new & updated 2.0 version of Flow Shot now saves all photos directly to iOS Photos as they are shot.  The update for Flow Shot should be available on the App Store later today.  If there are old photos left from the previous version of Flow Shot the new version will attempt to automatically export all of them to iOS Photos when it starts the first time.  Happy photo taking, and thanks for your feedback and support!

### 5/5 — Very cool!  Very fun!  Must have.

*2018-05-23, version 1.1.0*

I put my phone on a little tripod and placed it within 2-3 feet of our bird feeder and within 5 minutes I had 100 photos and kept 90% of them.  It’s a lot of fun and so many possibilities on where you can put it.  This is one of my new favorite apps.

### 5/5 — Perfect for Animal Photography

*2018-01-24, version 1.1.0*

This app is fabulous, a word I rarely use. For more than a year I have been looking for a device that would trigger my iPhone when birds or other animals would approach its tripod. And here it is in an app that actually works. I initially had problems with leaves moving in the wind triggering the shutter,but by adjusting the motion sensitivity the issue disappeared.

Congratulations to the developer on this one!

## Frequently asked questions about Flow Shot

### What is Flow Shot?

Flow Shot is a motion-activated camera application that automatically captures high-resolution photos and Live Photos. It is designed to take pictures without the user needing to hold their device, making it ideal for action shots.

### How does Flow Shot capture photos?

Flow Shot uses a motion detector to automatically capture full-resolution pictures, including Live Photos, at a rate of over 10 shots per second. Sensitivity can be adjusted for different scenarios.

### What kind of photos can Flow Shot take?

Flow Shot excels at capturing action shots of sports, wildlife, pets, and group events. It can also be used for creative photography with long or short exposures, and low-light shots.

### Does Flow Shot have manual camera controls?

Yes, Flow Shot includes full-featured manual camera controls. These allow for custom shutter priority, exposure compensation, manual shutter and ISO control, tap-to-focus, focus peaking, and exposure histogram display.

### What devices does Flow Shot support?

Flow Shot is supported on iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch devices. It utilizes all front and rear cameras, including wide, ultra-wide, and telephoto lenses.

### How much does Flow Shot cost?

Flow Shot is a paid application, available for $2.99. There are no in-app purchases or subscription fees associated with its use.

### How often is Flow Shot updated?

The latest version of Flow Shot is 2.0.1, which was last updated on November 7, 2019. This indicates a history of updates, though the frequency may vary.

### Is Flow Shot suitable for children?

Flow Shot has an age rating of 4+, making it suitable for younger users. The app's functionality is focused on photography and does not contain mature content.

## Version history (last 1 release)

### 2.0.1 — 2019-11-07

Flow Shot version 2.0.1 :
 • Fixed problem introduced in iOS 13.2 where pictures were not saving properly into iOS Photos

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*Data collected daily from the US App Store and indexed by [AppsHunter](https://appshunter.io/). User reviews are verbatim App Store reviews. Ratings, prices and chart positions refresh continuously; this snapshot is from 2026-06-10.*
