Frame Grab vs Permanent Archive
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Frame Grab
Easily extract still images from videos stored on your device. Select any frame, adjust playback speed, and save images in JPEG format. Supports videos from Photos, Music, Podcasts, and TV apps.
- Extract frames from videos
- Save as JPEG
- Adjust playback speed
- Save single or multiple frames
- Embed Exif metadata
- Continuous frame grabbing
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Frame Grab makes it easy to capture and share any moment from videos stored on your device as still images in JPEG or HEIF format. It supports not only videos stored in the Photos app, but also those in the Music, Podcasts, and TV apps, as long as they are downloaded to your device. ◇◇◇ How to Use ◇◇◇ ◆When you launch the app, a list of video categories appears: Photos, Live Photos, Music Videos, Home Videos, Movies, TV Shows, and Podcasts. ◆Tap a category to view its videos, then tap a video to open the player view. ◆Move the playhead to the desired frame. Use the buttons on either side of the play button to step forward or backward one frame at a time. ◆Save Option 1: Tap the Share button to save the displayed frame to the Photos app, or share it with other apps and services. ◆Save Option 2: Tap the gray circle button to temporarily save the displayed frame to the Queue. Repeat this for other frames as needed. When you’re ready, tap the red badge showing the number of queued items to open the Queue and save multiple frames at once to the Photos app, or share them with other apps and services. ◆Choose an image format: Choose JPEG or HEIF in “Settings” > “Image Export Settings” > “Format”. ◇◇◇ Settings ◇◇◇ ◆Live Photos: Choose whether to show Live Photos videos. ◆Quality: Low, Low-Mid, Hi-Mid, High ◆Size: Actual size of original video Half size of original video Maximum 1920, 960 or 640 pixels ◆Location Info: Choose whether to embed location data as Exif metadata in the extracted photos. Applies only if the video contains location information. ◆Date-Time Info: Choose whether to embed the shooting date and time as Exif metadata in the extracted photos. ◇◇◇ Other Features ◇◇◇ ◆Playback Speed: 0.5x, 1.0x, 1.25x, 1.5x, 2x ◆Continuous Grabbing: Extract multiple frames at user-defined intervals and save them to the Queue. ◇◇◇ Note ◇◇◇ ◆No recording feature included. ◆Protected videos — such as movies downloaded from the Apple TV Store — cannot be displayed. ◆Images in the Queue may be cleared when either the app or the OS is updated. ◆Videos recorded on iPhone or iPad store only the location where the recording started. Images extracted from the same video will contain the same location information.
Permanent Archive
Securely store your family photos, videos, documents, and other digital files permanently. This nonprofit service offers a one-time fee for lifelong access, allowing you to preserve and share your legacy with future generations.
- Permanent digital file storage
- One-time fee for lifelong access
- Legacy planning with steward assignment
- Private or public sharing options
- Collaborative archiving with access control
- Automatic metadata capture
- File format conversion for future accessibility
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Permanent.org is a place where you can store your family photos and videos, personal documents, business records, or any other digital file permanently. Our nonprofit mission is a promise to store your digitized photos, videos, music, documents, or anything made of bits and bytes for all time. Our one-time fee model means you don’t have to pay monthly subscriptions for file storage and your access to your files will never expire. We can do that because we're a nonprofit backed by an endowment, same as a museum, university, or faith-based organization. Storage fees are donations. Permanent.org is user friendly for any technical level. It works just like the other file storage applications you’re already familiar with. A digital archive on Permanent.org is a legacy that you can pass down to future generations using our new Legacy Planning feature; you can now name a legacy contact and archive steward. You have the option to keep files private or share them with your whole family, community or the world by adding them to the Permanent Public Gallery. Preserving and sharing your legacy allows future generations to learn from you and know your unique story. ◼Tell the story of your files: add titles, descriptions, dates, locations, and tags to your files. Metadata is captured automatically for your files when you upload to save you time. ◼Share with confidence: choose what files and folders you want to share and what level of access others can have to view, contribute, edit, or curate your content. Generate share links that are easy to copy and paste or share files directly in text messages, emails, or any app. ◼Collaborate with control: add family, friends and teammates to your Permanent Archives as members so they can build archives with you. Control their level of access to view, contribute, edit, or curate your content. ◼Maintain access forever: files are converted to universally standard formats so they are accessible as technology changes. One-time storage fees mean your account and archives will never expire. Be a digital preservation hero! Don’t wait, start building your archives today. There’s no cost to get started. Your loved ones will thank you for it. - - - Permanent.org is the world's first permanent data storage system, backed by a nonprofit organization, the Permanent Legacy Foundation. Secure your most important memories on the spot to ensure they are backed up for all time in the private and secure storage system built for the people, not for profit. Learn more about our nonprofit mission and how we can ensure security, privacy and accessible, permanent data storage at permanent.org.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is rating: Permanent Archive at 5.0 against Frame Grab's 4.4. Permanent Archive also leads on ads (none vs shown) and review sentiment (100% vs 70%). Frame Grab's advantage is ratings volume (97 vs 6) and monetization model (free with in-app purchases vs paid). On price, update cadence, in-app purchases and device support there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Permanent Archive holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.4. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Frame Grab has 97 ratings behind it against 6, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 70% of Frame Grab's written reviews are positive against 100% of Permanent Archive's.
Frame Grab ships an update every 2 months, Permanent Archive every 6 weeks. The most recent releases landed on October 22, 2026 and October 14, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Frame Grab | Permanent Archive |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.4 (97 ratings) | 5.0 (6 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 70.0% of reviews | 100.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 97 — better | 6 |
| Update frequency | Every 2 months | Every 6 weeks — better |
| Ads | Yes | No — better |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases — better | Paid |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad — better | iPhone |
| Requires iOS | 18.6 | 16.2 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 7 MB | 54 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Tranquillity Base | Permanent.org |
Customer experience
Frame Grab
Permanent Archive
Bugs and requests
Frame Grab
Reported bugs
19 issues- App freezes on launch with large photo libraries
- Slow to load videos
- Black frame displayed in the center of the screen during frame-by-frame selection
- App crashes when scrolling through home videos
- Screen grab doesn't always work
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- App crashes when reaching a certain number of frames, losing images
- Error message: 'Cannot load this video. PHAsset. PlaybackStyle:video'
- App crashes on start
- App crashes randomly, freezes
- Does not load any videos
- Has not worked since the update
- Won't open videos on iPhoneX / iOS13
- App crashes when I get a certain number of frames and I lose all my images
- The scree grab doesn’t always take, and I paid for this app, but I’m still getting ads
- The app freezes on launch on phones with huge photo libraries (huge = 100k+ items)
- The screenshot will grab the frame directly before the one I’m trying to capture
- App crashes when scrolling through home videos
- Quality degradation upon extraction
- Cannot load this video. PHAsset. PlaybackStyle:video
Requested features
10 requests- One-time purchase option to remove ads
- Ability to pay to remove ads
- Integration with file sharing for video import
- Support for more video codecs (TS, MKV)
- Apple shortcut integration for automatic frame export
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- Zoom in while video is playing
- More speed options for frame selection
- Auto-capture all slides
- Improvement for small subjects/brightness correction
- Automatic photo extraction at intervals (e.g., every 3 seconds, 10 photos in 0.5 seconds)
Permanent Archive
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
Frame Grab
No in-app purchases
Permanent Archive
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is Frame Grab free?
Is Permanent Archive free?
Which has better reviews, Frame Grab or Permanent Archive?
Do Frame Grab or Permanent Archive have ads?
Which is updated more often, Frame Grab or Permanent Archive?
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