Free on the App Store — for iPad and iPhone
Kids Photo Booth
Turn your iPad into a party photo booth kids can run themselves.
Set it on a stand, and the birthday guests do the rest. Big picture buttons instead of words, a 3-2-1 countdown with beeps, and stickers that land on faces by themselves. Every photo stays on your iPad unless you email it — there are no accounts, no ads, and no internet connection at all.
A booth that doesn’t need a grown-up standing next to it
Anyone who has hosted a children’s party knows how it goes. You set up something fun, and then you spend the next two hours operating it — tapping the button, holding the phone, handing it back, taking it away again. The activity you added to make the afternoon easier becomes the thing that pins you to one corner of the room.
Kids Photo Booth is built to be left alone. A child walks up, taps a picture of what they want, poses for the countdown, decorates the result with stickers, and walks away. The booth resets itself for the next guest. Nothing a child can tap leads anywhere they shouldn’t be — settings, saved photos and emailing all sit behind a parental gate. Put the iPad in Guided Access and it stays exactly where you left it.
What it does
Pictures instead of words
The start screen shows two illustrations: one framed photo, or a strip of four. A child taps the picture of what they want, and that tap starts the booth. No reading required.
A real countdown
Huge 3-2-1 numbers with a beep on each one, so kids know when to pose even over party noise. Then a shutter click and a flash. Four shots in a row build a classic booth strip.
Stickers that find faces
Tap a party hat and every face in the photo gets one — all four shots in a strip at once. Drag to move, pinch to resize, twist to spin. Undo is always one tap away.
Your party, printed on it
Type “Mia’s 6th Birthday” once and it appears on the bottom of every photo, with the date. Guests go home with something that looks made for the day, not a generic snapshot.
Resets itself between guests
After each photo the booth counts itself back to the start screen, so nobody has to hand the iPad back to an adult. Set the delay, or turn it off entirely.
Free, and it stays free
No purchase, no subscription, no in-app purchases, no “unlock more stickers”. Every sticker and every feature is there the moment you install it.
Photographs of your children, and where they go
This is the part that matters. An app that photographs children at a party has exactly one job it must not get wrong, and the guarantee here is structural rather than a promise: the app contains no networking code whatsoever. It cannot upload a photo, because it has no way to reach the internet.
- No uploads, ever. Photos are written to a private folder on your own device and nowhere else.
- No accounts. Nobody signs in. There is nothing to sign in to.
- No ads, no analytics, no tracking. No third-party code of any kind is bundled in the app.
- Face detection stays on the device. Apple’s Vision framework returns the position of a face so a hat can sit on it. No faceprint or identity is created, nothing is stored, and the app cannot tell one child from another.
- Email needs a human. A grown-up passes the parental gate, iOS opens its own mail sheet with the photos attached, and a person presses Send. The app never sends anything by itself.
Kids Photo Booth is listed in the App Store Kids Category, which holds apps to stricter rules than the rest of the store. Full details are in the privacy policy.
How it works
- Set it up in two minutes. Open Settings, type the party name, pick the date. That’s the whole configuration. Everything else has a sensible default.
- Lock the iPad down. Turn on Guided Access in iOS Settings, triple-click the side button, tap Start. Children can’t leave the app, and the parental gate keeps them out of settings and saved photos.
- Stand it up and walk away. Guests tap a picture, pose for the countdown, add stickers, and the booth resets for the next child. You get on with the party.
- Collect the photos afterwards. Open the gallery, select the ones you want, and email them to yourself or to the parents. Or leave them on the iPad — they’re already saved.
For the grown-up running the party
Every adult control sits behind a parental gate: a two-digit number written out in words — “Sixty-three” — which you type back as digits. It takes about two seconds and no mental arithmetic, which matters when you’re holding a cake in the other hand. A young child can’t read a compound number word, so the gate holds.
Behind it you’ll find the party name and date, whether children pick their own photo mode, countdown sounds, the reset timer, whether photos are also copied to the iPad’s Photos app, and the full gallery of everything taken — where you can select a batch, email them, or wipe the device clean before you hand it back.
System requirements
Device
iPad or iPhone with a camera
iOS
iOS 17 or later
Internet
Not required, at any point
Price
Free, with no in-app purchases
Built by Oxin Studio
Kids Photo Booth is made by Oxin Studio Inc., an independent software studio in Calgary, Alberta. We build careful, private desktop and mobile apps — and we think an app made for children should be held to a higher standard than one made for adults, not a lower one. This one is free because a birthday party is not a business model.
Common questions
Do the photos ever leave the iPad?
Only if an adult sends them. Photos are saved to a private folder inside the app, and optionally copied to the iPad’s own Photos app if you switch that on. To email them, a grown-up passes the parental gate and iOS opens its standard mail sheet with the photos already attached — then a person presses Send. The app has no networking code and cannot upload anything on its own.
What age is it for?
It’s designed around children of roughly six to eight, who can tap a picture and drag a sticker without help. Younger children use it happily with a grown-up nearby — the picture buttons need no reading, and the only tricky gestures (pinch to resize, twist to rotate) are optional.
How do the stickers know where faces are?
Apple’s Vision framework finds faces in the photo on the device itself and reports where they are. The app uses that position to put a hat on a head or glasses on eyes — and in a four-shot strip, one tap decorates all four. No face data is stored or sent anywhere, and the app performs no recognition: it cannot tell one person from another. If no face is found, the sticker lands in the middle and can be dragged.
Can children get into the settings or delete photos?
Settings, the saved-photo gallery and every email action sit behind a parental gate. It shows a two-digit number written in words and asks for it as digits — a wrong answer generates a new number, so it can’t be brute-forced by tapping. Combined with iOS Guided Access, children stay inside the booth for the whole party.
Does it need Wi-Fi at the venue?
No. The app never uses a network connection, so it works the same in a community hall with no signal as it does at home. Emailing the photos afterwards needs a connection, but that happens whenever you get round to it.
Can I print the photos?
Not directly from the app in this version. Email the photos to yourself and print from there, or turn on the option to copy them into the iPad’s Photos app and print from Photos. Direct AirPrint support is on the list for a future update.
Is there an Android version?
Not at the moment. Kids Photo Booth is built natively for iPad and iPhone. If enough people ask, an Android version will be considered — get in touch and say so.
Set it up before the next party
Free, with no accounts, no ads, no in-app purchases and no tracking. Just a photo booth that runs itself and keeps your children’s photographs on your own iPad.
If you can, and only if you can
This app is free and stays free. If it saved you a subscription and you can spare something, it goes straight back into the next one.