Drop everything and download: Unfold

PICTURE PERFECT

Whether it’s on Snapchat or Instagram, ‘Stories’ are one of fastest growing social media trends, with wannabe influencers posting endless streams of avocado on toast, #nofilter beach views, and totally thought-provoking motivational quotes. If you’re one of them, Unfold is for you. It’s the holy grail of apps for any aesthetically inclined content creator, blogger or media luvvie wanting to make the stuff they upload on Instagram (it only works there for now) look that little bit more profesh.

WHAT IS IT, THEN?

Unfold is a Story-formatting app, allowing you to apply sleek, attractive templates to existing photos and videos. This helps you to transform your questionable smartphone photography into slick-looking #content, plus it’s a lot of fun collaging photos and videos onto one frame. This is what Scrapbooking looks like in 2018. What stands out from other layout apps is Unfold’s multimedia approach to displaying content. Previously, your Story could be either a photo or video, with any caption or hashtag overlaying the content. Now you can display pictures, captions and videos all at the same time, creating an all-singing-all-dancing visual treat for the eyes.

SOCIAL MEDIA BUTLER

The app is free to download with 15 pre-loaded templates for you to show off your stuff. That’ll probably be enough for most, but if you need more there are also three optional upgrades, which each unlock 15 new templates. Once Unfold has actually prettified your snaps, you have a decision. You can let it double your social media butler, dishing out your newly pimped up Story directly to Instagram, or save it to your camera roll to share when the time is right. This also opens it up to for sharing over email, Whatsapp or directly onto your main Instagram grid for longevity – a neat feature of the app the developers seem to have somewhat overlooked.

ANY DOWNSIDES?

The app developers clearly think creating a Story is a bit more of an art than it probably is for the average click-and-post Instagram user, and so some people might find the whole idea of Unfold a bit pretentious. Others will just find it entirely pointless instead. For those who don’t though, there are a few niggles in use. One slightly annoying feature is that you need to name every Story you create with something new. That might very well help to differentiate between them, but for IG addicts who publish Stories several times a day, there are only so many variations on ‘holiday’ and ‘food’ you can come up with.

STORY TIME

Another sticking point comes when you create a Story. The templates are on the small side at the bottom of the screen, so you can’t really see what it is you’re selecting. We found ourselves clicking through each of them to see which did what – while you’d probably get used to this with time, it would work better if they were displayed on the main screen. Thankfully, these downsides are eclipsed by the overall positive experience and professional design of the layouts – not to mention that, for what most people will require, it’s completely free. More cash to spend on those #wiwt summer outfits, then.