For the press A Place Recalled — press kit
A Place Recalled is a field-recording app for the places you'd like to remember. Press one button to capture thirty seconds of where you are — the cafe in the morning, the reading room, the beach at low tide, the rooftop in summer. The app finds a clean loop point in that soundscape, smooths the seam, and saves it next to the coordinate where it was captured. Months later, tap the memory. The room you remember plays on a quiet loop. Made quietly by sthreelabs.
All materials on this page are free to use in editorial coverage of A Place Recalled. Please credit sthreelabs.
i.Quick facts
- App name
- A Place Recalled
- Maker
- sthreelabs (Christopher Doherty)
- Price
- $2.99 USD, one-time purchase. No subscription, no in-app purchases.
- Platforms
- iOS 18.6 or later. Universal (iPhone & iPad).
- Languages
- English
- Privacy
- No account, no analytics, no third-party SDKs, no ads. All audio processing happens on-device. Captures sync via the user's private iCloud only.
- App Store
- apps.apple.com/app/a-place-recalled/id6764083407
- Site
- sthreelabs.com/recalled
- Press contact
- [email protected]
ii.One-paragraph description
A Place Recalled captures the ambient sound of a place — a cafe, a reading room, a beach at low tide — and turns it into a quiet loop you can return to later. Tap to record up to thirty seconds. The app's spectral loop-finder picks a clean wrap-around point in the recording, applies a gentle equal-power crossfade, and saves the result alongside the coordinate where it was captured. Months later, tap the memory: the room plays back indefinitely. Multiple captures of the same place stack as visits — the same room across hours, days, years.
iii.Longer description (for editorial use)
Most ambient apps stream stock soundscapes or generate procedural noise. A Place Recalled is the opposite: it records the room you're actually in, in thirty-second slices, and gives them back to you later, polished into a clean loop you can hold onto.
The mechanic is small. Tap the round capture button. The app briefly listens for nearby human voices and warns you if it hears any — local, on-device, never written to disk. Tap stop, or wait thirty seconds. A spectral loop-finder runs an FFT search to find the cleanest wrap-around point, applies an equal-power crossfade, and offers the loop for an audition. Tap Keep to save, or Try another for a different candidate.
Each saved memory shows up in the library with a paperback-styled, recolored map snapshot of where it was captured — Apple Maps stripped of its road blues and park greens and remapped to cream and ink, so the library reads more like a book of bookmarks than a navigation app. Tap a memory to listen back. Long-press the play button to set a sleep timer with a smooth fade-out.
If you capture again within about twenty meters of a place you've already kept, the new loop stacks under the existing memory as a visit. A coffee shop at 8 AM, 1 PM, and 5 PM becomes one growing record of the same room across time. The map browse view shows every place you've kept, with paperback bookmark pins clustered when colocated.
All audio capture, voice pre-checking, loop-finding, polish, and map recoloring happen entirely on the device using AVFoundation, Accelerate, SoundAnalysis, and Core Image. There are no third-party SDKs and no telemetry. Sync uses Apple's CloudKit private database — encrypted by Apple, accessible only to the user. The developer cannot read it.
It's part of the small paperback family of apps under the sthreelabs label, alongside Tallies (habit counter), A Spell of Work (focus timer), One Line in Time (one-line journal), and A Deep Breath (breathing app paired with public-domain literature).
iv.What's distinctive
- Real ambience, not stock. The loops are recordings the user makes of the rooms they're in. The app's job is to find a clean wrap-around in their actual recording, not to play back a curated library of cafe noise. Every loop is a place someone has been.
- The map as bookmark. Saved memories appear with a recolored Apple Maps snapshot — desaturated, duotoned to cream and ink, framed like a printed page. The library reads as a book of bookmarks rather than a list of audio files. Often the most photographable feature for editorial coverage.
- Visits stacking. When the user captures within about twenty meters of an existing memory, the new loop stacks under that memory as a visit — the same room, different times, all in one entry. Over months and years, a single memory accumulates an oral history of one place.
v.Features (positive list)
- Single-tap, up-to-thirty-second ambient recording with a pre-capture voice warning
- Automatic spectral loop-finder + equal-power crossfade — no manual editing
- Try another walks distinct top-K loop starts so the user can audition alternates
- Library view with paperback-styled, recolored map thumbnails and chronological search
- Map browse view with paperback bookmark pins, clustered when colocated
- Multiple captures of the same place stack as visits on one memory
- Detail view: recolored map, big play control, elapsed timer, visit picker
- Sleep timer (15 / 30 / 60 minutes) with smooth fade-out, set via long-press play
- iCloud sync of memories across iPhone and iPad via the user's private container
- Light, dark, and follow-system appearance
vi.What it deliberately doesn't do
- No streaks, no notifications, no analytics, no telemetry.
- No social features, no sharing, no public feed.
- No mood tags, no quality scores, no "best match" badges, no auto-titles.
- No editing tools after capture — the loop is the loop.
- No subscription, no in-app purchases — paid once, yours forever.
- No account, no login, no third-party SDKs, no ad networks.
vii.Screenshots
High-resolution PNGs at App Store Connect dimensions. Free to use in editorial coverage. Click any thumbnail to download.
viii.App icon
1024 × 1024 PNG. Two variants — light (default) and dark.
ix.Brand reference
A Place Recalled (and all sthreelabs marketing) uses the paperback design language. If you'd like to color-match in editorial graphics:
Typography: Crimson Pro (300–600 weights, italics) for body and headings. JetBrains Mono 400 for numerals and small caps.
x.Pull-quotes (use freely)
Lines from the listing copy that are designed to drop cleanly into editorial.
xi.About sthreelabs
sthreelabs is a one-person studio making small, quiet iOS apps. Every app is paid once, has no notifications, collects no data, and is deliberately scoped to do one thing well. A Place Recalled is part of the paperback collection — alongside Tallies (habit counter), A Spell of Work (focus timer), One Line in Time (one-line journal), and A Deep Breath (breathing app paired with public-domain literature).
Made quietly by Christopher Doherty.
xii.Press contact
Christopher Doherty — [email protected]
Press inquiries usually answered within 24 hours. Promo codes available on request for review purposes.
Made quietly by sthreelabs.