Short answer: Halation runs on iPhone and Android, and both apps use the same sharing engine. The invite link, the encryption and the time lock are identical on both, so one album can hold both kinds of phone.
Why mixed groups are awkward
Each platform has a shared-album feature, and each is built to work best among its own phones. Mixed groups end up with workarounds: a web link with a sign-in, a chat thread that recompresses everything, or one person who collects the photos and is never thanked.
The workaround problem is structural. A platform feature has no reason to be good at including the other platform. An independent app does.
One engine, two thin apps
The two Halation apps do not each implement the album. Both call one engine written once — networking, storage, encryption — and the apps on top are thin. That matters because four things have to match exactly between any two phones:
| Must match | Why |
|---|---|
| The invite link | A link made on one platform must open on the other. |
| Photo encryption | A photo sealed on one phone must open on the other. |
| The time lock | Two implementations of a lock are two chances to disagree about whether it is open. |
| The album log | Who added what, and what was deleted, must read the same everywhere. |
Because it is one code path, there is no second implementation to drift. Older invite links keep working too: a link sent last month still opens, even for someone who has not updated the app.
What to check before your event
- Make the album on whichever phone you prefer. The platform does not matter.
- Send the link in the group chat. The link opens in the app on either platform; guests without it are prompted to install.
- Try one iPhone and one Android before the day. Thirty seconds on the kitchen table beats finding a problem at the venue.
- Remind everyone to open the app on Wi-Fi afterwards, so photos finish moving between phones — see how peer-to-peer sharing works.
Videos and Live Photos cross too
Albums are not limited to still photographs. Videos travel, and so do Live Photos: a Live Photo stays a pair inside the album, in both directions, and you hold it to make it move. The one place something is lost is saving into the other platform's library, where the still and its clip are saved as two files rather than one Live Photo.
Saving to your own camera roll
Photos are exported from the app to your own library, and the app asks only to add to it. On iPhone the permission is write-only, and on Android the system picker hands over only what you choose.
Both platforms, one link
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