I have more than 55,000 images in my Google Photos library. The only way I relive some of these photo memories is through my smart displays around the house—I have one in the kitchen and one in the bedroom, and my wife and I point to the screens whenever a funny picture of our dog pops up. One day I will wade into this large pile and batch-delete images I don’t care for, but that feels like work. Better yet, I could just start using a device called Kyu to free myself from this digital chain to the cloud.

Kyu is a camera from a small Japanese company whose team members have worked at giants like Panasonic and Canon. At the center are Iori Ando and Yusuke Okawa, who cofounded the company at university in 2021, though the initial goal for their collaboration was to develop an online class for creators. The duo pivoted to Kyu, a compact silver and oval-shaped device that resembles a gadget born in the early 2000s.

“Memories are becoming like fast fashion—captured and forgotten quickly,” Ando tells me on a video call. “We see two major problems with how memories are visualized: It’s highly inefficient and lacks emotional consideration. So our mission is the preservation of memories—emotionally driven visualization of memories.”

On one side of Kyu is a camera you can use to capture 9-second clips (kyu means nine in Japanese), and on the other is a little 1.6-inch round OLED display with a button underneath so you can see what you’re capturing. Press the button to start a recording—there’s enough storage for 27 video clips. When the storage is full, pop off the base and plug the USB-C connector into your smartphone. This will export all the video clips to the Kyu app and wipe all the contents of the Kyu camera so you can start fresh.

The Kyu camera has a rechargeable battery and a stereo microphone to pick up audio. It’s water resistant. Video quality is limited to 1,080-pixel resolution at 30 frames per second. An accessory called the Kyu Touch lets you transfer your clips wirelessly, like AirDrop on an iPhone, but this is a separate purchase.

The clips you capture are stitched together in the Kyu app (iOS only at present) by machine learning algorithms, trained to create a “highlight” video of the best moments complete with a Spotify integration that lets you easily add your favorite music to your life’s recent moments. You can then post the video online, though you’ll need to “invite” other users of the Kyu app to see the reel, almost exactly like calling someone over to the couch to browse a physical photo album. You don’t need a Kyu camera to post to the Kyu app, so you can use your smartphone’s camera to participate in the community if you want. The video clips live indefinitely in the app and are capped at 60 second each.

There are hundreds of ways to capture video today, whether through an action camera, a mirrorless camera, a smartphone, or a drone. But while many of these devices have a learning curve—or in the case of a smartphone, a way to distract and pull you out of a moment—the Kyu keeps things extra simple on purpose. The camera has one button. The files get deleted automatically once you transfer them to your phone, so there’s no library to manage. You don’t even have to fuss with editing, since the software does it for you.

Courtesy of Kyu

This is hardly the first time a company has pitched simplicity as a way to capture and relive memories. Google debuted an AI-powered camera called Clips in 2018 that could record short videos, and you didn’t even have to press a button. Just turn it on and the AI could figure out the right moments to capture, and these 7-second clips were then accessible in the phone app. Clips was discontinued nearly two years after its launch.

The time may be ripe for Kyu to step in as a private, personal social network. BeReal, the social media app that championed authenticity, has been in sharp decline since its explosive growth in 2022. The mass migration from X to Bluesky has left some people wondering where to post. And TikTok may get banned in the US in 2025.

Perhaps the intent of carrying around Kyu in your hand, the instant camera-like “limit” on how much you can capture, and the easily stitched-together edits in the app will help create memory bursts that are bite-sized but still can transport you beyond the same old scroll. Since you’ll have to be more choosy with what you capture before space runs out, you won’t have unnecessary files hogging space. And the resulting videos are mercifully short—no one wants to sit through your 10-minute travel log. You can also control whether these videos are saved in your digital library instead of the automatic nonstop backup most of us are used to with our smartphones.

Courtesy of Kyu

Right now, the Google Photos app has “Memories” you can cycle through that show old images, but these are often random photos chosen by Google’s AI instead of a collection of memories tied to a specific event. Google recently launched a feature that employs generative artificial intelligence to create a yearly recap of your memories with AI-written captions. My 2024 recap didn’t particularly tug at my heartstrings, but maybe Kyu clips would have made more of an impact.

This is the first product from a new company, so we’ll need to see the camera in action before passing judgment. I’m hoping it can complete its promised functions successfully—a low bar for 2024. The Kyu is available for preorder globally and costs $299. There’s an optional $30 subscription in the works to, ironically, store your memories in the cloud, though Ando assures me it will also include other perks like insurance to protect the device, a repair program, and even a discount on future products.

The hardware launches in April, but if you have an iPhone, you can download the Kyu app now and start capturing 9-second videos. Just don’t call them Vines.