Review Insights · App Store
NightCap Camera
RTD · 2,918 ratings · ★ 4.4
4.4
★★★★★
2,918 ratings
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Top complaints - extracted from 54 negative reviews
Recurring phrases mined from 1-2★ reviews. The bigger the percentage, the more users have the same problem. Fix the top 2-3 in your version and you have product-market fit on day one.
1
"iphone"
22 negative reviews mention this · 41% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Sorely disappointed. This app is incredibly slow and jittery. I use an iPhone 17 pro and it still doesn’t seem to be good enough for this app. That’s $2.99 I am never getting back" - njahahhahahahaha
2
"camera"
16 negative reviews mention this · 30% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Not ideal - Apple app seems to be better. I’m in Finland and downloaded this app on an Aurora hunting tour. We had excellent activity. I followed the Aurora tutorial and I wish I could show you the difference in picture quality between the Nightcap app and the standard camera app. …" - Gearz86
3
"pictures"
12 negative reviews mention this · 22% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Obsolete. I do not write reviews unless they are either really good, or really bad. This, unfortunately is a bad one .. I have an iPhone 16 Pro Max. I want more than a 30s long exposure. Why Apple has limited the amount of time I can do it for, I don…" - ab.forbes
4
"work"
12 negative reviews mention this · 22% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Does not work. I have tried everything watched tutorials and tried all settings. There are times I cannot click on the icons and when I take a photo the button turns red, timer starts, and nothing happens." - Level downed
5
"money"
12 negative reviews mention this · 22% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Unimpressed. If you have an older iPhone, I still have the XR, don’t bother. I bought it to take pictures of the aurora. I see 0 difference in these pictures vs the one my phone takes. No difference in the night sky with star mode vs the one I would nor…" - Hrts79
6
"doesn"
11 negative reviews mention this · 20% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Sorely disappointed. This app is incredibly slow and jittery. I use an iPhone 17 pro and it still doesn’t seem to be good enough for this app. That’s $2.99 I am never getting back" - njahahhahahahaha
7
"phone"
10 negative reviews mention this · 19% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Sorely disappointed. This app is incredibly slow and jittery. I use an iPhone 17 pro and it still doesn’t seem to be good enough for this app. That’s $2.99 I am never getting back" - njahahhahahahaha
8
"waste"
10 negative reviews mention this · 19% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Terrible. Super buggy. Agonizingly Slow. One of the worst app purchases I’ve made. And not eligible for refund. Waste of $3. iPhone 15 Pro Max" - ethan.winchester
9
"better"
8 negative reviews mention this · 15% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Not ideal - Apple app seems to be better. I’m in Finland and downloaded this app on an Aurora hunting tour. We had excellent activity. I followed the Aurora tutorial and I wish I could show you the difference in picture quality between the Nightcap app and the standard camera app. …" - Gearz86
10
"mode"
7 negative reviews mention this · 13% of all complaints
★★★★★ "The app freezes. The app freezes any time I try to use I can’t adjust settings or change modes" - Ew5870
11
"photos"
7 negative reviews mention this · 13% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Stay away. App to let a 10 year old use, see awful pictures, then switch to camera’s own app and let them see what good photos are supposed to look like" - dirtbyke
12
"doesn work"
7 negative reviews mention this · 13% of all complaints
📋 All 54 negative reviews
Every 1-2★ review we fetched. Use the copy button to grab them all for your own analysis (paste into ChatGPT/Claude with a prompt like "summarize core user problems, group by theme, ignore bugs, focus on missing features").
The app freezes
The app freezes any time I try to use I can’t adjust settings or change modes
Frame rate sucks
0
Don’t fall for the scam!
They say the app is $2.99 I believe but just charged me again this month and I now see where it’s a LOT more than what they lead you to believe!
Sorely disappointed
This app is incredibly slow and jittery. I use an iPhone 17 pro and it still doesn’t seem to be good enough for this app.
That’s $2.99 I am never getting back
That’s $2.99 I am never getting back
No update in 3 years
Hasn’t been updated in 3 years. This app is worse than the native iPhone 15 pro camera. At least it doesn’t crash in iOS18. Reviews from newer phone users report crashing. Should be removed from App Store.
Not worth it
App is way to laggy to be even remotely useful. Takes seconds to respond to even a basic setting change.
Terrible
Super buggy. Agonizingly Slow. One of the worst app purchases I’ve made. And not eligible for refund. Waste of $3.
iPhone 15 Pro Max
iPhone 15 Pro Max
iPhone 17 pro max lag
Straight garbage and lag on iPhone 17 pro max
Ruim de mais
O aplicativo trava, não consegue fazer o foco ele é atrasado, muito ruim mesmo, no começo parecia que era ruim, e no fim parecia o começo
Stay away
App to let a 10 year old use, see awful pictures, then switch to camera’s own app and let them see what good photos are supposed to look like
Does not work
I have tried everything watched tutorials and tried all settings. There are times I cannot click on the icons and when I take a photo the button turns red, timer starts, and nothing happens.
Junk
Might have been a decent app at one time, but it’s basically unusable on my iPhone 16 pro max.
Doesn’t work with iPhone 16pro
I was trying to capture the full eclipse and AI highly recommended this app, unfortunately it takes forever to focus
Don’t
No good don’t download
Night Cap
Not allowing me to complete setting up the app. Telling me to allow access to photos, which has been done on me SE phone.
Not functioning with Iphone 16 Pro
I just upgraded my phone to the Iphone 16 Pro. The app does not work - it keeps shutting off the phone. A shame as the Aurora Borealis has been outstanding the last teo nights.
Crashes phone
I’m on iPhone 16 Pro and iOS 18 and this app has crashed my phone twice within the space of twenty minutes. Otherwise, it seems like a handy app.
Lags and freezes
I had heard decent reviews from a forum and I wanted to try for myself. This app lags like crazy and eventually freezes up on my 14 Pro Max. I guess it’s not for everyone.
Not worth it for Northern lights
I purchased this app, read through the tutorial on how to use it best for the Auroras. My plain non-pro Apple phone 13 took better pictures with the regular camera settings set at: nighttime at 10 seconds. For free.
Waste of $3 in my experience.
Waste of $3 in my experience.
Unimpressed
If you have an older iPhone, I still have the XR, don’t bother. I bought it to take pictures of the aurora. I see 0 difference in these pictures vs the one my phone takes. No difference in the night sky with star mode vs the one I would normally take. Disappointing waste of money.
What's the price?
In Apps it said $2.99, but I was just charged $10.98. What's up?!
Focus logic doesn’t work
I had good experience with NightCap with my iPhone 13 Pro. However, when I recently upgraded to an iPhone 15 pro NightCap is no longer compatible - it can’t focus on the stars. Testing against four other low light/astrophotography camera apps, infinite focus on my iPhone 15 pro is at around 0.95 (it was actually lower on my iPhone 13 Pro). Unfortunately with NightCap I run the focus all the way out to 1.00 and it still hasn’t achieved focus on the stars. I know the AI in NightCap is supposed to “learn” the camera and self calibrate the focus settings. But, after working with the phone outside for a while to see if it could learn, it didn’t. I still can’t achieve focus. I even tried deleting and reinstalling the app to see if had, perhaps, ported over the calibration data from my old iPhone 13 Pro. Still can’t achieve focus. I emailed the NightCap developers several times - no reply. Hence the review. Unfortunate, since otherwise NightCap was a pretty capable app for this application.
Does not work for meteors
I set up the app on an iPhone 14 Pro Max during the last two major meteor showers in low ambient light on a tripod. The first two days have me 100 shots and not a single meteor. For the Geminids, I set up the same way but left it running for ten hours. I only ran two hours for the first two tries. I got zero pictures during the ten hour run. I’m very disappointed in this app but glad it is cheap just like it’s AI software.
Doesn’t work?
The app only takes solid black images, and none of the controls do anything.
Bad
Doesn’t recognize other lenses nothing you can’t do with built in. Please give a refund.
Didn’t save my pictures
Downloaded this app to capture the recent meteor shower. I gave the app access to my camera, microphone and library. Despite following the instructions on using the “meteor” setting, nothing saved. Luckily I had my phone set on a tripod so I could enjoy the meteor shower with my own two eyes. Heartbreaking to discover it didn’t catch anything.
meteor mode not working at all
the sole purpose i bought this app is to take photos of meteors. however either the auto mode or using some manual turning failed to take a single photo of meteor. even failed to take the most brightest ones. this app should at least provide an option to save all the photos it took so I have a chance to manual pick the photos with meteor before your weird ai algorithm automatically removes them.
wasted money, apple does it better
I totally regret buying this app. never produced a better result than iPhone 13 native camera app. total waste of dollars!
I don’t get it
Maybe because I’m using an iPhone 14 Pro, but I don’t see that this app produced anything “wow”
The long exposure photos I took with the regular camera app came out much more vibrant and crisp and I could go handheld with a 3s shutter vs the 15
These came not grainy and not good enough quality i would print or post them.
The long exposure photos I took with the regular camera app came out much more vibrant and crisp and I could go handheld with a 3s shutter vs the 15
These came not grainy and not good enough quality i would print or post them.
I have wasted $3 on worse
But not much. During the busiest meteor shower of the year, the camera picked up not one picture in an hour while I was watching the meteor show. Haven’t tried any other features but no good for what I purchased it for. iPhone 14 pro max.
Hm
Thought this was a one time purchase and was charged. Sadly wasn’t impressed.
no good
Waste of time. Waste of money.
poor/no bluetooth shutter support
would be an ok app if free, but for a paid app, it is not worth it. it will not work with bluetooth shutter clickers - i tried several
Don’t waste money
It doesn’t work… there’s no way any of the pics are 4k 😂
Doesn’t work
The camera will freeze up when you try to change any settings. Regular camera works much better.
Horrible
I have the iPhone XR and this was supposed to help the camera quality and it was worse than my actually camera. I was trying to take pictures of the super moon lunar eclipse but they were so bad and horrible don’t get this it’s not worth the money
Save Your Money
I was really looking forward to capturing the full moon in better quality with the help of this app. Unfortunately I was really disappointed as the images weren’t clear as advertised. I visited the website, followed the help guide within the app and still found no improvement. I’m disappointed because I was really hoping this would level up my mediocre moon pictures.
Media doesn’t save
Took a wonderful video of the northern lights, followed all tutorials and video never showed up anywhere
iPhone 12 Plus
iPhone 12 Plus camera take way better pics without this app. Waste of money. Will never use or recommend.
Save your money
I paid for and downloaded this to take photos of the night sky. iPhone 12 pro. I’ve tried using this in several different lightings and all of the photos were grainy. Also, there’s no option to edit your photo in the app, so you’ll need another app for that.
Very Difficult To Use
I installed the app and immediately found it very difficult to use. I was getting massive amounts of lag and completely out of focus pictures. Very hard to take videos as well ... no indicator on the app as to how to shoot video. Sorry, but I honestly can’t recommend the app. Had to delete it and will go for a refund when my Apple receipt shows up.
Star mode, doesn’t work at all
If you’re interested in this app to capture the stars, look elsewhere. It doesn’t work at all. All you’ll get is a black blob with some fuzzy shining spots. Waste of money.
Hard to use
Hard to use. Don’t waste your money.
Waste of money
My phone camera takes better pictures then this app!!!
No good
Doesn’t work as day and over charges without permission
App is not intuitive
Not sure how this app received such high ratings. Frankly, I find it easier to use my Nikon on manual versus this app, which defeats the purpose.
Save your money.
Save your money.
Not ideal - Apple app seems to be better
I’m in Finland and downloaded this app on an Aurora hunting tour. We had excellent activity. I followed the Aurora tutorial and I wish I could show you the difference in picture quality between the Nightcap app and the standard camera app. The regular app was much better
Obsolete
I do not write reviews unless they are either really good, or really bad. This, unfortunately is a bad one .. I have an iPhone 16 Pro Max. I want more than a 30s long exposure. Why Apple has limited the amount of time I can do it for, I don’t know. But that’s beside the point. I was told that this app could be used to go beyond that. Even a simple and standard 15 second exposure with zero light pollution, the pictures was extremely grainy and felt like I was taking a picture on a cheap Huawei android from Walmart. Why this is even still a paid app, I don’t know. If you have an iPhone newer than iPhone 11 Pro, do not install this. Your camera app will produce much better image quality than this.
Giving benefit of the doubt and where credit is due: I personally feel like this app was made before night mode was a thing, and in the past this app was probably great! But in 2025 (almost 2026) it is as I made the subject … obsolete.
Giving benefit of the doubt and where credit is due: I personally feel like this app was made before night mode was a thing, and in the past this app was probably great! But in 2025 (almost 2026) it is as I made the subject … obsolete.
Use to be one of the best.
does not work correctly on iphone 16 Pro max :: ios18.2.1
Worthless
Maybe I just can’t figure it out, but I have no enhancement/ NV capabilities with this app.
+ 4 more in the clipboard copy
Sentiment summary
84%
Positive (4-5★)
4%
Neutral (3★)
12%
Negative (1-2★)