A house build time-lapse app, built in Australia

The framing drift problem

A build changes every week, and so, it turns out, does your phone.

• Hand-held phone photos shift in zoom, lens and viewpoint across weeks, so the finished time-lapse stutters and jumps instead of flowing.
• A tripod helps, but you can't leave one on site for 3 months, and setting it up in exactly the same spot each visit takes real discipline.
• Without guides, you're guessing whether today's photo matches yesterday's. Most of the time, it doesn't – not quite.

How Plumb Daily locks the shot

Plumb Daily's answer is one habit, repeated: set a key photo, then match it.

• Set a key photo on day one, and the viewfinder shows it as a see-through overlay on the live camera view. You adjust until they line up.
• On-screen guides do the rest: an adjustable-opacity overlay, an on-device stencil outline, a difference view, a spirit level and a grid.
• Lens, zoom and orientation lock for the scene, so every day uses the same field of view – no guesswork about camera settings.

For the full method – where to stand, how the lens and zoom lock works, and how to fix any drift afterwards – read how to align progress photos from the same spot.

From daily capture to finished video

Once the shot is locked, capturing it is quick.

• One scene per project, one key photo, one tap a day to capture.
• An optional daily reminder for each scene nudges you at a time you choose, so a busy build doesn't mean a missed day.
• Export as a time-lapse, with photos flicking past at 2, 5, 10, 15 or 30 a second, or a slideshow, with each photo holding for 1–5 seconds between transitions.

Works on your iPhone and Mac

A house build runs for months, and you'll want more than a phone screen to manage it.

• Plumb Daily has a native app for each, and the same App Store listing covers the iPhone and Mac apps. The iPhone app needs iOS 18 or later; the Mac app needs macOS 15 or later, on Apple silicon or Intel.
• Browse, compare, tidy and export on the big screen with the Mac companion app – useful once a scene holds hundreds of photos.
• Align All runs on-device auto-alignment across every photo at once, then you can nudge any photo that still needs it by hand in the nudge editor.

Private by design – your iCloud, your rules

A record of your build is worth keeping private, and Plumb Daily is built around that.

• No account, no ads, no tracking. Every image-processing step happens on your device, not on a server somewhere.
• Photos sync between your iPhone and Mac through your own private iCloud – never through Plumb Daily servers.
• Your build record stays yours – on your devices and in your own iCloud. Nobody at Platform21 can see it.

That combination of on-device processing and your own iCloud is exactly what a progress photo app for home builders needs to get right, because a build record is personal, not something to hand to a third party.

Made in Australia, from a real build

• Matthew Sweet at Platform21 built Plumb Daily to record his own new home build – the flagship use case is real, not a marketing line.
• It works for any long-running project, not only new builds: renovations, extensions, a garden's growth, or any project you want to remember from start to finish.
• It's made in Australia, and this site is written in plain Australian English with no hype – a house build time-lapse app for Australia that sets out to do one job well.

Frequently asked questions

A few common questions about this house build time-lapse app for Australia.

How much does it cost?

Pricing hasn't been decided yet.

Does it work on other phones?

Not at the moment. Plumb Daily is an iPhone app, with a companion app for the Mac. Have a look at who Plumb Daily is built for to see whether it suits your project.

What happens to my photos if I stop using the app?

Every photo is also saved to your Photos library, and to a scene album if you chose one, so deleting the app doesn't delete your photos. If you sync through your own iCloud, your scenes are kept there too.

Alignment discipline, not a trick

Anyone can flick through a folder of photos and stitch them into a video. What makes a house build time-lapse app for Australia worth using is whether each frame lines up with the last one – same spot, same angle, same day after day, for as long as the build takes. That's the part Plumb Daily handles, so you don't have to think about it each morning.

Want to try it on your own build? Join the waitlist and you'll get one email from me when Plumb Daily is on the App Store. Nothing else.