How your selfie booth works.
From setup to the finished gallery: this guide walks through the three areas of the app — the event assistant, the admin area and guest mode — and shows the key features with pictures from the app.
This is where you set up your event.
The most important settings happen in the event assistant: it starts automatically as long as no event is live, leads through four steps up to the purchase and ends with “Start event” — right away or on a later day.
- 01
Choose design & occasion
Pick one of the three designs with its accent color and enter occasion name, date and greeting — the live preview instantly shows what your guests will see.
Assistant · Occasion with live preview - 02
Try it before you buy
Right in the design step, “Try it out” lets you test the complete guest flow — mode choice, countdown, capture and QR code, in every mode. Up to three test captures cost nothing; you only pay for the event. They carry a watermark and land in a test gallery that stays online until you start your event (for 31 days at most).
Capture modes, countdown and event language come preset — all five modes are on. You can change them at any time in the admin area.
- 03
Gallery & upload
Up to three quick questions, one after the other in a dialog, with nothing preselected: one link for the whole event — every shot collects in one gallery — or one link per capture? Should “PIN protection” additionally secure the gallery with a gallery PIN? And may the selfie booth also upload over mobile data or a phone’s hotspot? Afterwards you see your answers as a summary; tap a row to answer again. You don’t pick the gallery PIN yourself: the app generates it automatically and shows it to your guests next to the QR code.
With a shared event link you should leave PIN protection on: there a single link opens every capture from every guest. If each shot gets its own link, you can switch it off — a link passed on then shows only that one picture.
Assistant · Gallery - 04
Unlock
This is where you pay — per event or unlimited with Picolate Plus; with an active subscription you go straight on without another purchase. Buying doesn’t start the event yet: the 24 hours only begin with “Start event”, and your purchase stays valid until you start this event.
So you can set up and buy days ahead — the app remembers all your entries, even if you close it in between.
- 05
Start event
In the last step you set your admin PIN, and a short animation shows how to get into the settings during the party — only once you’ve confirmed this can the event be started. Here the app also offers you the guest notice as a PDF to put up or share; in the admin area you can create it again at any time. After tapping “Start event” you see the start, the end of the event and the end of the gallery — only “Start now” starts the 24 hours, and the selfie booth belongs to your guests. Before you set it up: prepare the iPad for the event.
Two PINs, two jobs: the admin PIN protects the settings area of the selfie booth — you set it yourself. The gallery PIN protects the photo link for your guests — the app generates it automatically and shows it next to the QR code.
Prepare the iPad for the event.
Three quick moves on the iPad itself before your guests take over — so the selfie booth reliably fills the whole screen and nobody ends up in the settings by accident.
Why this matters: since iPadOS 26 the iPad can show apps as freely movable windows. Set to “Windowed Apps”, the selfie booth may appear shrunken with black borders — and guests can move or resize the window by its handle. In “Full Screen Apps” mode the selfie booth is guaranteed to run full screen.
- 01
Choose “Full Screen Apps”
Open Settings → Multitasking & Gestures and select “Full Screen Apps”. Every app — including the selfie booth — then always uses the whole screen, with no window handle.
Settings · Multitasking & Gestures · “Full Screen Apps” - 02
Turn on Rotation Lock
Swipe down from the top-right corner to open Control Center and tap Rotation Lock — the padlock icon with the circular arrow. The display then stays in landscape even if the iPad gets nudged while you set it up.
- 03
Start Guided Access
Enable Settings → Accessibility → Guided Access once and set a passcode there. Then start the selfie booth and triple-click the top button (on an iPad with a Home button: the Home button): the iPad is now locked to the app — home gesture and app switching are off. To end it, triple-click again and enter the passcode.
Adjust & manage later.
During the event the selfie booth stays in guest mode — the admin area sits hidden behind it, protected by your admin PIN.
How to open the admin area
While the selfie booth is running, press and hold the top-left corner of the screen for about 1.5 seconds, then enter your admin PIN. Many people miss this at their first event — and it’s exactly how you get back to the settings at any time. As long as you haven’t set an admin PIN of your own, the default PIN 0000 applies — best set your own early. And if it ever slips your mind: tap “Forgot PIN?” on the PIN pad and confirm with Face ID or your device passcode — this works entirely without iCloud.
What you can change here
Much of this you set here or change later: design and accent color, occasion and greeting, capture modes and countdown, upload policy and gallery link, plus camera settings and language — modes, countdown and language can only be set here. The admin gallery shows all captures with their upload status and lets you delete individual ones — from the device and the server. And you can end the event early at any time.
How the party runs.
In guest mode the screen belongs to your guests — all settings stay locked. Capture, view, take along: that’s all they need to know.
Guests pick a capture mode, the countdown runs, the selfie booth fires. After every capture the preview screen immediately shows the QR code — with PIN protection on, the gallery PIN, a four-digit number, sits next to it. The selfie booth uploads the pictures in the background and returns to the start screen by itself.
A tip for your guests: don’t just scan the QR code — take a photo of the screen. That way your access stays with you, even when the selfie booth has long moved on to the next guest; with PIN protection on you get the gallery PIN along with it.
AI sample photos · The app takes real photos
How long the pictures stay online.
The retention period follows the chosen design — nothing extra to configure. Afterwards the cloud deletes the media by itself; in the admin gallery you can also delete individual captures earlier at any time. Once opened, the gallery stays accessible on that same phone for as long as the captures are online — anyone coming back days later has nothing to type again.
Birthday
The kids’ design. Deliberately short: pictures of children shouldn’t stay online longer than necessary.
Atelier & Studio
The grown-up designs. A bit more time to download — typical for weddings, company parties or shoots.
A quick note: the period is tied to the design, not the occasion. If you run a kids’ birthday in the “Studio” look, 30 days apply instead of 7. So pick the design accordingly — or point the parents to the longer period.
Privacy & a note for parents.
The shots are uploaded to the gallery and thus leave the iPad. That’s convenient for your guests — but it comes with responsibility, especially with photos of children.
- ✓Stored in the EU. The media sit with a German provider (Hetzner) in the EU — not on US servers.
- ✓Only with the link. The gallery cannot be found publicly — no search engine entry, no directory, and the link cannot be guessed. A gallery PIN can be added on top.
- ✓Automatic deletion. After 7 or 30 days (depending on the design) the media are removed server-side.
For photos of children: get the parents’ consent
Before you use the selfie booth at a party with children, you need the consent of the legal guardians — you organize that yourself, e.g. via the invitation. The app supports you here: when you start the event, it offers you a guest notice as a PDF that covers the upload, access protection and deletion period — in the kids’ design explicitly including parental consent. You can print it, put it up or share it; in the admin area you can create it again at any time.
The notice already tells your guests about the protected gallery and the automatic deletion after 7 or 30 days — put it up clearly visible at the photo spot.