Get all your social network photos in one place with Pixable for iPhone and iPad

Pixable for iPhone and iPad is a social networking app that pulls in all your photos from Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. It's great for times when you may not want to browse through your Twitter or Facebook feeds but want to casually browse photos. While Instagram is easy to browse on its own, adding it in means you can browse all three in one single app. Considering Instagram doesn't have an iPad app, Pixable can make a good alternative.

We all like to view pictures in our social networking feeds and even though some Twitter apps have inline images, it's still a lot of scrolling when just casually browsing. With Pixable, you can link up your Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts with your Pixable account in order to view all your friend's photos in one place. Considering Pixable is based on social networking, you will be required to sign in with Facebook. We have long had a hatred for services that make you do this without the option to create a standalone login. Even though it's a social networking app, not everyone has Facebook and this leaves out users who may have Twitter and Instagram but don't have Facebook.

Once you've managed to login with your Facebook account, you'll be asked to add other networks, namely Twitter and Instagram. Once you've done that your photos will start aggregating in albums. At the top left you can slide out a main navigation menu that will show you your networks, photos that are trending, your friends, and your photos. To access an album, just tap it and all the photos inside that album will expand. Tapping on any photo will bring that photo up. You can favorite a photo by tapping the heart. If you tap into a photo, you can also comment on it natively from inside Pixable. Any photos you've favorited will show up in your favorites section for viewing later.

One of the features of Pixable that makes it a little different than apps that randomly pull in photos is that you can actually navigate through a friend's entire album. To do this, tap into any photo that they have in your feed and scroll up and down to view other photos they've uploaded. If you find a photo you'd like to share, you can also tap into it and choose the share button in the bottom right hand corner.

The good

  • Easy to browse interface
  • Allows for viewing of whole albums with swipe gestures
  • Combines all your networks and allows in-app commenting which eliminates the need to jump between apps

The bad

  • You have to have Facebook in order to log in so if you don't, you can't use Pixable
  • It'd be nice to see better album views or thumbnails instead of having to swipe through individual photos to view an entire album

The bottom line

Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram are used for sharing photos all the time and jumping between apps or browsing timelines gets tiring. Pixable is great for casual browsing photos when you don't want or need to read all the in between stuff. If you have a lot of friends or follow a lot of people on Twitter or Instagram, you can easily miss things that you may of wanted to see photo wise. Pixable helps you catch those moments.

If you're a photo buff and want a place to find all your friend's photos in one place, we'd recommend giving Pixable a try.

Allyson Kazmucha

iMore senior editor from 2011 to 2015.