Questions from the darkroom.

Each round is one photo, called a negative.

• Load a negative. Tap Load negative to pick one of your own photos, or Found negatives to use one of ours. The first time, a short tutorial round shows you the ropes.
• Develop it. The print starts under-exposed. Work the darkroom instruments (exposure, grade, the filter wheel, dye, reversal and grain) to bring out what’s in the shadows. The static in your headphones narrows towards a signal as you get close.
• Call it. Tap Clean if you think nothing is there. Tap Haunted and circle the spot with the grease pencil if you think you’ve found it. A haunted call only counts if your circle lands on the figure.

Afterwards you can share the undeveloped negative (it carries a hint, so a friend can develop it in the app or in any photo editor) or the developed print.

Most likely because there was nothing to find. About half of all rounds are clean, on purpose, and the sound rises on clean rounds too. Calling Clean is often the right answer.

When something is hidden, it hides well. Try these:

• Raise the exposure a long way. Figures usually sit in the darkest parts of the picture: doorways, hallways, corners, under trees.
• Change the grade and turn the filter wheel slowly; some figures only separate from the background at the right contrast or colour.
• Use headphones and listen for the static thinning out.

Photos with deep shadows and a bit of space around the people work best. Very bright photos, close-ups and pictures of a single object give a figure fewer places to stand, so those rounds are more likely to be clean or to use a smaller, subtler effect. The people in your photo are never changed.

Open Settings and tap Restore purchases, or tap Restore on the unlock screen. Make sure you’re signed in to the App Store with the same Apple Account you used to buy Full Darkroom. The unlock is a one-time purchase, so restoring never charges you again.

Still locked? Check that you have a connection, quit and reopen the app, then try again. If it still doesn’t work, email us with the date of purchase (you can find it under your Apple Account’s purchase history).

No, but the game is much better with them. With headphones the sound is positioned in space, so the signal can come from the side of the picture where something is waiting, and a low layer that phone speakers can’t reproduce is added. Wired, AirPods and other Bluetooth headphones all work.

The sound is a clue, not an answer: on clean rounds it builds up and then never resolves. To play silently, turn on Mute in Settings.

Never. All processing happens on your iPhone. The app uses Apple’s photo picker, so it only sees the photos you choose and never asks for access to your library. No photos, thumbnails or fingerprints of them are uploaded, there is no account, and there are no ads or tracking. Shared images are saved without the location or camera details of the original.

The app sends a small set of anonymous gameplay events and crash reports to Google’s Firebase. The privacy policy lists every one.

You get five frames of film a day for your own photos; one frame is used each time you load one. Film resets at midnight, local time. Found negatives never use film, so you can always keep playing.

Full Darkroom is a one-time purchase ($2.99 in the US; local prices vary). It unlocks unlimited film, full-resolution prints without the watermark, and an unlimited archive (the free archive keeps your last 12). Every round can be solved without it.

Save the image, then open it in Dark Current to develop it there, or follow the hint printed in the corner (for example, “raise exposure”) in any photo editor.

Purchases are handled by Apple, so refunds are too. Request one at reportaproblem.apple.com.

iPhone with iOS 26 or later. English only for now.