Yes. All 19 effects, all 9 presets and unlimited stacking are free, and nothing you export carries a watermark. Premium adds full resolution export, looping video export, saving your own presets, and removes ads.

Glitch art app for iPhone

Break your
photos on purpose.

Q: How is it different from other glitch apps?

Most glitch apps lay a fixed pattern over whatever you give them, so every photo comes out looking the same. Each MODUL8 effect models one specific hardware failure and reads the pixels underneath before deciding what to do, so the same settings produce different results on different photographs.

MODUL8 is an image modulation kit for iPhone. Nineteen effects, each one modelled on a specific way that real hardware used to fail: tape that lost tracking, tubes that bloomed at the edges, compression that gave up halfway through a frame. Stack them, reorder them, and turn a photo into something that looks like it came off a machine that was already dying.

It is free, every effect runs on your phone, and your photos never leave the device.

Download on the App Store Free · iPhone · iOS 15+

A Tokyo crossing rendered through MODUL8: the buildings smeared upward into long vertical streaks by pixel sorting, colour channels pulled apart, the crowd still recognisable underneath. — Shinjuku crossing · Distortion + RGB Split + Pixel Sort · rendered on device

The idea

A filter paints over a photo. MODUL8 damages it.

Most glitch apps ship one look. They lay a fixed pattern of coloured lines over whatever you give them, and every photo comes out wearing the same costume. You can spot the app from across a feed.

MODUL8 works the other way round. Each effect is a small simulation of one real failure, and it reads the actual pixels underneath before deciding what to do to them. Pixel Sort finds the bright regions in your specific frame and drags them until the buildings turn to vertical rain. Datamosh picks blocks and pastes them somewhere they do not belong. VHS bleeds colour sideways the way a worn tape head did. Feed two different photos to the same settings and you get two different pictures, because the damage is a response to the image rather than a layer on top of it.

Nothing is baked in. Nineteen effects, any number of them at once, in any order you like.

The original photograph of a Tokyo crossing on a clear day: office towers, signage, a crowd on the striped crossing. — Drag it. One frame, three stacked effects. The sorting follows the brightness of this particular sky, which is why the towers melt upward and the crowd does not.

The same frame after MODUL8: buildings dissolved into vertical streaks, colour fringing on every edge, the crossing stretched into ribbons. — Drag it. One frame, three stacked effects. The sorting follows the brightness of this particular sky, which is why the towers melt upward and the crowd does not.

What is actually in there

Nineteen effects. Every one of them is a real failure mode.

They are not variations on a theme. Each one models something different, which is why stacking them gets interesting instead of muddy.

Analogue video

VHS tracking errors, head switching noise at the bottom of the frame, chroma delay, interlacing comb, signal sync loss, analogue static. This is the family that makes a picture look like it was recorded off a television at two in the morning.

Effects: VHS · Chroma · Interlace · Sync · Static · Scanlines

Data corruption

Datamosh copies blocks from one part of the frame into another and smears the motion between them, the way a video file does when the keyframes go missing. Corruption and Pixel Shift tear rows sideways. Pixel Sort reorders pixels by brightness until solid objects run like wet paint.

Effects: Datamosh · Corruption · Pixel Shift · Pixel Sort · Feedback

Display and colour

CRT adds phosphor glow, barrel curvature and a shadow mask. Bit Crush and Dither drop the colour depth to something a machine from 1994 could hold. RGB Split pulls the three channels apart. Film Grain and Noise put texture back on top.

Effects: CRT · Crush · Dither · RGB Split · Invert · Film · Noise · Distortion

NOISEPIXEL SHIFTRGB SPLIT SCANLINESDISTORTIONCORRUPTION FEEDBACKVHSCRT CHROMAFILMCRUSH INTERLACEINVERTDATAMOSH DITHERSTATICSORT SYNC

Same photo, different damage

The stack decides the picture.

Five renders from two source frames, changed only by which effects were switched on and what order they ran in. Order matters: sorting a photo and then splitting the channels is not the same picture as splitting the channels first and sorting after.

A Tokyo street pushed through the CRT preset: green and magenta phosphor separation, barrel curvature bending the buildings, a visible shadow mask over everything. — CRT + Scanlines + RGB Split

The same street through VHS: colour bleeding sideways off the neon, tracking tear across the lower frame, everything softened like a worn tape. — VHS + Chroma + RGB Split

The same street through the Cyber preset: sharp red and cyan channel offset on every edge, a slow wave running through the geometry. — Distortion + RGB Split + Noise

A yellow Japanese surveillance camera warning sign reduced to a coarse dithered palette with visible scanlines, like a screenshot from an old games console. — Crush + Dither + Scanlines + Sort

The Shinjuku crossing with buildings dragged into long vertical streaks by pixel sorting. — Distortion + RGB Split + Sort

The untouched source photograph of the surveillance camera sign, for comparison. — Untouched source

The interface

One screen. Everything on it does one thing.

The canvas is at the top and it updates while you drag. Underneath it are nine presets to get you somewhere in one tap, then the layer stack showing exactly what is running and in what order, then the effect rack. Tap an effect to open its own parameters. No menus, no modes, no hunting.

MODUL8 running on iPhone: the glitched canvas at the top, a row of preset buttons, and the layer list showing Noise, Distortion and RGB Split.

The layer stack with three effects listed and a drag handle on each, above the horizontal effect rack.

A melted pixel-sorted crossing on the canvas with four effects stacked below it.

Load a photo from your library, or shoot one in the app.

Tap a preset. VHS, CRT, Cyber, Ghost, Retro, Film, Melt, Static or Fried.

Open any effect and move its sliders. Intensity, and then whatever else that particular effect has: block size, tracking, spacing, curvature, threshold.

Drag the layers into a different order and watch the picture change.

Export to your camera roll, or save the whole stack as a preset of your own.

On the device

Your photos stay on your phone.

Every effect runs locally. There is no upload, no account, no render queue and no server holding a copy of anything you shot. The app is six megabytes and the editing works in aeroplane mode.

It is also why the sliders feel live: you are dragging the real image rather than waiting on a round trip to somebody's GPU. The free version does serve ads, which is the one part that talks to the network. Premium removes them.

Video too

Loops, not just stills.

Turn any finished image into a seamless looping video with the effect parameters animating across the loop. The tracking drifts, the sort threshold moves, the channels breathe. It exports straight to your camera roll at a size that posts cleanly.

The deal

Free. Premium is optional.

Every one of the nineteen effects and all nine presets are free, with no limit on how many you stack. Nothing is held hostage behind a paywall and nothing you export is watermarked. Premium is about output and comfort, not about unlocking the tools.

Free All 19 effects, all 9 presets, unlimited stacking, save and share, no watermark
Premium Full resolution export, looping video export, saving your own presets, no ads

Download on the App Store Privacy policy

Questions

The things people ask first.

Is MODUL8 free?

Yes. All 19 effects, all 9 presets and unlimited stacking are free, and nothing you export is watermarked. Premium adds full resolution export, looping video export, saving your own presets, and removes ads.

What effects are in it?

Noise, Pixel Shift, RGB Split, Scanlines, Distortion, Corruption, Feedback, VHS, CRT, Chroma, Film Grain, Bit Crush, Interlace, Invert, Datamosh, Dither, Analogue Static, Pixel Sort and Signal Sync. Any number at once, in any order.

How is it different from other glitch apps?

Most of them lay a fixed pattern over whatever you give them, so every photo comes out wearing the same costume. Each MODUL8 effect models one specific hardware failure and reads the pixels underneath before deciding what to do, so the same settings give different results on different photographs.

Does it upload my photos?

No. Every effect runs locally on your iPhone. There is no account, no render queue and no server holding your images. The free version serves ads, which is the only part of the app that touches the network.

Can it make glitch videos?

Yes. Any finished image can be exported as a seamless looping video with the effect parameters animating across the loop, straight to your camera roll.

Which iPhones does it work on?

Any iPhone running iOS 15 or later. The app is about 6 MB.

Break your photos on purpose.