Cocoon - Private Sharing Reviews

It really is a beautiful app, works well, and has a lot of potential. But there’re a few gaps that keep it from becoming my primary family messaging app. K so I hate to give so much weight to something as petty as gifs, but I apparently use this feature so much elsewhere that the absence of a gif integration on this app is a huge drawback for me. A widget for iOS 14 with like a snapshot of what’s going on in each this app would be a great way to subtly notify us of activity throughout the day. Also would like to see a collective calendar that lets you see events, flights, work schedules, etc for the group at a glance. (Bonus points if it could show collective availability to simplify selecting commonly free dates for getting together IRL) And finally, maybe some more categories to quickly share. for instance: media sharing like what we’re watching, reading, listening to, with the ability of engage in inline discussions about those topics. Every time a new episode comes out, or album drops, or a chapter is read, discussing what happened would be so interesting— Anywayy I’ve only just started using this app so hopefully I haven’t just missed these features from being a new user. I have high hopes and will keep my eye on release notes as they continue to update.

I love the idea of a micro social for those most important to you; I also love the elegant, minimalist design ethos that pervades this app. However, there are areas that need more polish. For example, currently you can only delete a group of photos, whereas more granular control of individual photos would be welcome. What if you post something by mistake? Furthermore, if you post a group of photos and comment on one of them, said comment overlays every photo in the group. These seem like issues that would have been resolved in early alpha/beta builds.

Overall, I’m really enjoying Cocoon thus far and see the immense value it provides. Going forward, I’ll definitely be a paying customer, and I look forward to seeing how this app evolves in the coming weeks/months.

My family started using Cocoon during the pandemic to keep in touch; it’s really great. However, it is seemingly no longer supported — the team was acquired by another company and even though the announcement said Cocoon would continue “independently”, the help center link is broken and their contact email address returns as undeliverable. (I discovered this when my dad got a new phone and could no longer find Cocoon on the Play store.) Really disappointing that they aren’t more upfront about the lack of continued support — and it seems borderline unethical to charge people a subscription too! We don’t pay for a subscription but like, don’t give people the option to pay monthly for your app if you’re not going to continue supporting it, that’s just gross. My family will be finding a different app, sadly.

Love using Cocoon with my family. It’s our go to app and allows us to enjoy communicating fun photos and news items and saving iMessage for urgent matters only. BUT some bug has surfaced and we can no longer use the Apple share option to share an item without an error. Now we have to copy/paste after opening Cocoon . Way more time consuming and is taking the fun out of sharing. Hope this can be fixed soon.

Cocoon definitely has potential and is a cute idea for trying to provide that same kind of closeness you feel with your special someone in-person and replicate it within a messaging/social hub.

Hard to go up against normal texting apps, but I have one suggestion that might make a big difference in such a simple (and sure, shallow) way. Give the choice of changing/personalizing Cocoon icon.

I know it’s such a shallow thing to reject an app for its app icon, but that’s truly what made my wife and I remove this from our homepages. If you gave us some options to choose from, or even gave us a way to create a monogram, bigram, etc, that personalizes our this app, even make it a paid feature, I bet you’ll have lots of people more interested in Cocoon. I feel so shallow for complaining about an app icon but I would rather be honest because we want to use Cocoon, we just don’t like the badge and don’t want to look at it versus look at iMessage.

Please consider this an implement it fast fast fast! I’ll be checking back! Thanks and best of luck, devs!

Cocoon is wonderful! My family lives in different cities across the US. Although we try to talk on the phone a lot to keep in touch, this app helps us constantly feel close to one another. I love being able to keep up to date on where my family is and what they are up to without needing to proactively ask. Also, the design is beautiful, and I love the new features they are rolling out. This is an important app for loved ones!!

So much better than the incessant notifications from iMessage for a close-knit family group that likes to share stuff! Really well done. I’d like to see more reactions than just a “like”. Only reason it’s not 5 stars is because Safari Content Blockers are not honored, so links shared in the this app are full of crap, and sometimes full-page pop-ups/videos/whatever take over and prevent easy commenting because they are overlaid on “top” of the link.

Cocoon uses an extremely insecure method to make your family’s chats private. It is essentially a six-letter password that you cannot change, that a malicious actor would have infinite tries to guess, and once that malicious actor gets access to your this app they cannot be removed.

A six letter password is not enough to put in front of the locations of all your family members and your private conversations with them. This shows a serious lack of understanding of even the most fundamental ways your safety could be compromised, and does so while advertising itself as a privacy focused platform.

Until this fundamental flaw is addressed, you should look elsewhere for private communication.

A few issues I’ve run into so far: The “Home” timeline hasn’t updated in 2 days. Weather almost always shows “not available” for everyone in my this app. One this app member’s info hasn’t updated in days.

A few suggestions: Although I can delete images from the Home timeline, there’s no delete available in the Vault. It would be nice to be able to branch separate/private chats with only specific members of the this app. Would be nice to set location based notifications.

All in all, I like the idea, but the functionality is still pretty basic, and status info updates are awfully flakey.

We were users of Path before that discontinued. I’ve been using Cocoon with my family for the better part of a year, and I just love it! I gravitate to using Cocoon far more than other social media because these are the people I care most about and want to share things with FIRST! It’s easy to share, to comment, to discuss, and to even look at things shared in the past!

I love having a smaller space to share with friends or family but I'm hesitant to start inviting others until we can delete content. Once you share a photo, there is no way to remove it. Could be embarrassing if you accidentally share something you didn't want to.

Other than that I think it's easy to use and has a nice design. I'm just waiting for updates (ability to remove content and join multiple cocoons).

I love Cocoon since it feels like a great in between from texting and other social media apps.

It gives you a safe space to passively send updates to your this app, and the organization of content makes it very easy to check Cocoon when it’s convenient to catch up. I appreciate that it’s helped me get closer and feel more connected to my in-laws. Great app!

Highly recommend downloading

I’m the oldest of 6 kids and just graduated college. Staying in touch with my fam has gotten to be really tough.

What we needed was something exactly like this. Without having to call everyone individually or pay attention to social media, I genuinely feel in touch with my entire family spread across multiple US states and even London😬✈️

I suggest this for any family and friend group that simply wants to stay in touch.

Cocoon is wonderful—but I've encountered a crash while adding new photos on my 11 Pro Max. The button forced close me everytime I want to add new photos, and the error persists even after restarting my phone. Please fix it soon. Thanks!. Anyway, Cocoon 's awesome!

Our family has been using this app since the beginning! It is an amazing way to keep in contact with grandparents or family far away without sharing photos on public sites. It also helps keep our close family in touch much easier. We love it!

This is the best app on my phone, my family (spread across the the US) uses it every day to share photos of my nephew, our dog, and all kinds of updates from our lives. It’s really easy to use and makes my parents especially happy to know a little more about what we’re all up to when we can’t be together in person.

Seems really great and I like the concept of keeping a tight group tighter as you are all in different parts of the world. Privacy is a big issue for our family since there are so many little ones and we want to share photos with the grandparents. My drop in stars is because 2/3 of the family do not use Apple devices. If I can’t really share this with a majority of the family then there is no reason to keep Cocoon in all honesty. A for effort but a C- in execution.

this app makes keeping in touch with immediate family easy and fun while increasing opportunities for interaction with loved ones. The photo vault is a cool feature that stores all shared photos in a single tab, not having to scroll through message history to find previously shared pics.

this app seems ok, just want to know if you plan on continuing the project or if it will die in a couple years? I don’t want to waste my time to get family and friends involved if it’s just going to disappear, but it’s the best thing I have seen so far.

I was hoping for something a little more polished and feature rich. It doesn’t seem much more than a running Messenger app conversation. I was hoping it would be more of maintaining a profile page like FB and posting things inside your this app. Without all the advertisements and political BS. I do like the idea of a closed close-nit family thing. I’ll keep checking back to see how it develops.

this app is my most opened app on my phone. I look forward to updating my family and receiving their updates each day. It feels like we are living close by even though we are thousands of miles away. Not sure how we would accomplish this without Cocoon.

There’s a lot of cool things about Cacoon.

One unexpected benefit though: it’s perfect for your home screen because it never sends you notifications and it puts a representation of your family on the home screen.

It’s a cool, unassuming reminder to think of my large, blended family throughout the day.

I’m using this app with my parents who live across the country (I’m on the West Coast; they’re back East) and it’s the most we’ve messaged in months. It’s really bringing everyone together in a thoughtful way. Beautifully designed and I can’t wait to see how this product further develops and grows.