HagePasha

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  You see yourself daily, so you cannot notice gradual change

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  Guide lines plus a translucent overlay of your previous photo

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  Compare any two dates with synchronized zoom and pan

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  A calm check-in every 30 days, kept in one place

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  One quiet reminder when it is photo day

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  Photos never land in your camera roll — the app keeps them in its own storage

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  No account, no cloud: photos never leave the device

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  Compare screen, no device frame

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  Settings and Premium (one-time purchase via RevenueCat), no device frame

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  HagePasha app icon (1024x1024)

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  Same frame every time — that is the whole app

Inspiration

HagePasha started with a simple observation: the more often we see ourselves, the harder it is to notice gradual changes.

Because we look in the mirror every day, subtle changes to our hairline or crown can be difficult to recognize. However, when we look back at an old photo, the difference may suddenly become obvious. This often leads to the thought, “I wish I had started taking photos earlier.”

Normal camera apps allow people to take photos, but they do not solve the biggest challenge: each photo is taken from a slightly different position, angle, distance, or lighting condition. These inconsistencies make long-term comparisons unreliable.

We created HagePasha to make hair tracking simple, consistent, and private.

The name combines “hage,” a Japanese word associated with hair loss, and “pasha,” the Japanese onomatopoeia for the sound of a camera shutter. The playful name helps make a sensitive subject feel more approachable.

What it does

HagePasha is a private photo-recording app that helps users track changes to their hairline and crown over time.

The app provides:

• Camera guides for consistently positioning the hairline or crown
• A semi-transparent overlay of the previous photo
• Side-by-side comparison between photos from different dates
• Synchronized zooming and panning during comparisons
• Custom reminders for taking the next photo
• Fully local photo storage
• No account registration or cloud upload
• A one-time Premium purchase to remove advertisements

HagePasha does not diagnose hair loss, calculate hair density, or evaluate the effectiveness of treatments. Instead, it helps users create a consistent visual record that they can review themselves or share with a medical professional when necessary.

How we built it

We built HagePasha as a cross-platform mobile application using React Native, Expo, and TypeScript.

The camera experience was designed around repeatability rather than simply taking attractive photos. Users first select either their hairline or crown and align themselves with an on-screen guide.

From the second recording onward, the previous photo can be displayed as a semi-transparent overlay. This helps users reproduce the earlier camera position, head angle, distance, and scale.

Photos and recording data are stored locally inside the app's private storage area. HagePasha does not require an email address, password, or cloud account. It also avoids requesting access to the user's entire photo library.

We implemented local notifications for recurring photo reminders and used RevenueCat to manage the one-time Premium entitlement and purchase restoration across iOS and Android.

Challenges we ran into

One of our biggest challenges was making photos genuinely comparable.

Even small differences in camera distance, head angle, lighting, hairstyle, or hair condition can create the appearance of improvement or deterioration. The previous-photo overlay helped reduce these differences, but the interface also needed to remain easy to use while someone was holding a phone above their head with one hand.

Privacy was another major challenge. Photos of a person's hairline or crown can feel highly sensitive. Rather than treating privacy as something to address only through a privacy policy, we made it an architectural requirement:

• No user account
• No photo uploads
• No cloud synchronization
• No AI analysis of the photos

We also had to carefully define the product's boundaries. Adding AI-generated hair scores or automatic hair-loss assessments might have made the app appear more advanced, but unreliable results could create unnecessary anxiety or false confidence.

For this reason, we intentionally focused HagePasha on consistent recording and comparison rather than diagnosis.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud that we turned a simple personal problem into a focused product with a clear purpose.

Instead of adding many unrelated features, we concentrated on the complete tracking experience: taking a consistent photo, storing it privately, remembering to take the next one, and comparing changes over time.

We are especially proud of building privacy into the product's architecture. Users can begin recording without creating an account or uploading sensitive photos to an external server.

We are also proud that HagePasha supports both iOS and Android from a shared codebase while still providing native camera, storage, notification, advertising, and in-app purchase experiences.

Most importantly, we built and shipped a real product that people can continue using for months or years.

What we learned

The biggest lesson we learned was that consistency can sometimes be more valuable than intelligence.

HagePasha does not need to predict the future or judge someone's appearance. Its value comes from helping users repeat one small action under similar conditions over a long period of time.

We also learned that privacy-focused decisions can improve the overall product experience. By removing accounts and cloud synchronization, we made onboarding faster, reduced technical complexity, and created a product promise that is easy to understand.

Another important lesson was that building a focused product requires deciding what not to build. Avoiding AI diagnosis, social features, and complicated subscription plans helped us maintain a clear purpose:

Take a consistent photo today, so you have something reliable to compare tomorrow.

What's next for HagePasha

HagePasha is live on the App Store as of August 7, 2026 — shipped during the Shipaton window, in five languages (Japanese, English, French, Simplified Chinese, Korean), with the one-time Premium purchase served through RevenueCat. HagePasha is also live on Google Play, so users can now download the same five-language experience on iOS and Android.

From here the work is learning from real-world usage and refining the camera guidance based on what people actually run into.

We plan to explore:

• Better guidance for difficult shooting positions
• More flexible comparison views
• Improved reminder customization
• Additional Premium personalization options
• Better accessibility and localization
• More educational content about consistent long-term recording

As the product evolves, we will maintain its core promise: users remain in control of their photos, their data stays private, and HagePasha remains a recording tool rather than a diagnostic service.

Built With

• nextjs
• react-native
• typescript