Glitch art app for iPhone
Break your
photos on purpose.
MODUL8 is an image modulation kit for iPhone. Twenty-nine effects, each one modelled on a specific way that real hardware used to fail: tape that lost tracking, tubes that bloomed at the edges, a satellite feed losing lock, compression that gave up halfway through a frame. Stack them, reorder them, and turn a photo or a video clip into something that looks like it came off a machine that was already dying.
The nineteen classic effects are free, there are no ads, everything renders on your phone, and nothing you open in it is ever uploaded.
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. Twenty-nine effects, stacked in any order you like.
Photo
MODUL8
What is actually in there
Twenty-nine 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. Nineteen classics are free, and ten more come with Premium.
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 · ScanlinesData 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 · FeedbackDisplay 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 · DistortionTen more with Premium
New in 2.0, and each one another machine to fail through: a satellite feed losing lock, a broadcast arriving twice and leaving a ghost, slow-scan television, teletext, a fax line, a picture reposted until it wears out, a webcam, a handheld games console, a magnet held to a tube, and tape chewed up by the deck.
Effects: Satellite · Ghosting · Slow Scan · Teletext · Fax · Repost · Webcam · Handheld · Magnet · ChewedFree · 19 classics
Premium · 10 new in 2.0
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.
The interface
The picture on screen is the picture you save.
Nothing is drawn over it: no labels, no buttons, no scan lines of the app's own. Everything renders on the GPU, so the preview is sharp and it updates while you drag.
Open a photo and the first row is For This Photo, the presets that show up well on that picture. Nothing is applied until you tap one. Every effect is a switch, the layer stack shows what is running and in what order, and every setting has its own level meter.
Open a photo, or a video clip, from your library.
Start from a preset. The ones that show up well on your photo come first. Nine are built in, and Premium adds two packs, Dead Air and Y2K.
Tap an effect to switch it on, and again to switch it off. Open it to move its settings, or hit Shuffle. Any setting can drift, step or sweep on its own.
Put the layers in a different order and watch the picture change.
Burn in a camcorder, digicam, VCR or CCTV date, or mask the subject so it stays clean while the background breaks, or the other way round.
Save to your camera roll, or save the whole stack to use again.
On the device
Your photos stay on your phone.
Everything is processed on the device. There is no upload, no render queue and no server holding a copy of anything you shot. The app is about four megabytes.
It is also why the settings feel live: you are dragging the real image on your own phone's GPU rather than waiting on a round trip to somebody else's. And there are no ads, in the free version or in Premium.
Video too
Clips and loops, not just stills.
Open a video clip and watch it play through your effects, then trim it to any length and save it at 1080p, or in 4K when the clip is 4K, with its sound. Turn on Sync to Audio and the effects hit with the beat, a clap, a slammed door. Or turn a still into a three-second loop. Any setting can drift, step or sweep on its own, and loops and videos carry the movement: the tracking drifts, the channels breathe. Video and loops come with Premium.
The deal
Free. Premium is optional.
The nineteen classic effects, the layers and the built-in presets work without a subscription, and there are no ads. Premium adds everything new in 2.0 and bigger exports. You can try any Premium feature on your own photo first: only saving asks.
- Free 19 classic effects, layers, the built-in presets, saves at 1024 pixels, no ads
- Premium Video with Sync to Audio, the ten new effects, settings that move, date stamps, masks, the Dead Air and Y2K preset packs, exports at 2048 pixels and 4K, three-second loops
- Plans Monthly or yearly. The yearly plan starts with a 7-day free trial, and the app shows prices in your own currency.
Questions
The things people ask first.
Is MODUL8 free?
Yes. The 19 classic effects, layers and the built-in presets work without a subscription and save at 1024 pixels, and there are no ads. Premium adds video, the ten new effects, settings that move, date stamps, masks and two preset packs, plus exports at 2048 pixels and 4K and three-second loops. It is monthly or yearly, and the yearly plan starts with a 7-day free trial.
What effects are in it?
Twenty-nine. Nineteen classics are free: Noise, Pixel Shift, RGB Split, Scanlines, Distortion, Corruption, Feedback, VHS, CRT, Chroma, Film, Crush, Interlace, Invert, Datamosh, Dither, Static, Sort and Sync. Ten more come with Premium: Satellite, Ghosting, Slow Scan, Teletext, Fax, Repost, Webcam, Handheld, Magnet and Chewed. Stack them 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. Everything is processed on your iPhone and nothing is uploaded. There is no render queue and no server holding your images, and there are no ads.
Can it make glitch videos?
Yes. Open a clip, trim it to any length and save it at 1080p, or in 4K when the clip is 4K, with its sound. Sync to Audio makes the effects pulse with the beat. You can also turn a still into a three-second loop, with any setting drifting, stepping or sweeping across it. Video and loops come with Premium.
Which iPhones does it work on?
Any iPhone running iOS 17 or later. The app is about 4 MB.