EPOCH

"Distance fades with every moment."
A private, minimalist photo-sharing application built for couples, delivering photos directly to your Android Home Screen widget.

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What is Epoch?

Epoch is a private photo-sharing application designed exclusively for couples. Instead of sending photos into crowded chat groups or social media feeds, Epoch lets you share photos directly with your partner - displaying their latest photo live on your Android Home Screen Widget.

When your partner captures a moment and hits Send, your home screen widget automatically updates. You don't even need to open the application to stay connected.

Key Features

• Private Couple Connection: Pair securely using a unique 8-character Share ID.
• Live Home Screen Widget: Full-bleed Jetpack Glance widget with an instant, background-capable Refresh button.
• Instant Photo Sharing: Fast 2-step S3 presigned photo upload pipeline for high-resolution images.
• Celestial Sun & Moon Aesthetic: Custom-crafted dark space navy & sun-gold theme derived directly from the app logo.
• Disconnect & Control: Easily manage or disconnect partner pairing at any time from your profile.
• One-Tap Widget Pinning: Request system widget placement directly from inside the app.

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App Preview

Splash Screen

Home Screen

Partner Photo

Profile Screen

Home Widget

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How It Works

1. Sign Up & Share ID: Each user receives a unique Share ID upon registration.
2. Connect Partner: Exchange Share IDs to establish a private, bidirectional link.
3. Send & Display: Upload a photo from your gallery - your partner's home screen widget updates automatically!
4. Widget Refresh: Press the floating ↻ button on your widget anytime to sync the latest photo in the background.

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Architecture & Tech Stack

Epoch is engineered using modern Android development practices and scalable cloud backend architecture.

Android App (Frontend)

• Kotlin: 100% modern Kotlin codebase.
• Jetpack Compose: Declarative UI built with Material Design 3 design system tokens and micro-animations.
• Jetpack Glance (1.1.0): Native Android Home Screen AppWidget framework with background BroadcastReceiver integration.
• Retrofit 2 & Moshi: Type-safe REST client with JSON adapter serialisation.
• Coil: Fast, asynchronous image loading with memory & disk caching.
• Android Architecture: MVVM (Model-View-ViewModel) with Kotlin Coroutines and StateFlow.

AWS Backend (Serverless)

• AWS Lambda: Node.js microservice architecture.
• Amazon DynamoDB: Scalable NoSQL database storing user profiles and partner linkages.
• Amazon S3: High-performance object storage utilizing S3 Presigned URLs for direct 2-step client uploads.
• JWT & bcrypt: Secure JSON Web Token authentication with salted password hashing.

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API Documentation

For detailed backend API contracts, request/response schemas, and AWS Lambda endpoint specifications, please refer to the full API Documentation.

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Crafted with ❤️ for couples everywhere.