Create a Digital Time Capsule
A digital time capsule is a set of photos, videos, voice recordings, documents and written messages that you seal today and that can only be opened on a future date you choose. With Time Capsule you compose it online, pick who receives it and when it opens, and it stays locked until that day — anywhere from an hour to thirty years from now.
No shoebox in the attic, no hard drive nobody remembers the password to. You put things in, you choose a date, and it waits.
This page explains what a digital time capsule is, what goes inside one, and how ours works. If you already know and just want to start, the button below opens an empty capsule.
What is a digital time capsule?
A digital time capsule is a sealed collection of files and messages with an opening date attached to it. You add what you want to preserve, you name the people who should receive it, and you set the moment it unlocks. Until then nobody can open it — not the recipients, not you.
The idea is the same as a physical time capsule buried in a garden or sealed into a school wall. What changes is what it can hold and who it can reach. A digital capsule takes video and sound as easily as it takes a letter, and it can open for someone living on the other side of the world.
It is not a backup, and it is not a scheduled email. A backup is something you hope never to need. A time capsule is written to be read — on a specific day, by a specific person, including the person you will be by then.
How a digital time capsule works
Six steps, in order. The whole thing takes an evening if you are thorough, ten minutes if you are not.
1. Create the capsule
Give it a name and write the message that sits at the heart of it. The message can run to a hundred thousand characters, so a long letter is fine.
2. Add your memories
Upload photos, videos, voice recordings, scans and documents — up to 50 MB per file. Free capsules include 300 MB of storage, paid ones 1 GB, and you can buy more.
3. Choose the recipients
One person or several. A recipient can be an email address, or just a name saved in your contacts — useful for a child who has no inbox yet.
4. Set the opening date
Anything in the future: a birthday in eleven years, an anniversary, a Tuesday in 2050. You also choose how long the capsule stays open afterwards.
5. Decide who can see it
Public, so anyone with the link can open it on the day. Private, so only your recipients can. Or password-protected, with a hint you write yourself.
6. Seal it
The moment you lock it, the capsule becomes read-only. It cannot be edited, the date cannot be moved, and nobody can open it early — including you.
What can you put inside?
Any file type, up to 50 MB each. In practice people fill capsules with four kinds of things.
Files you upload
- Photos — including the ones that never made it to social media
- Videos, from a two-minute message to a whole afternoon
- Voice recordings: a song, a story, someone's laugh
- Scans of drawings, letters, tickets, schoolwork
- Documents and PDFs — a contract, a diary page, a plan
Things you write
- A letter to whoever opens it
- The story behind each photo, so it still makes sense later
- What was happening that week, in the world and in your kitchen
- Predictions you are willing to be wrong about
- Questions for the person opening it
Things people forget to include
- Prices: what a coffee, a litre of fuel or a flat cost this year
- Ordinary detail — the route to work, what the flat smells like
- The names of people who mattered this year and may not later
- Voices of the people who won't always be there to record
- Something embarrassing you will enjoy being reminded of
One capsule holds everything at once. You don't need to choose between the letter and the video.
Start with one thing
You don't need the whole capsule planned. Open one, put in a single photo and a paragraph, and add the rest before you seal it.
Why people create one
The reason usually comes before the capsule. These are the ones people write to us about, each with a page of its own.
For your child→
Preserve what their childhood actually felt like and hand it back to them at 18.
For your future self→
Record who you are right now, not the version you will remember being.
For a wedding→
Seal the day as people experienced it and reopen it on an anniversary.
For a birthday→
Mark a milestone with a capsule that opens on the next one.
For a graduation→
Close a school chapter and reopen it at a reunion.
For your family→
Keep what your family felt like at one particular moment, not just how it looked.
Digital vs physical time capsules
A tin buried in a garden has something a website cannot copy: it is a real object, and digging it up is an event. These are the practical differences, not an argument.
| Digital capsule | Physical capsule | |
|---|---|---|
| What it holds | Photos, video, sound, documents, long text — anything under 50 MB per file | Whatever physically fits, and survives the conditions |
| Who can receive it | Anyone with an email address or a link, anywhere | Whoever is standing there when it is opened |
| Opening | Unlocks automatically on the date, and recipients are emailed | Someone has to remember, find it, and dig |
| Condition on opening | Files come out as they went in, in standard formats | Depends on damp, temperature and luck |
| Cost | One payment, based on how far ahead it opens. Under a year is free | The container, and the ground to put it in |
| Risk | Depends on a company still being here — read our honest answer | Depends on the spot being remembered and undisturbed |
Plenty of people do both: the tin in the garden, and a capsule that opens the same day to say what was actually going on.
Privacy and preservation
A sealed capsule is visible to nobody until its date. You choose whether it then opens to your recipients only, to anyone holding the link, or only to someone who knows a password you set.
Capsules are not end-to-end encrypted. Files are stored on Cloudflare R2 and capsule details on Cloudflare D1, encrypted at rest, and we run automated safety checks on content — which means the content is technically reachable by us, and we would rather say so than imply otherwise.
On the longer question — will this still be here in thirty years — we have a page that answers it without marketing language, including what happens to your capsule if the company ever winds down.
What it costs
One payment, no subscription. You pay once, when you seal the capsule, and never hear from us about billing again.
A capsule that opens within a year is free and includes 300 MB of storage. Beyond that, the price follows how far into the future it goes — five years costs less than thirty — and paid capsules include 1 GB. Extra storage is a small one-time fee, and dates beyond thirty years are available as a per-year add-on.
Digital time capsule questions
What is a digital time capsule?
What can I put in a digital time capsule?
Can I include videos in a time capsule?
Can several people receive the same capsule?
Can a capsule open decades in the future?
Can I change a capsule after sealing it?
What happens when the capsule opens?
How much does a digital time capsule cost?
What happens if Time-Capsule.io shuts down?
Seal something today
Choose the date, choose the people, and let it wait.
Pay once — yours to download and keep on opening day.