FaceLab: Future Face Aging App

Review by eFreeware

FaceLab is a photo editing app from Lyrebird Studio. It sits in the Photography category, it is free to download, and it has been installed more than 50 million times. The pitch is simple: take a portrait and see it changed in ways that are amusing rather than accurate, from an older version of your own face to a swapped gender or a new haircut.

What makes it worth a second look is the range of edits gathered in one place. Aging, gender swap, hairstyle try-on, beard removal, an age scanner and a baby generator are all part of the same app, so you are not juggling several downloads to get a handful of novelty effects. The average rating of 3.8 from a very large number of ratings suggests a broad audience with mixed feelings, which is worth keeping in mind before you install it.

I would treat FaceLab as entertainment software first. The results are meant to be shared and laughed at, not used as a serious preview of how you will actually look in thirty years. If that framing appeals to you, the rest of this review walks through the main jobs the app is built to do.

Aging filters and the age scanner

The aging tool is the centerpiece. You feed it a photo and it produces an older version of the face, which the developer frames as a way to see your future self. The appeal is obvious for anyone curious about how they might age, and it works as a party trick when you run a group of friends through it one after another. The child-to-old direction is also covered, so the same effect can be applied to a younger face in a photo.

Alongside that sits an age scanner, which estimates how old a face looks. It is a different kind of feature from the aging filter: instead of generating a new image, it reads the one you give it and returns a number. I would expect people to use it as a quick curiosity check rather than anything precise, since estimating age from a single photo is an inherently loose exercise.

There is a future baby generator as well, which imagines what a child might look like. Between the aging filter, the age scanner and the baby tool, the app covers the full arc of a face across time, and that combination is what gives FaceLab more staying power than a single-effect novelty app.

Gender swap and beard tools

The gender swap feature handles male-to-female transformations, letting you see a photo of a face altered toward a different presentation. It is the kind of effect that gets shared quickly, and it pairs naturally with the hairstyle tools, since a change of hair does a lot of the visual work in that sort of edit.

The beard editor goes the other way, adding or removing facial hair. A beardless filter strips a beard away, which is useful if you are curious what a clean-shaven version of a face looks like, or if you want to show someone a photo without the beard they have now. These two features together make FaceLab a reasonable choice for anyone who enjoys seeing familiar faces nudged into unfamiliar territory.

What I appreciate here is that the app does not treat these as throwaway gimmicks bolted onto the aging tool. Beard editing and gender swap are presented as first-class options, and for a lot of users they may end up being the reason to keep the app installed rather than the aging filter itself.

Hairstyles, face shape and hair color

The hairstyle side of FaceLab is the part with the most practical use. A face shape detector is included, and the app suggests haircuts and styles. If you have ever stood in front of a mirror wondering whether a shorter cut would work, trying it on a photo first is a low-stakes way to find out.

The hairstyle try-on covers both men's and women's styles, and there is a hair color changer for experimenting with a different shade. A bald filter is included too, which is a straightforward way to preview a shaved head without committing to a razor. None of this replaces a good barber or stylist, but as a reference point before an appointment it has real value.

The face shape finder is the thread that ties these tools together, since the suggestions depend on it reading your face correctly.

What you need before you start

FaceLab is free to download, and the developer describes a premium option that removes ads and the watermark on your results. The app does contain advertising in its free form, and in-app purchases are available. Both of those are worth knowing before you install, particularly if you plan to share the images you make.

The app needs a photo to work on. Every feature depends on the app being able to read a face in the image, so a blurry or distant shot is unlikely to give a satisfying result.

The app was released in October 2020 and the developer has kept it updated, with the most recent release noted in September 2026.

Where FaceLab fits in

This app suits people who enjoy playful photo transformations and want several of them in one place. If you like the idea of seeing an aged version of yourself, trying a hairstyle before a cut, or running a few friends through a gender swap filter for a laugh, FaceLab covers all of that without asking for money up front.

It is less suited to anyone looking for careful, natural-looking retouching. The effects here are designed to be noticeable, and the developer's own framing leans on fun rather than realism. Someone who wants to subtly improve a portrait for a professional profile would be working against the grain of what this app is built to do.

The advertising and the watermark on free results are the main things to weigh.

A playful editor for face transformations

With more than 50 million installs and a 3.8 average, it has clearly found an audience, and the breadth of tools explains why.

I would recommend it to anyone who wants a quick, lighthearted way to see a face changed in several directions without paying for the privilege. The hairstyle and face shape tools give it a practical edge over a pure novelty filter, and the premium option is there for people who want cleaner results.

Go in expecting entertainment rather than a realistic preview of the future. Judged on those terms, FaceLab is an easy app to try and a reasonable one to keep.