Frequently asked questions

No. Backdating is a normal part of the app, not a workaround — you file a memory under the day it happened, whenever you get to it. Plenty of the archive will be older than the app. And Look back walks your camera roll month by month to show you the months with photographs and nothing written — on your phone, reading only dates and counts, uploading nothing until you pick one.

Under fifteen seconds for most days, one-handed. If it takes longer than that, that's a bug.

Nothing happens. That's the point.

Yes, on the same archive. The second parent is part of membership, and one membership covers everyone in the household — every kid, both of you.

No. A hundred entries is already a thing your kid doesn't have. There's no threshold.

That's a decision the family makes, not one the app makes for you. Sealed entries — part of membership — can be written to open at an age you choose, and one you have already written stays yours whatever you pay. The export means the archive is handed over as a real object, whatever you decide.

The second half of the daily card, and the part that comes with membership. Take a photo, film thirty seconds, record their voice, or just go do something — get on the floor for ten minutes. Some missions produce a file. Some don't. Both count. One lands on a weekday and two at the weekend, a bigger one lands weekly, and once a month something asks for a number — height, hand, foot — or sends you back through this month last year in your camera roll. All 133 prompts are published, so you can read every one before signing up for anything.

They stack quietly and expire after two weeks, and the app never mentions them again. There is no counter to break, and nothing turns red because you were busy.

$59.99 a year — two months free versus monthly — or $5.99 a month. One membership covers the whole household: every kid, both parents. Everything is open for two weeks first, with no card and nothing to cancel. Both tiers, line by line, are on the pricing page.

Yes, and it isn't a trial — it has no end date. The daily question arrives every day, forever. Search and a full export, always. Everything you have already written and captured stays yours. The missions are the part that's membership, along with the photographs, video and recordings they ask for.

Pocket Chronicle drops to the free tier and your archive is never locked. Everything you have written and captured stays readable, searchable and exportable, you keep answering the daily question, and text is never deleted. The missions go back to being part of membership, and so does adding new photographs, video and voice recordings. The full version is on the promise page.

Settings on your iPhone, two taps, like any other subscription. Apple handles it, and we don't get to make it hard. During the two weeks there is nothing to cancel, because there is no card on file.

One tap gives you a zip: every entry, every photo, every recording, in folders by date — plus an index.html you double-click. It opens in any browser, offline, with no account and no internet. Free and complete on every tier, even if you stopped paying years ago.

Everything you wrote, every caption you added, and every transcript of something they said. You aren't searching filenames and dates — you're searching the answers, which is much closer to how you'll actually remember it.

Tap to start, tap again to pause, and a check mark when you're done. Up to ten minutes in one recording. On iOS 26 the phone writes a transcript itself, so you can search something you'll never have time to relisten to; on an older iPhone the recording is kept and the transcript isn't.

Not yet. The export is the object that exists today — a zip you can hold onto and hand over. A printed book is something we want to make and have not made.

Some prompts ask you to write forward — to who they'll be at eighteen, or something you'd want them to know. You seal it until an age you choose, and a letter meant for eighteen stays shut until eighteen. Sealed letters come with membership; a letter you have already written stays yours either way.

Yes, with membership. Both answer into the same archive on one membership, and whoever was there that day writes it down. Neither of you has to reconstruct the other's week.

No. Not on any tier, not at a bigger scale, not ever.

With Apple or Google, or with a link sent to an email address you add in Settings. There is no Facebook login — routing a private record of a child through an ad company contradicts the thing being sold.

No. Nothing about your child is sold, brokered, or used to train anything.

Not today. Pocket Chronicle is on the App Store for iPhone, and there is no Android app and no web app. We'd rather say that plainly than hint at a roadmap we can't promise.

Pocket Chronicle is on the App Store, free to download, on iPhone. The daily question is free forever and everything else is open for two weeks with no card and nothing to cancel. There is no Android app and no web app, and the daily prompt still goes out by email for anyone who would rather answer it in a notebook.