Hearth keeps the voice. Your father taps a photo, says whatever it stirs up, and that voice is saved to that photo — forever. One tap. No typing.
Grandpa’s laugh. The way Grandma tells the story of how they met. No group chat gets those back.
Honest status: Hearth works end to end and is running in production — but it isn’t open yet. Exactly one family uses it: the one that built it. Early families are let in by hand, a few at a time.
He told the whole story again. Every word of it.
Every “family app” is really a photo app. But the thing a family loses forever is the voice.
Pictures get backed up by three companies at once. Nobody is keeping the sound of how your grandmother says your name — and when she’s gone, that’s the part you’d give anything for. Hearth exists for that one thing: to keep the voices while there’s still time.
Three taps from a moment to something your family still has in forty years.
Take a photo, or pull one from your library. Nothing to arrange, no album to name, no caption required.
Hold the button and talk. Then tag whose voice it is — because the best stories get recorded on somebody else’s phone.
Photo and voice land in your family’s feed and stay there — in a private vault only your family can open. An archive, not a timeline.
Every family app dies the same way: the people it’s really for can’t get in. So Hearth is split down the middle — rich capture for the ones who take the photos, near-zero effort for the ones whose voices matter most.
You’re the keeper: the daughter, the grandchild, the person who already sends the photos to everyone.
The easiest interface ever invented is talking. The second easiest is reading a letter that arrived on its own.
Dear Jaan, here’s your family’s week.
The part of Hearth an elder never installs anything to use. It arrives on its own, every Sunday evening.
Voices lead, photos follow. Each voice gets its own named line — “Mia’s voice” — because a photo-only email is every other family app.
A quiet week sends nothing. Silence beats a hollow email. Nothing here is trying to earn a daily open.
Built to be readable. Large type, high contrast, and no app-store detour between someone and their family.
Family life is the most personal thing there is, which is exactly why it doesn’t belong on a platform that sells attention.
Every photo and every recording sits behind your family’s membership check. Media is never public and never guessable — the link a mail client fetches is signed and expires.
Nobody is targeting your mother with anything. There’s no advertising business here to feed, and no third party learning who your family is.
No follower counts, no algorithmic feed, no infinite scroll, nothing to win. Presence over metrics — a lamp-lit room, not a casino.
The plan is a single subscription paid by whoever organizes — never by the elder — plus things you can hold, like a printed book of the year. You are not the product.
Hearth is built by one person and isn’t open to the public. Here’s the honest line between what runs today and what doesn’t yet — the same list the project keeps for itself.
If there’s someone in your family you’d hate to lose the sound of, say so — that’s the whole application. Early families get in a few at a time.
Ask for an early inviteWrites to a person, not a mailing list. No newsletter, no drip campaign.