Support

Hearth is early and built by one person — so support is that person, reading their own email. Nothing below is a bot.

You got an invitation

Someone in your family invited you, and the email has a ten-character code in it, like K7M2P-Q4XVZ.

While Hearth is this early there is no App Store listing yet — so if you don’t already have the app on your phone, the code alone can’t get you in. Reply to the invitation, or write to dev@takehearth.com, and you’ll be set up by hand. That’s not a workaround; at this size it’s the actual process.

If you do have Hearth on your phone: open it, sign in with your email, and on the next screen tap “Joining someone else’s family? Enter your code” — then type the code in. Don’t create a family of your own first; that makes a second, empty one. The dash is only there to make the code readable. Codes stop working after 14 days, so if yours has expired just ask whoever invited you for a fresh one.

“I don’t want to install anything.”

Then don’t. Ask the family member who invited you to add your email address instead. You’ll get a letter every Sunday with that week’s photos and voices, and you can listen to them right there in your email. No app, no account, no password. It’s a first-class way to be in a family’s Hearth, not a consolation prize.

Signing in

The code never arrived

• Check the spam or junk folder — mail from a new sender often lands there once.
• Make sure the address is the one your family used to invite you.
• Codes last 15 minutes. If you’ve been away from the phone, ask for a new one.
• Each code can be used once. If you’ve already typed it in somewhere, request another.

Why isn’t there a password?

Because passwords are where family apps lose grandparents. A code emailed to you is one fewer thing to invent, forget, or write on a note by the phone.

Photos and voices

Recording a voice

Add a photo, then hold the record button and talk. Before you share it, tag whose voice it is — this is the part people miss and the part that matters. If you recorded your grandfather telling a story on your own phone, tag it as his voice, and it will be filed as his forever, even if he never opens the app.

A voice won’t play

• Check the phone isn’t on silent — and turn the volume up; older recordings can be quiet.
• If you just finished recording, leave the compose screen first, then tap play in the feed.
• On a poor connection a recording may take a moment to start. If it never starts, pull down to refresh the feed.

Adding someone who has no phone

A family organizer can add a person to the family without an account at all — a name, and optionally an email address for the weekly letter. Their voices can be recorded by anyone else in the family. If they ever get a phone and want in properly, an invitation can be attached to the person who’s already there, so everything already filed as their voice stays theirs.

The weekly letter

When does it come?

Sunday evening, and only if the family actually shared something that week. A quiet week sends nothing — Hearth would rather be silent than send a hollow email.

Stopping it

Every letter has an unsubscribe link at the bottom. One tap, it takes effect immediately, and you don’t have to sign in to anything. You stay in the family — you just stop getting the letter.

The photos aren’t showing in my email

Some email programs block images until you tell them not to; look for a "show images" or "display external images" prompt at the top of the message. The links to voices work either way.

Privacy and your data

Who can see my family’s memories?

Only the people in your family. Nothing is public, nothing is discoverable, nothing is shared with anyone else, and there are no ads or trackers anywhere in Hearth. The details are on the privacy page.

Removing something

Whoever shared a memory — or a family organizer — can remove it in the app. It’s gone for everyone.

Deleting an account or a whole family archive

Email dev@takehearth.com. It gets done by hand, properly, including the stored photos and recordings. You can also ask for a copy of everything first.

What Hearth costs

Nothing today — there is no subscription and nothing to buy yet. The plan is one subscription per family, paid by whoever organizes and never by the grandparent. If that ever changes for an existing family, they’ll hear it from a person first.