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Steps: minutes, warnings and optional

Minutes are an estimate rather than a countdown. Flowly measures what the step really takes and tells you when the estimate is consistently off. A warning announces the step a few minutes early, which is what makes stopping something enjoyable possible. Optional steps count as finished either way.

See also

• Today

  Today is everything the house has on, per child. A routine card shows where that routine stands right now: not started, running with the step they are on, or finished. Under Quick things are the screens you reach for most. It is a picture of what the app already knows, so there is no plan here for you to keep up to date.

• Options for today

  Real days do not repeat perfectly, and a routine that took an evening to get right should survive a swimming bag. Under Options for today on any routine card you can add one thing for today, or tap a step that today can miss. Both last until midnight: the routine itself is never touched, and tomorrow is built from the routine again. If the routine is already running, the change reaches the child screen straight away.

• When your child asks for help

  Every step on the child screen has I need help next to Done. Tapping it records that this step was hard and tells anyone in the family who left that switch on. The step itself stays exactly as it was. On Today you will see it on the card afterwards, and if the same step needs a hand three runs in a row, What we noticed will say so. A step that keeps needing help is usually two jobs wearing one name.

• What each role can do

  Three of them, and the screen beside the invitation shows what each one gets rather than describing it: which parts of the app they open, which children are on them, and which buttons are theirs. A co-parent can do everything you can except billing and removing the owner. A babysitter can run a routine with the children you name and log a reminder. That is the whole of it: handing over a bedtime should not hand over a month of a child's life. Somebody invited to look can see routines and progress. An invitation works once and can be withdrawn until it is used, and a role can be changed afterwards from this same screen.

• The screen beside this form

  This is what the choices on this page look like in your child's hands: the same step, drawn again every time you change something. It is the product rather than a picture of it, so what you see here is what they get. Nothing on this page is saved until you save it, and nothing you do to the preview reaches a child.

• The hours calls may come through

  One answer for the whole house, because the question it settles is about you rather than about a child: may a phone ring now. Two children ringing at eleven at night wake the same grown-up, so asking it on every profile only produced two answers to one question, and the looser of the two quietly decided the quiet hours. Whether a child may call at all, and whether it may be with picture, is still theirs alone and lives on their profile. Leave the hours empty and calling works at any hour. Fill them in and the call button appears inside them. A window from evening to morning is allowed: set the later time first. "I need help" is separate, always on their screen and always reaching you.

• Calling for help

  Off until you turn it on, per child, on their profile. With it on, the help button on their screen gets a second button beside it that rings every grown-up in the family at once, on whichever device they are holding. The first to pick up takes the call and the rest stop ringing. The hours it works between are set once for the whole family, on the family screen. Outside those hours the button stands there with a clock on it, so the house stays quiet and a child can see there is an hour when it works. It wakes up by itself the moment the window opens. Leave the hours empty and calling works at any hour. Either way this is about calling only: "I need help" is always on their screen and always reaches you. The picture and the sound go straight from one device to the other. Only the few lines two browsers need to find each other pass through this server, and nothing is recorded or stored. The camera starts on the side facing your child and can be turned around during the call. Two devices in the same house connect reliably. From a different network it sometimes cannot find a route, and then it says so.

• Hand over: giving your child the screen

  Hand over puts the device on your child's side: one step at a time, their icon, their pace, and the routine is all they can reach. Coming back to your side asks for the code you set in Settings, if you set one. You can hand over from Today or with Hand it to them inside a routine.

• More than one device

  Sign in with the same account on the tablet or the old phone and hand the screen over there. There is no separate child account: it stays one family, so a routine finished on one device is finished everywhere. Someone in another house gets their own sign-in through an invitation from Family.

• Routines and steps

  A routine is a list of steps in the order they really happen in your house. Each step can carry a picture, an estimate in minutes, a warning before it starts and a few substeps. Editing a routine changes tomorrow, never what already happened: a run keeps its own copy of the steps.

• Steps: minutes, warnings and optional

  Minutes are an estimate rather than a countdown. Flowly measures what the step really takes and tells you when the estimate is consistently off. A warning announces the step a few minutes early, which is what makes stopping something enjoyable possible. Optional steps count as finished either way.

• The timer

  A step can show a timer your child starts, stops and resets themselves. It is a picture of time passing, not a race: nothing happens when it runs out, no sound, no penalty. Timers help some children and wind others up, so they are per step rather than everywhere.

• How their screen feels: calm, standard, playful

  Calm removes motion, colour, counters and celebration and makes the type large: one step, nothing else. Playful adds points, a small celebration and a streak. Two children in one family can be in different modes and neither ever sees the other's.

• Logging a reminder

  When you had to remind them of something, tap the step and log it. That one tap is the only reason the reminder count is honest: Flowly never guesses that a nudge happened. It is a note about the morning, not a mark against your child.

• Progress: what the numbers mean

  Every figure on Progress comes from something that actually happened in the app. Routines finished counts the ones that reached their last step. Started without a nudge counts runs opened on the child screen with no help from your side. Reminders you logged is the count of your own taps. Times they asked for help counts taps on the help button and carries no judgement in either direction. A day with nothing recorded is drawn as empty, never as a zero.

• What we noticed

  After a couple of weeks What we noticed starts pointing at one thing at a time: a step that is always skipped, one that always runs over, a handover that always goes wrong. Every card shows What we saw before What we suggest, and nothing changes until you tap Accept. You can edit it first, or say not now.

• Rewards, points and goals

  Points come from finished steps and stay earned, so a missed day costs nothing. A reward is something you already give anyway, priced in points, so the child chooses rather than asks. A goal is a target you set together and it closes itself when it is met.

• Family: who sees what

  Invite a co-parent, a grandparent or a babysitter and choose what each of them can see. A caregiver can run tonight's bedtime without getting a month of your child's history. Only the account owner can change the plan or remove people.

• Your plan: Free, Family and the trial

  Free is a whole working product for one child and three routines, with no countdown. Family removes the limits and adds the trends across children and weeks. The trial of Family is something you switch on yourself from your account, with no card, and it stops on its own.

• Your data: what is stored

  Which steps were tapped and when, how long each was on screen, what was skipped, and every reminder you logged yourself. About your child: a first name, an icon and a colour, plus whatever you add yourself. About you: your name, your email address, your setup answers and your notification choices. Your password is stored as a hash. Settings has Your data, which lists all of it and exports or deletes it: a child, the history, or the whole account.

• Trying it without an account

  This is the real child screen with a ready-made routine behind it. Your place in it lives in this browser session only: nothing is written to an account and nothing is left behind when you close the tab. Making an account turns it into a routine for your own child.