Answers to the most common questions about Our Fam! If you don't find what you're looking for, contact us at [email protected].

Privacy & Encryption

Can you read my messages, lists, or location?

No. Your messages, list contents, and location coordinates are end-to-end encrypted on your device before they are uploaded. We cannot read them, and neither can our cloud provider. Only members of your family, on their own devices, can decrypt this content.

How does the encryption work?

Private content is encrypted on your device using ECDH key exchange and AES-256-GCM encryption before upload. Your private keys never leave your device. For full detail, see our Privacy Policy.

What happens if I get a new phone, or delete and reinstall the app?

Each phone or tablet makes its own private key when you sign in, and that key never leaves the device. It isn't stored by us or backed up anywhere, which is what keeps your family's content private. The flip side is that a new phone, or the same phone after you delete and reinstall Our Fam!, starts with a brand-new key.

• Everything from then on works normally. New messages, lists, events, chores, and meals are encrypted for your new device as well.
• Some older content may show "Unable to decrypt" on the new device. That's content that was locked only for your old key, and nobody, including us, can unlock it.
• Other devices still signed in keep everything. If you also use Our Fam! on a tablet or another phone, the older content stays readable there.

Tip: avoid deleting the app just to fix a problem. Try closing and reopening it, or signing out and back in, first. Signing out and back in on the same device keeps your key.

Can I see my Google, iCloud, or Outlook calendar in Our Fam!?

Yes, on Family Plus and Family Max. Profile → Calendar → Your other calendars reads the calendars already on your phone and shows their events in your Our Fam! calendar — only to you, and nothing is uploaded. You can also share one of them with your family: your phone then copies its events into the family calendar, encrypted like any other family event and read-only for everyone else. A school or team schedule you only have as a link? Paste it under Calendar links — your phone downloads it straight from their website. (Calendar links aren't available on accounts for kids under 14.)

Can I see Our Fam! events in Google Calendar (or iCloud, Outlook)?

Yes, on Family Plus and Family Max: Profile → Calendar → Add to another calendar. Before it turns on, the app asks you to approve a short notice, because this is the one place family events leave our end-to-end encryption. The copies are stored by Google, Apple, or Microsoft in a form they can read, under their privacy terms, and anyone you share that calendar with can see them. We can't encrypt, change, or delete them once they're there. Turning it off removes the events Our Fam! added from today on. If you edit a one-off event in the other calendar, the change is copied back to Our Fam! for everyone who can see it (when it was also changed in Our Fam!, the newer edit wins); deleting an event you created there deletes it in Our Fam! too. Repeating events only go one way. This isn't available on accounts for kids under 14. See our Privacy Policy and Terms.

Location

Why is my location stale or not updating?

The most common cause is the location permission being set to "Only while using the app." For background updates to work, set it to "Allow all the time": Settings → Apps → Our Fam! → Permissions → Location → Allow all the time.

How do arrival and departure alerts work?

A family admin can define named places (like "Home" or "School"). When a watched family member arrives at or leaves one of those places, the family is notified. You can choose which places and members you're alerted about in the app's settings.

Can I turn off location sharing?

Yes. You can turn location sharing on or off at any time from your profile. When it's off, your location is not shared with anyone.

Families

Can I be in more than one family?

Yes. You can belong to multiple families at once and switch between them in the app. One family is shown as active at a time, but notifications arrive from all of them.

How do I join a family?

Use the family's invite code or scan its QR code from the Family Setup screen. Your request is sent to that family's admin, who approves it before you're added.

What are the different roles?

• Admin — manages the family: invites, removals, places, and member settings.
• Member — a regular adult member.
• Child — a member on an account marked as belonging to a minor, which enables additional protections.

Chores & Allowance

How does the chore chart work?

Open the Chores card on Home. Adults add chores, pick who does them, and choose how often they repeat, whether they take turns, and what each one is worth: money, points, screen-time minutes, or a reward you name yourself (like "Ice cream"). Everyone ticks off their own chores. If a chore needs an OK, it waits until an adult approves it before the reward counts. A "first one" chore is up for grabs: whoever ticks it first gets it. The chore chart is free on every plan.

Does Our Fam! pay the allowance?

No. Our Fam! keeps track of what each person has earned, and adults can give a bonus, dock a reward, or mark an amount as paid out. The actual paying happens however your family already does it. No money is held or moved by the app.

Can you see our chores?

Chore names, notes, custom reward names, and the notes on a bonus or dock are end-to-end encrypted, so we can't read them. Who a chore is for, when it's due, what it's worth, and who ticked it are stored unencrypted, so balances add up and a child can't give themselves a bigger reward. See our Privacy Policy for the details.

Which chore notifications will I get?

Only the ones where someone is waiting on you:

• Adults are told when a chore is waiting for their OK. If several are waiting, they get one notification ("3 chores are waiting for your OK"), not one for each.
• Kids are told when a chore is approved or sent back, and when they get a bonus or are docked.

New chores, chores that count straight away, missed chores, and pay-outs stay silent, and there's no "got it first" notification. To turn chore notifications off, go to Profile → Notifications → Chore updates; this applies to all your devices.

Can my kids get a reminder to do their chores?

Yes. An adult taps the child's balance on the Chores screen, then Daily reminder, and picks a time. The child's phone then reminds them at that time, but only on days when they still have chores left. It's off until an adult sets it.

Meal Planner

How does the meal planner work?

Open the Meals card on Home. It shows this week's dinners, Sunday to Saturday. Adults tap a day to plan dinner, pick who's cooking (a family member, or "Other" for someone like Grandma or takeout), and add ingredients and notes. Everyone in the family can see the week, and the Home card shows tonight's dinner and who's making it. Copy last week fills in the days you haven't planned yet from last week's dinners. The meal planner is free on every plan.

Can I put the ingredients on our shopping list?

Yes. Open a dinner and tap Send ingredients to a list. Untick anything you already have, pick a list, and the rest are added to the bottom of it.

Can you see what we're having for dinner?

No. A dinner's name, ingredients, notes, and who's cooking are end-to-end encrypted. We only store which day it's for and who last changed it. See our Privacy Policy for the details.

Plans & Sponsorship

What's free?

Our Fam! is free to use. Every family gets end-to-end encrypted chat, shared lists, the family calendar, the chore chart, and location sharing at no cost. Paid plans only give a family more room: more members, lists, and places, longer videos, and photos and videos kept longer.

	Free	Family Plus	Family Max
Price	Free	$4.99/month or $49.99/year	$9.99/month or $99.99/year
Members per family	6	10	20
Lists	5	25	Unlimited
Places with arrival alerts	2	5	10
Video length	15 seconds	30 seconds	60 seconds
Photos and videos kept	90 days	1 year	Forever
Families you can sponsor	—	3	5

Prices are in US dollars and may vary by country. The app store shows your exact price before you buy.

When a photo or video sent in chat passes its plan's limit, it's deleted from our servers and the chat shows "📷 Photo expired" (or "🎥 Video expired") in its place. To keep one, save it to your phone first: long-press it and tap Download. GIFs picked from the GIF search aren't affected.

What does "sponsoring" a family mean?

When you subscribe, you don't just upgrade yourself. You get sponsor slots (3 with Family Plus, 5 with Family Max), and you use them to put families you belong to on your plan. Everyone in a sponsored family gets the extra room, and nobody else in it has to pay.

Example: Grandma subscribes to Family Plus. She sponsors "The Smiths" (her son's family) and "The Joneses" (her daughter's family). Both families are now on Family Plus. Her son, daughter, their partners, and the grandkids all still see Your plan: Free, because they aren't paying, but both of their families have Family Plus room. Grandma still has 1 slot left.

How do I sponsor a family?

• Subscribe in Profile → Plans & sponsorship.
• When you first subscribe, families you're the admin of are sponsored automatically, and so are new families you create, while you have a free slot.
• Right after you subscribe, the app asks whether you'd like to sponsor the family you're looking at. Tap Sponsor or Not now.
• Any time later, open Profile → Families, expand a family, and tap Sponsor this family. Your plan never spreads to every family you're in on its own. You choose.

Who can sponsor a family?

• Any adult member of the family. You don't need to be the admin.
• You must be in the family. You can't sponsor a family you aren't a member of. To help one, ask someone in it to subscribe, or ask to join.
• A family has one sponsor at a time. If it's already sponsored, you'll see who sponsors it.
• Accounts marked as a minor never see purchase screens. If they hit a limit, they're asked to talk to an adult in their family.

What happens when a sponsorship ends?

A sponsorship ends when the sponsor taps Stop sponsoring, leaves or is removed from the family, deletes their account, or their subscription ends. Either way, the family doesn't lose anything right away:

• The family keeps its plan for 14 more days. It shows as "Family Plus until <date> · sponsorship ending".
• During those 14 days, any adult in the family with a paid plan can take over the sponsorship from the family's card. If the sponsor's subscription simply lapsed, renewing it puts the sponsorship back.
• If nobody takes over, the family moves to Free when the 14 days are up.

The sponsor keeps their own plan the whole time. Stopping a sponsorship only frees up one of their slots.

When do I get my sponsor slot back?

Usually right away, so you can sponsor a different family. The one exception: if the family was using more room than Free allows when you stopped (for example 8 members, 6 lists, or 3 places), that slot stays in use for 7 days before you can reuse it. This stops one subscription from being passed around to fill up family after family.

What happens to our stuff if a family goes back to Free?

Nobody is removed, and no lists, places, or messages are deleted. If the family has more than Free allows:

• Lists: 5 stay fully editable. The others become read-only. Everyone can still open and read them, and they can still be deleted.
• Places: 2 keep sending arrival and leaving alerts. The others stay on the map but are paused, so they send no alerts.
• Members: everyone stays, but no new members can be approved until the family is under the limit.
• Videos: new videos follow the Free length (15 seconds). Videos already sent aren't affected.
• Photos and videos: Free keeps them for 90 days, so ones sent in chat more than 90 days ago expire. Save any you want to keep before the family's plan ends.

The family admin chooses which lists and places stay active (the oldest are kept until they pick). Look for the banner on the Lists screen and on the Map's Places tab. As soon as the family is sponsored again, everything unlocks by itself.

I subscribed on my iPhone. Does it work on Android (or the other way around)?

Yes. Your plan belongs to your Our Fam! account, not to a phone, so it works on every device you sign in to. To change or cancel it, use the app store you bought it from (the App Store or Google Play). If you sign in on a new phone and your plan doesn't show, tap Restore purchases.

How do I upgrade, downgrade, or cancel?

Open Profile → Plans & sponsorship. From there you can switch between Family Plus and Family Max, or between monthly and yearly. To cancel, tap Manage subscription, which opens your app store's subscription settings.

• When you cancel, you keep your plan until the end of the period you've already paid for. After that, the families you sponsor get the same 14 days described above.
• If you move from Family Max to Family Plus, the families you sponsor move to Family Plus too. If you were sponsoring more than 3, the most recent extras' sponsorships end (with the usual 14 days).
• Refunds are handled by Apple or Google under their own policies.

Is there a limit on how many families I can be in?

You can join up to 15 families, free. On the Free plan you can start one family of your own. Subscribers can start more while they have a free sponsor slot, and new families they start are sponsored automatically.

Can I sell or give away a sponsorship?

No. Sponsorships are personal to your account, only cover families you're actually a member of, and can't be sold or transferred. See our Terms of Service.

Children & Minors

What does marking an account as a minor do?

Marking an account as belonging to a minor enables added protections for that account, such as family-managed location settings. Whether an account is a minor is controlled by the account holder and cannot be changed by another family member.

How does someone confirm they are now an adult?

An account marked as a minor can be upgraded to an adult account through a verification flow: confirm your birth year, confirm by email, and follow the link back into the app. Once verified, the minor protections no longer apply.

Account & Data

How do I delete my account?

Open the app, go to Profile → Manage My Data, and tap Delete Account. For the full steps and details of what is removed and what remains, see how to delete your account.

What happens to my data when I delete my account?

Your account, profile, location data, device tokens, and direct messages are deleted. To keep your family's shared history intact, some content — such as your messages in group chats and items you added to shared lists — is kept but is no longer linked to your account. See the account deletion page for the full breakdown.

Still have questions?

Contact us any time at [email protected]. You can also review our Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.