Setup is one code, and only if you want two phones.
The first phone needs nothing at all. The second one needs a code, which the first one makes for you. No accounts, no invites, no waiting for whoever's free.
There's no order to get right and no window to miss. Add a phone tonight and a tablet in March and they'll all show the same thing.
First phone
- Open Baby Brain. You'll land in a made-up week, so you can see what it looks like with something in it.
- Tap Start my own log. The invented week goes and yours begins. Anything you already tapped in comes with you.
- Add it to your home screen. That's the whole of it, and it's free for as long as you want it.
On one phone your log lives on that phone and nowhere else, which is the point of it and also the risk. Export it now and then, from Settings.
Adding the second phone
- On the phone that already has your log, pay £2 to add every other phone. Stripe brings you back and hands you into the app.
- It makes the code on the spot, something like
WPTP-4K6B-JBP9-QP4Z-4E1R-Z9ZF, and shows it once. Your log is exactly where it was. - Your phone will offer to save it to your passwords. Let it. Send it to whoever's on the other phone, then tap I've saved it.
Every phone after
- Open Baby Brain and add it to the home screen. It opens in the made-up week, which is what it does until it has a code.
- Tap Enter your code and put it in. Your password manager should offer it; by hand, capitals and dashes don't matter. Twenty-four characters of faff, once, in exchange for never having an account.
- The demo data disappears and your real log takes its place, usually within seconds.
Get a character wrong and Baby Brain tells you straight away. A wrong code matches no household, so that phone won't quietly start a separate log of its own, the kind you'd only discover a week later, at 3am, in a mood.
If you lose a phone
If you've paid, you haven't lost anything: your other phones hold the whole history. If you were on one phone, the log went with it, and that's the one thing the £2 protects you from.
There's no remote wipe, because the code is the key and any phone holding it can still read the log. I can't build one without being able to read your log myself.
Save the code somewhere safe. It isn't a password I can reset, because I never receive it. Any phone that's already set up will show it again, under Settings → Show my sync code, so you'd have to lose the code and every device at once to be stuck.
Add as many devices as you like
Both phones, the tablet in the kitchen, the childminder, and the next phone you buy.
Extra phones cost nothing. The £2 covers the household, not the handset.
Two things worth knowing
- You don't get to pick the code. One you'd remember is one someone could guess, and guessing it is the only way in.
- My server forgets after 30 days. Your phones keep the full history; the server holds each change only long enough for the other phone to pick it up.