Support
Help with Chore Chart
Chore Chart is a chore chart for iPhone and iPad where a child’s “Done” tap goes into a parent’s approval queue rather than straight to finished. Most questions are about that one rule, the parent passcode, or turns between children. All three are below.
Getting started
What do I need to run it?
An iPhone or iPad running iOS 18 or later. Version 1.0 is free, with no subscription, no in-app purchase and no advertising.
How do I set it up?
The first run asks for one child’s name and colour, then offers a short list of starter chores such as making a bed, setting the table or feeding the pet. Pick three, or write your own, and the app lands on today’s list. You can add more children and more chores at any time from the Family and Chores tabs.
Do my children need their own phones or accounts?
No. Chore Chart runs on one device that you own. Children never install anything, never sign in and have no password to forget. You hand them the phone in child mode, and they hand it back.
How do I switch to child mode?
On the Today screen, use the child mode button in the toolbar and choose which child is holding the device. The parent tabs disappear and only that child’s chores for today are shown.
Approving and points
My child tapped Done but no points appeared.
That is how the app works, not a fault. A child’s tap moves the chore into your Approve queue and awards nothing. Points are credited at the moment you approve it. Sending a chore back awards nothing and puts it in front of the child again.
Can I turn the approval step off?
No. There is no setting for it. A child’s tap can never reach approved on its own, which is the one thing the app is built to guarantee.
Where can I see what a child has earned?
Open the Family tab and tap a child. Their page shows the running balance and every point they’ve been given, each one from a chore you approved. There is no separate log of chores in version 1.0 beyond this.
The Approve tab is empty but I know something was done.
Only chores a child has actually tapped Done on appear there. If the child did the work but never tapped, the chore is still sitting under “needs doing” on their list. You can also check the Today tab, which shows every child’s day at once with a count of what needs doing, what is waiting and what is finished.
I approved something by mistake.
Approval is final in version 1.0. It credits the points once and there is no undo, and no way to edit a balance by hand. This is deliberate — a points total that a parent can quietly rewrite is worth less than one that only ever goes up when a real chore was approved. If it matters, the simplest fix is to take the difference off the next chore’s value, or to talk it through with your child.
Children and turns
How does the rotation decide whose turn it is?
Put two or more children on one chore, in the order you want, and each scheduled day goes to the next child in that order. Turns are counted from the calendar rather than stored anywhere, so approving a chore, sending it back, missing a day or reinstalling the app can never shift whose turn is next.
The same child seems to have it two days running.
Check the order of children on that chore in the Chores tab, and check the schedule. A chore set to certain days of the week only rotates on the days it actually runs, so a Monday-and-Tuesday chore rotates between those two days, not across the whole week.
A chore isn’t showing up today.
Three things to check, in this order: the chore’s schedule covers today; the chore isn’t archived, which hides it from future days; and today’s turn belongs to the child whose list you’re looking at. In child mode you only ever see one child’s chores, so a chore assigned to a sibling won’t appear.
Parent passcode
How do I get back to the parent view from child mode?
Tap Grown-ups at the top of the child’s screen and enter your four-digit passcode, or use Face ID or Touch ID if you turned that on in settings. If you haven’t set a passcode, the same button takes you straight back.
I forgot my passcode.
There is no way to recover it. The passcode is stored only as a one-way hash on your device, which means it cannot be looked up or reset by anyone, including us. If you are locked in child mode, the only way back is to delete and reinstall the app, and that erases all of your chore data.
To remove or change a passcode you already know, go to Family → Settings → Grown-up lock while you are in parent mode. Pick something your children won’t guess, and write it down somewhere.
Should I set a passcode at all?
Without one, a child in child mode can tap their way back to your tabs, including the approval queue. It’s a child lock rather than a security boundary: enough to stop a nine-year-old approving their own chores, not something to rely on for anything else.
Notifications
What notifications does the app send?
One kind only: an alert when a child marks a chore done, so you know there’s something waiting in Approve. If several chores are marked within a few seconds, they collapse into a single banner rather than a stack. iOS asks for permission the first time there is something worth telling you about, not during setup.
I’m not getting them.
Check two switches. In the app, Family → Settings → Notifications has “Tell me when a chore is waiting”. In iOS, open Settings, find Chore Chart in the app list, and confirm notifications are allowed there too. If you declined the iOS prompt when it first appeared, the app cannot ask again — it has to be switched back on in iOS Settings.
Editing and removing
If I rename a chore, does it change days we’ve already finished?
No. Each day’s chore keeps its own copy of the title, icon, child and point value from when it was created. Editing a chore only updates future days that nobody has acted on yet. Anything a child has claimed, anything you have ruled on, and anything before today is left exactly as it was.
What’s the difference between archiving and deleting a chore?
Swipe a chore in the Chores tab to get both. Archive stops it appearing on future days and moves it to an Archived section you can restore from. Delete removes the chore itself. Neither one touches your children’s approved history or points — days that already happened keep their own record.
How do I remove a child?
Swipe their row in the Family tab and choose Archive. They stop appearing on future days and move to an Archived section, and their points history is kept in case you restore them. Deleting a child outright isn’t possible in version 1.0; to erase everything, delete the app.
Your data
Does Chore Chart sync between devices?
Not in version 1.0. Your data lives on the single device you set the app up on. If you have iPhone or iPad backup switched on, Chore Chart’s data is included in that backup like any other app’s, but the app itself never sends anything anywhere.
How do I delete everything?
Delete the app from your device. Everything Chore Chart stored goes with it. There is no account to close and no copy on a server, because there is no server. The privacy policy sets out exactly what is stored and where.
Does it work without a connection?
Yes, completely. Nothing in the app makes a network request, so aeroplane mode and a dead Wi-Fi router change nothing.
Contact
Still stuck?
Email me and I’ll reply. It’s a one-person app, so answers usually take a day or two rather than minutes.
To make it quicker, please say which iOS version and device you’re on, what you expected to happen, and what happened instead. Please don’t include your parent passcode or anything else you wouldn’t want in an email.
App: Chore Chart, version 1.0, for iPhone and iPad running iOS 18 or later. See also the privacy policy and the product overview.