Smalljoy

Everything your kids say and do, saved in seconds and kept safe.

Comment

Why I made this

Kids say the funniest things. The other day mine called the moon a "big banana". I laughed, and by bedtime I had forgotten it.

I have thousands of photos on my phone, but almost none of the little stories behind them. I tried notes, we tried a baby book with my wife. We never kept up. It always felt like homework.

So I built Smalljoy: a baby book you'll actually keep.

What it does

  • Tap and talk. Press the big button and say what happened. Your words show up as you speak, and your voice note is saved with them. It takes about 10 seconds.
  • Photos and videos too. Add a picture or a clip to any moment, or just write a few words.
  • One journal per child. Every moment shows how old your child was. Siblings in the same moment? Tag both.
  • Little reasons to come back. See your week at a glance, and get moments back like "On this day, 1 year ago."
  • A gentle reminder in the evening: "What did Maya do today?"
  • Private. Everything stays on your phone. The words are written out on the phone itself. No ads, no tracking, no account.
  • Share with your partner through iCloud, if you want both parents adding moments.

How I built it

  • Swift and SwiftUI, made for iPhone.
  • SwiftData keeps everything on the phone.
  • Apple's new on-device speech engine (SpeechAnalyzer) turns your voice into text while you record. Nothing is sent to a server.
  • CloudKit lets two parents share one family journal.
  • RevenueCat runs the subscription: a 7-day free trial, monthly and yearly plans, and the paywall.
  • I designed every screen to feel warm and calm. The onboarding opens like a keepsake: kids' quotes float by, you write your child's name on a little journal, pick an animal sticker, and the cover opens.

I'm one person, and I built it with AI coding tools (Claude Code and Codex) helping me along the way.

What was hard

  • Making the words appear reliably. Apple's older speech engine needed Siri and Dictation set up in a certain way and failed on some phones. I switched to Apple's new on-device engine, so it just works.
  • Keeping it private. No server of my own, no logins. Sharing between two parents runs on iCloud only.
  • Making it feel simple. Fewer buttons, bigger moments. The whole app is built around one tap.

What's next

  • Export all moments, so nobody ever loses their memories.
  • Free access for the second parent on one subscription.
  • A home screen widget with "On this day".

Built With

Share this project:

Updates

Submission history