Dear Ones
A private family keepsake of the people you love most.
Dear Ones is a private family keepsake for parents. You save quotes, milestones, photos, voice notes, selfie videos, and letters for each of your children. The app keeps everything organized in per-child timelines, in your own warm voice, until you're ready to share each child's keepsake with them.
Moms and dads who want to remember the small things, like what their child said this morning, the milestone she just hit, or the letter you want them to open on their wedding day. It's for any family that wants a simple, private place to keep these memories in their own words.
Photos are part of it, but the heart of Dear Ones is the writing. You're building a keepsake in your own voice that your child will eventually receive. Quotes, milestones, voice notes, and letters all live in the same timeline as the photos.
Yes. The account holder holds the family keepsake, and you can invite the other parent with an access code. With a view-and-add code, they can add memories from their own phone, which you approve before they join the keepsake. If you'd rather keep it simpler, you can still just tag the other parent by name in entries without them installing the app.
That's your call. You hold each child's keepsake and decide when and how to share it. You can mark specific entries as private to mom or dad, and seal letters to stay closed until a date you choose. When the time is right, you can share a child's timeline two ways: give them an access code to read their own timeline in the app, or export it as a keepsake PDF. You stay in control of the code and can revoke it at any time.
Every plan starts with a 14-day free trial. You won't be charged during the trial, and you can cancel any time before it ends in Settings → Apple ID → Subscriptions. If you don't cancel, the plan you picked renews automatically at the price shown at signup.
Open Settings → Apple ID → Subscriptions on your iPhone, find Dear Ones, and tap Cancel Subscription. Your access continues until the end of the current billing period. We don't process cancellations directly because Apple handles all billing for App Store apps.
Unlimited entries, unlimited children, photo, video, and voice attachments, sealed letters for the future, and keepsake sharing. One Family plan covers your whole family, with no per-parent or per-child upcharge.
You keep your existing entries on your device but can't save new ones until you resubscribe. We never delete the content you've already saved.
With family sharing off, which is the default, no. Your entries stay on your device and back up only to your own private iCloud, and only if you keep iCloud on. Voice note transcription and face grouping both happen on your device. If you turn on family sharing, the entries you choose to share are stored on our sharing servers so the people you've given a code can see them. Anything you mark private to yourself never leaves your device. Our Privacy Policy walks through the full picture.
As long as iCloud is on, your keepsake backs up to your private iCloud, so reinstalling the app or setting up a new phone restores it when you sign in with the same Apple ID. You can confirm you're covered any time: the Family tab shows a Backup status row, and tapping it opens the iCloud backup screen with your last backup time and a Back up now button. If iCloud is off, your entries live only on that device, so we recommend keeping iCloud on.
Try signing out of the app (Family tab → Settings → Sign Out) and signing back in with Apple. If the issue persists, email us with your iOS version and the screen where you're stuck.
First, make sure you're signed in to the same iCloud account (Settings → Apple ID → iCloud) and that iCloud Drive is on with Dear Ones enabled. Your keepsake restores when you sign in with the same Apple ID. On the Family tab, open the Backup status row to see the iCloud backup screen, confirm a recent backup ran, and tap Back up now if needed. On a small number of devices, Apple's automatic sync gets stuck on Apple's side; the keepsake backup is a separate copy that covers you either way. If it still won't restore, email us and we'll help. Family sharing, where you give someone a code to view your timelines, is separate from your personal backup and doesn't replace it.
Voice note transcription runs on your device using Apple's Speech framework. It requires Speech Recognition permission (Settings → Privacy → Speech Recognition → Dear Ones). If the toggle is off, transcription will be skipped but the audio is still saved.
Sealed letters stay closed until the date you set, then they open in the Letters tab for you to read or share. If a letter didn't open, check the date on the letter. You can open and share a sealed letter manually any time from the Letters tab.
Email info@nextfrontierbuilders.com. Tell us your iOS version, what you were trying to do, and where you got stuck. We answer every message.