Support

Handwritten Journal is an iPad app for children who are learning to write. Your child says what happened today, the words appear on a ruled page, and they write over them in their own hand.

Common questions

The microphone isn't working.

Open the iPad's Settings › Privacy & Security › Microphone and check that Handwritten Journal is switched on. The same goes for Speech Recognition, just below it. Without the microphone your child can still type their sentence with Type it instead and write it exactly the same way.

The words came out wrong.

Speech recognition on young voices is imperfect. The spoken words stay editable until they are written: tap the Abc tool on the writing page and the page becomes an editor — tap into the words and type, or tap Speak to say them again where the cursor is. Lines already written stay as they are. A misheard word never has to enter the journal.

Can more than one child use it?

Yes. Each child gets a profile with their own journal, typeface and size, and an optional four-digit PIN. A PIN keeps a sibling out; it is not encryption, and the app says so in Settings.

What is the grown-up PIN?

Four digits only grown-ups know. The iPad asks for them before anything leaves the app or cannot be undone: sending a page, exporting a journal as a PDF, opening a website, deleting an entry or a profile, resetting progress, and changing grown-up settings. There is no PIN until one is needed: the first time something asks for a grown-up, the app sets one up. A grown-up chooses it — on their iPhone, in Handwritten Journal, or on the iPad after signing in there — never whoever happens to be holding the iPad. If it is forgotten, choose a new one from the grown-up's iPhone (Settings › Devices › the iPad › Choose a new PIN); the iPad takes it the next time it is online.

Can my child send me a page?

Yes, for free, once you set it up. Install Handwritten Journal on your iPhone — iOS 18 or later — and tap Set up the iPad: sign in with Apple or by email, answer the age check (Apple's own on iOS 26 or later; before that the app asks the year you were born, and keeps only whether you are 18 or older), agree to what sending pages means, and choose the iPad's PIN. The iPhone shows a code; on the iPad, tap Send on a finished entry, then Get my grown-up and With my iPhone, and scan the code. On Link profiles, tick which children can send. From then on Send puts the page on your iPhone, and the page tells your child when you have seen it. Pages are kept 30 days; save any you want to keep.

What is Send to friends?

An optional subscription that lets your children write notes to children in families you invite. You invite a family you know with a link or a code; they accept in their own copy of the app and choose which of their children may write back. To accept, their grown-up needs an iPhone with iOS 26 or later, where Apple can confirm an adult. You can send one of your child's pages with the invitation, so the other family sees what their child would get — whoever opens the link sees that page, until the invitation is answered or runs out. Every note goes to you first, then to the other family's grown-up, and only then to the other child — nothing is ever sent back automatically. Only the family that invites pays; the other family replies free. Switch a friendship off, pause everything, or remove a family at any time in the app on your iPhone. Cancel the subscription in your Apple Account.

My child asked for a friend. What happens?

On the iPad, Ask for a friend lets your child write their friend's name and pick a sticker. You see the request on your iPhone (or, if the iPad uses your child's own Apple Account with Communication Limits, Apple asks you in Messages first). Only a grown-up can invite another family; if you say Not this time, your child sees just that.

Where is our data?

Your child's journal is on your iPad. Nothing about your child leaves it unless a grown-up sets up sending — and then only a first name and sticker for each child you tick, and the pages and notes that are sent, kept for your family alone and deleted on a schedule. There is no advertising, analytics or crash reporting, and we never sell your data. On your iPhone, See everything we hold shows it all and Stop sharing and leave deletes it. The privacy policy says exactly what is kept and for how long.

How do I back up the journal?

Export it. On the iPad, open Settings — the gear on the profile chooser, or the gear on a child's journal screen — and under Grown-ups tap Export a journal; it asks for the grown-up PIN. Choose whose journal, choose Everything, and tap Make the book to get the whole book as one PDF; save it to Files or iCloud Drive. There is no cloud sync of the journal, so an export now and then is the backup.

If the row reads Set up Grown-ups, no grown-up has set up this iPad yet, and nothing can be exported from it until one has. Tap it, and a grown-up signs in and chooses the PIN, as in Can my child send me a page? above. Not now — just the PIN is enough to export, and sends nothing about your children.

How do I print a page?

Open Export a journal, as in the answer above. Choose One entry, pick the entry, tap Share, and print it from the share sheet. The same screen exports This month or Everything. A page your child sent to your iPhone can be printed from there too: open it and tap Save as PDF or Share or export.

My child's score dropped.

Check whether the typeface or size changed. Progress is tracked per setting for exactly this reason — a smaller letter is harder, so the Progress chart marks where the font or size changed, and the table beneath it scores each setting separately.

A card came up and my child couldn't close it.

That is the lesson. When a word is finished with letters drawn out of order, the page teaches each of those letters in turn: the letter draws itself, and tracing every one of them correctly closes the card. Watch again replays the arrows. It appears at most once per word.

Do I need an Apple Pencil? Does it work on an iPhone?

Handwritten Journal is designed for Apple Pencil — any model your iPad supports — and that is how we recommend using it: the grip, the pressure and the resting hand are what the app teaches and grades. It works with a finger too. The first time the app runs it asks your child to trace a letter, with a pencil or a finger; if there isn't a pencil to hand, I don't have an Apple Pencil explains what the pencil adds, links to Apple's table of which pencil fits which iPad, and Carry on without one finishes setting up. You are not asked again, and nothing in the app needs a pencil to open. Each profile also has a Finger tracing allowed switch under Settings › Writing. The journal is for iPad, iPadOS 18 or later; on an iPhone the app is the grown-up's side of sending pages and notes.

What are all the questions when the app first opens?

The first run settles three things, once per iPad: a grown-up agrees to the terms of use and the privacy policy, someone says whether the iPad should talk, and your child traces a letter — with the Apple Pencil if there is one, or a finger. Then it goes to the profiles, where the first child is added. The app's own Settings — the gear on the profile chooser — keeps both documents under Legal, with the date a grown-up agreed. Only the agreement can come back, if the documents change.

How do I stop the iPad talking?

Open that child's settings — the gear on their journal screen — and turn Voice feedback off under Feedback. The voice only says whose turn it is, which letter to trace, that a line is finished, and how an entry went; it never reads the journal aloud, and it never speaks while the microphone is listening. Each child has their own switch, and the answer given when the app first opened is only what a new profile starts with.

My child already knows the letter and doesn't want to watch it drawn.

Turn Tutor off — the capsule with the graduation cap in the practice sheet's toolbar. With it off, touching a letter lays its guide down finished, with the blue dot where the first stroke begins, and it is their turn straight away; turn it back on and every letter is shown first again. The switch is kept per child. Two things do not change either way: a letter traced out of the arrow order is still shown again, and the How to trace a letter card, the writing page's lesson and the welcome's pencil check all play in full.

The screen went white and nothing responds.

That is Trace on paper — a row of the … menu at the top right of the writing page, once the page has words. It turns the page bright white with the words in black and stops answering touches, so a sheet of paper can lie on the screen and the letters be traced with a real pencil. Tap the screen quickly three times to return to the writing page exactly as it was; two quick taps turn to the next page of a long entry. The app says this aloud when the page locks, and says it again if it hears four or more quick taps. Leaving the app ends it too. Nothing traced on paper is scored or added to the journal.

A hand is tapping the screen and my child can't get past it.

That is the first visit's walkthrough. It points at one thing at a time — Practice my letters on the journal screen, then the big letter on the practice sheet, then New Entry back on the journal screen, then the microphone on the first entry — and tapping the thing it points to moves it on. Skip in the speech bubble ends it, and a tap on the dimmed part of the screen says the words again. Each child is shown it once. The practice sheet's How to trace a letter card can be brought back at any time with the ? in its toolbar.

Still stuck?

Email hello@handwrittenjournal.app. It helps to say which iPad you have, which version of iPadOS it is running, and what you tapped just before the problem. Please do not send your child's journal or photos unless we ask for a specific page.