The same answers you will find under Help in the app.
There are three kinds of chart, each suited to a different way of motivating a child:
Reward focus — a fixed number of stars to earn before a reward. You can attach a photo of the reward so it stays front and centre.
Weekly goals — the classic week chart: the days of the week across the top and the chart goals down the side, so a week's progress is easy to review together.
Goals focus — the chart goals down the side and achievements filling in as they happen. Best when goals don't need a daily rhythm.
A weekly chart starts afresh each week. Nothing is lost: earlier weeks are kept, and you can look back through them from the chart's history, which shows how many stars were awarded in each past week.
When you create a chart you can give it an end date, or leave it open. A chart with an end date shows when it expires; a chart without one carries on for as long as you want it to.
Delete permanently deletes a chart you own, for everyone it was shared with.
Remove only takes a chart that someone else shared with you off your device. They still have it.
If the owner deletes a chart you were sharing, it stays visible to you but becomes read-only: no more changes can be made to it.
Yes. Open the chart and edit its star count. This is handy when a reward turns out to be too easy or too hard to reach.
Each chart can have its own alerts, separate from the app-wide reminders in Settings. Use them for a nudge tied to one particular chart — a bedtime routine, say — without being reminded about every chart you have.
Chart Kids can look like duplicates when a friend shares a chart for a child you've also added yourself. See A friend's child appears twice.
When a friend shares a chart, the children on it come across as their records. So a child you've also added yourself can appear twice: once as your record and once as theirs.
You can point their record at your own, so StarBright shows your name, colour and avatar for both. A child set up this way shows an Alias of a shared child badge on the kid carousel, and your own record shows Has a local alias.
The link is kept on this device only. It isn't shared with your friend, or with your other devices.
The free version of StarBright includes one child, and one child per chart. Adding more children, or putting several children on the same chart, is part of the paid version. See What's included free?
Chart goals are a fundamental part of StarBright. Goals are attached to charts and help children focus their efforts on particular things to earn stars. They're the starting point for a child on each chart: a reminder of what's expected of them to make progress towards a reward.
Chart goals belong to one chart. They're the rows on a weekly or goals chart.
Family goals live outside any single chart and can be more ambitious. A family goal can award a different number of stars depending on how well it's done — say 1, 2 or 3 — and you can describe what's expected for each. Those descriptions appear when stars are awarded, to encourage a bit more effort next time.
Child Mode lets a child use StarBright on their own device. They can see their charts and goals, and tap to request a star whenever they complete one.
A parent device is needed too. That's where star requests arrive as push notifications for you to approve or decline, and where you choose which children can use Child Mode.
Together, the two devices give a child a sense of ownership over their progress while keeping you in control.
When a child in Child Mode asks for a star, the request is sent to the parent device as a push notification and shown on the home screen until you deal with it. Approve it to award the star, or decline it.
Open the device under Family Devices and disable Child Mode there. You can also change which children are allowed to use that device without turning Child Mode off altogether.
Send a friend request from the Friends screen. Your friend needs the StarBright app and an account; if you send someone an invite and they don't have the app yet, the link takes them to the app store.
Until they accept, the request shows as Not accepted yet. Once it's accepted, you can choose which charts to share with them and what each of you can do with them.
You choose, per friend and per chart:
Sharing a chart with a friend uses one of your sharing slots for the month. Slots renew each month, and more can be bought as a one-off top-up or as a subscription.
A friend with a subscription can also let you use some of their slots. Shared slots are never reserved: they only come into play once your own are used up, and your friend can still use all of theirs if you don't need them.
Yes. Every photo is encrypted on your phone before it's uploaded, and only the people you've shared the chart with can read it.
Before it leaves your device it's also re-encoded, and location, time, camera and device details are always removed. In Settings you can additionally strip the colour profile; photos may look slightly less vivid on other devices, but nothing about your camera's colour setup is shared.
Shared photos are encrypted on your phone, so a new phone can't read them until it has the key. The recovery key is how you carry that key across.
Create it from My Profile, write it down or keep it in a password manager, and enter it on any new phone. StarBright never has a copy and cannot recover it for you. If you lose it you can create a new one, but photos shared from a phone that still uses the old key won't be readable on the new one.
The free version shares images at up to 512 pixels wide and tall. The paid version allows up to 2048 pixels.
The free version includes:
You can also try the paid version free for 7 days.
The standard look is free. The other looks, and every look added in future, are part of the paid version.
Plans are subscriptions that give you a set number of sharing slots each month, and access to the paid version's features. Unused slots roll over to the following month and currently do not expire. You can gift slots to people in your friends list. These gifts can be a one off gift or you can setup a proportion of your monthly slots so that they are available for a friend to consume (See the Friend dialog for more details). A top-up is a one-off purchase of extra sharing slots that lasts until you use them up. These can also be gifted to friends.
As a thank you for supporting StarBright, anyone who bought the app before it went free has access to the paid version's features. This is recognised by the original purchase on your device, and applies to both Android and iOS. Grandfathered accounts will also receive 500 sharing slots that will never expire.
With an account your data is kept safely in the cloud and synced between your devices: sign each one into the same account and they stay in step. An account is also what lets you add friends and share charts with them.
Charts, goals, stars and children sync between every device signed into your account, and each device appears under Family Devices, where it can be managed separately.
Two things stay on the device they were set up on: the recovery key for shared photos has to be entered on each phone, and a link you make between a friend's child and your own record.
With an email address and password, or with Apple or Google sign-in where offered.
Open Settings and choose Delete account under Account. After you confirm, a one hour countdown starts on the server; you can cancel during that hour, or skip it and delete straight away. Every device signed into the account shows the same countdown.
When it ends, everything StarBright keeps for you on its servers is removed: your charts, children, goals and stars, the photos you shared, your friends, your devices and your purchase records. Friends lose the charts you shared with them. Your sign-in is deleted too, and the app switches to a guest account.
Charts and photos already on this device are not touched. Uninstall the app to remove them.
Alerts and reminders are reminders from this device, at a time of day you choose, to review charts, goals and achievements and award stars.
Updates from friends and family are sent to you when someone shares a chart with you, or awards stars to a chart you've been shared.