Happy HerdSet up in about four minutes
No accounts for the kids. No email addresses. No logins to distribute. This page walks through every step, plus the two things worth doing on day two.
The six steps
Do these once, on the phone you use most. Everything else follows from them.
🌐 Prefer to start right now, on this screen?
Happy Herd runs in any modern browser — the same board, the same family, the same code. A few things belong to the phone apps and aren't there:
- Everything on the board: chores, calendar, meals, lists, rewards, Calm Mode, the wall display
- ✦ Magic Add by photo or pasted text
- Siri, the OS share sheet and push notifications — phone apps only
- The Happy Herd Family Plan is bought in the phone apps; the browser runs the free plan
Add your family
On the welcome screen, pick a way in. The fast one is the photo path: point your camera at any photo of your family and Happy Herd suggests a card for each person it sees. You confirm names on a "Yep, that's us" sheet, fix anything it got wrong, and you're done.
- Prefer to type? "Who's in the herd?" takes about a minute
- Already have an account, or joining a family somebody else made? Both are on the same screen
- Each person gets a first name, an avatar and a colour — a nickname is optional and kids love it
Kids are profiles, not accounts. No email address, no password, nothing for them to remember or lose.
Say whose device this is
Happy Herd asks "whose device is this?" and you tap your own face. It's the single most-skipped and most-important step: it's how the right phone buzzes for the right person, and how a chore ticked on this device is attributed correctly.
- Stored on the device, not on your account — so a shared iPad can belong to a child
- Change it later in Settings → Notifications → "This device belongs to"
- A wall tablet doesn't need to belong to anyone; leave it unclaimed
Add your first chore
The guided tour points at the ＋ on a child's card. One chore is enough to see the whole loop: assign it, set whether it's a must-do, choose a repeat, and give it a payout if you're using rewards.
- Repeat options cover every day, school nights, specific weekdays and one-offs
- Time-of-day grouping — morning, after school, evening — is what makes the board readable
- Tick it yourself once to see the celebration and the undo window
Point it at the school
This is the highest-value five minutes in the whole app, and it's why the calendar stops being something you maintain. Two routes, and you can do both:
- Paste a calendar link — Settings → School & sports calendars. Eight one-tap provider tiles, or any feed URL. Happy Herd checks it's real before saving and tells you plainly if it isn't
- Forward an email — your family gets a private address. Forward the school newsletter or a season PDF and the dates land on the board
- Connect Google Calendar if you keep your own life in one, and optionally push family events back out to it
Assign an imported feed to a child and every event from it lands on their lane automatically.
Calendar Sep 6 – 12
Today ＋Hand out the family code
Settings → Family → Family code. Six characters. Your partner and your kids install the app, enter the code, and they're on the same board. Everyone can tick chores, add to lists and read the calendar straight away.
- Partner not the app-installing type? Invite them by text instead — one message, they reply YES, and they're in. It never chases them a second time
- Rotate the code any time from the same screen if you shared it too widely
- The code is a password. Your family's private email address is deliberately a different secret
Make the other grown-up a parent
Joining puts someone on the board. It doesn't hand them the keys — and that's deliberate. Nobody in Happy Herd can make themselves a parent. The second adult taps "Ask to be a parent", and someone who already is one approves it in Settings → Family. Two people, one deliberate act.
- They can find it on the whose-device screen under 🔑 My card is taken or missing, or from the message they get if a parent action refuses them
- Approving takes one tap from you. After that they can do everything you can — settings, approvals, money, sharing
- Knowing the PIN is not enough by itself, on purpose. A child who watched you type it still cannot become a parent
- There's no notification yet, so tell them once you've approved it — or ask them to tell you they've asked
The two things that make it stick
Optional on day one. Both are what turns Happy Herd from an app you opened into the thing your household actually runs on.
Put it on the wall
Mount any tablet you already own, join with your code, and switch on wall display. Everyone's column, tonight's dinner and tomorrow's preview, readable across the room — and kids can tick their own chores without being able to touch anything else.
Photograph the next flyer
The next piece of paper that comes home in a backpack — point ✦ Magic Add at it. Seeing fourteen events, a fee and a shopping item appear from one photo is the moment the app makes sense.
Five settings people find in week three
Set your parent PIN
Four digits, verified on the server. It guards Settings, approvals and money. One unlock lasts an hour. Settings → Family → Change PIN.
The evening chore reminder
Pick an hour and Happy Herd nudges instead of you. Off until you turn it on.
Pick a theme
Six of them, and it's a household setting — every screen in the house changes at once. Kids have opinions about this.
Focus mode for one child
A per-device switch. One thing at a time at 125% with high contrast, for the kid who freezes at a list of nine.
Or Calm Mode
The day as a sequence, durations you can see, and a quiet transition warning. Free, per device. How it works →
Notification quiet hours
Per device, in your own clock. Kids get three kinds of notification; parents get nine.
How your household is set up
One home, two homes, or just us. It only changes what the board offers — nothing is deleted or hidden, and you can switch any time.
Setting up
What does a brand-new family actually start with?
Everyone's cards, a Grocery list and a School stuff list ready to use, the guided tour pointing at your first chore, and 15 ✦ Magic reads to spend over the first two weeks. Nothing is pre-filled with fake data you then have to delete.
Do I need to do this on a particular device?
Do the first setup on the phone you use most. Everything after that is just joining with the code.
My partner won't install an app.
Then don't ask them to. Invite them by text — one message, they reply YES, and they can receive asks and be assigned to events. Plenty of households run with one installed parent and one texting parent.
My partner joined but can't change anything.
That's expected, and it's one tap to fix. Joining with the code puts someone on the board; it doesn't make them a parent, because nobody can make themselves one. They tap "Ask to be a parent", you approve it in Settings → Family, and they're a parent from that moment — same powers as you.
It's the same reason the PIN alone isn't enough: a child who watched you type it shouldn't be able to promote themselves.
Their card says "taken".
That card is already linked to a different sign-in — usually an old install, a signed-out device, or a browser they've since cleared. A parent can free it from Settings → Family: open that person's card and choose Release. Then they can pick it on their own device.
They don't have to wait for that to be useful, though — "Ask to be a parent" works regardless of which card they're on.
Can I move an existing family calendar in?
Subscribe to it, connect Google, forward the emails, or photograph the paper. There's no bulk import button — in practice subscribing to the school feed does more work than importing history would.
What if I set something up wrong?
Nearly everything is changeable and nothing here is destructive. Member names, avatars, which device belongs to whom, the theme, the household model, the PIN and the family code can all be changed later.
Where do I go if I'm stuck?
Support, or email hello@happyherd.app — a person answers.
Four minutes, and the fridge door is free.
Get an email the day Happy Herd is live. Nothing for the rest of your family to install — you'll hand them a six-character code.
Free forever for the whole family · The Family Plan is $4.99/mo with 7 days free · Nothing for the rest of your family to install