The How-to Guide

The first screen you see. It reads "Welcome home" over "to your household", and offers three ways in: your Apple account, your Google account, or an email address and password. Nothing in HomieHub works until you are signed in; there is no browsing without an account.

1. Open HomieHub. The Welcome home screen appears.
2. Tap Sign in with Apple (Continue with Apple on Android) or Continue with Google to use an account you already have.
3. Or type your address in the Email field to use an email address and a password.
4. Tap Privacy Policy at the bottom if you want to read what you are agreeing to before you continue. Android carries a Terms link beside it; iPhone shows Privacy Policy only, because HomieHub has no published terms page yet.

Worth knowing

• The three routes make separate accounts. An account made with Apple and an account made with the same email address and a password are two different people as far as HomieHub is concerned, so use the same route every time.
• The Apple and Google buttons keep their own black-and-white and white-with-the-four-colour-G styling on purpose, in both light and dark mode. That is what those buttons are meant to look like, not a theming fault.

This is the route that gives you a password. You give an email address, a password twice, the name your housemates will see, and a username. All of it is asked on one screen before the account is made.

An account made with an email address does nothing until you click the link HomieHub emails you. Until then you are not signed in, even though the account exists. Both apps say so on screen after you tap Create account.

Coming back after a sign-out or on a new phone. This is the same screen you signed up on.

One tap, no password to remember and no email to confirm. Both apps offer both providers, and either one signs you straight into the app.

A reset link is emailed to you, and you set the new password from that link rather than inside the app. Without this there is no other way back into an email-and-password account.

Seven pages explaining what HomieHub is, shown once the first time you land in the app signed in. It covers what a home is, that everything inside one is private to its members, how chores rotate, the shared calendar, and what Plus does.

1. Read the first page, Welcome to HomieHub.
2. Tap Next to move on, or swipe sideways.
3. Tap Back if you want to reread a page. Back is not available on the last page — swipe sideways to go back from there.
4. Tap Get started on the last page, HomieHub Plus.
5. Or tap Skip in the top right at any point; it lands in exactly the same place as finishing.

Worth knowing

• Skip looks like it might cost you something. It does not — it goes to the same place Get started does, and nothing in the tour is a setting.
• The tour is remembered per account on that phone, so a housemate signing in on the same device still gets it, and you will see it again on a new phone.
• Back is invisible on the first page rather than missing, so Next never moves under your finger between pages.
• The calendar page differs. On iPhone it is "Calendars, and your phone's" and mentions events appearing in the iPhone's own Calendar app. On Android it is "A calendar the whole house shares" and does not, because Android has no calendar sync yet.
• The offer that appears after the last page is the HomieHub Plus page, shown once at the end of first run. Dismissing it is a normal outcome and costs you nothing — see "See what HomieHub Plus gives you" in Notifications, Plus & Settings.

A single screen headed "Pick a username" that appears right after the tour, and only if your account does not have one yet. That is usually because you signed in with Apple or Google, or because the name you chose at sign-up was taken by the time you confirmed your email. You can add a photo here too.

Almost everything in HomieHub belongs to a home, so an account that is not in one yet opens onto empty screens. Both apps now say so on Today and name the tab that fixes it.

A home is the container everything else in HomieHub lives in: the feed, the chats, the bills, the calendar. Whoever moves in first creates it and everybody else joins with a code. A home is private to the people in it, and you can be in more than one.

Somebody already in the home generates a short code and passes it to you in a message. You type the code in and you are a member. If you are brand new, being invited skips nothing: you install the app, make your own account or sign in, work through the welcome tour and the username step, and only then is there anywhere for the code to go.

1. If you have just been invited, install HomieHub and make an account, or sign in, the same way as anyone else, then work through the welcome tour and the username step.
2. Open the Household tab. The screen is headed "Your homes", and a brand-new account sees "No households yet" on iPhone, or "You're not in a home yet." on Android.
3. On iPhone, tap + at the top right and choose "Join with Code" — or, from inside your one home, tap "Add household" under "Manage households" and choose "Join with Code".
4. On Android, tap "Start a home" if you are not in a home yet, or "join with a code" at the bottom of the list, beside "+ start another household". Scroll the screen that opens down to "Been given a code?".
5. Type the code into "Invite code".
6. Tap "Join" (iPhone) or "Join home" (Android). The home appears in your list, with its feed, calendar and bills.

Worth knowing

• People look for a link to tap. The invitation arrives as a code in a message, and the share message spells the code out but carries no working link — so you type it in by hand, and you have to make your own account before the code has anywhere to go.
• A code lasts seven days from the moment it was made. After that, ask for a fresh one.
• Codes are uppercase. Android capitalises as you type and will not enable the button until the code is at least six characters; the iPhone field is set to capitals. A code read out over the phone still works.
• Joining is free and unlimited on both phones, whatever you already own — only owning more than two homes needs Plus. On iPhone, Create Household and Join with Code are separate items in the + menu, so the two-home limit cannot touch joining.
• On Android, both "+ start another household" and "join with a code" open the same New home screen; the second label is there so the word you are looking for is on screen. Once you own two homes, only Create home on it is dimmed — the invite-code field below still works, and Your homes carries a line saying the free plan covers two homes you own, with a See Plus link beside it.
• If the home has hit the free-plan member limit, iPhone says "This household is full. The owner needs HomieHub Plus to invite more people."
• No Plus offer is made at the end of a first run like this. The home you joined belongs to whoever made it, and only its owner can lift its member limit.
• If your housemate invited you by username or email instead, there is no code to type: the invitation waits inside the app — see "Accept an invitation somebody sent you".
• Nothing needs to be installed or opened first beyond the app itself. The code is the whole mechanism.

The free plan covers two homes you own. A third needs HomieHub Plus. Joining homes is not limited at all, so this only ever stops you creating one.

1. Open the Household tab.
2. On iPhone, tap + at the top right and choose "Create Household", or "Add household" under "Manage households" and then "Create Household". The Plus screen opens instead of the create form, headed "Room for another home."
3. On Android, tap "+ start another household". The create screen opens as usual, with "Create home" greyed out and a line beneath it: "The free plan covers two homes you own. Joining one with a code is always free."
4. To carry on without Plus, use the code somebody gave you: the field under "Been given a code?" on that same Android screen, or "Join with Code" on iPhone.

Worth knowing

• The limit is on creating a home, not on joining one. Both labels at the bottom of Android's "Your homes" open the same screen, and only "Create home" is withheld — the code field below it works as normal.
• Android says it on the list as well. Under the two buttons at the bottom of "Your homes" it reads "You own two homes, which is what the free plan covers. Joining another with a code is always free.", with "See Plus" underneath.
• The count is homes you still own, not homes you have ever made. Hand one over with "Make owner" and the place frees up.
• Homes you joined but do not own do not count towards it.
• This is a different limit from the one that locks people out of a home. That one is about how many people are in a home; this one is about how many homes you own.

Tapping a home on "Your homes" opens its page. The cover sits at the top, then the name, how many people are in it and your own role, then a card for each thing the house keeps.

1. Open the Household tab and tap the home's card. On iPhone, if you are in only one home, the tab opens its page for you and there is no card to tap.
2. Read the name, the member count and your role pill under the cover.
3. Scroll through the cards the home has filled in: "house rules", "wifi", "Members" and the rest. Android's equivalents are "house rules", "wifi" and "housemates".
4. If you are the owner, tap "edit" on a card's header to change that one thing, or use the "more to manage" tiles further down.

Worth knowing

• Sections disappear when they are empty, so an owner who clears the house rules can no longer find the rules card. The way back in is the "Rules" tile under "more to manage".
• iPhone writes every card heading in lower case, whatever the words are underneath, so look for "house rules" and "wifi" rather than "House Rules" and "WiFi". "Members" is the one heading that keeps its capital.
• A card you cannot find is a card nobody has filled in. Empty sections draw nothing at all, so the page describes the home rather than nagging about it.
• Owners still reach every empty section from the "more to manage" tiles, which show "None" or "Not set" against whatever is unset. That grid doubles as the list of what is still blank.
• Members can read everything on the page. Only the owner can change any of it.
• iPhone's tiles are "Bills", "Rules", "WiFi", "Schedules", "Expenses", "Cal sync", "Address", "Photos", "Emergency" and "Edit".
• Android has one way in to changes: "Edit this home" under "manage", which holds the name, rules, wifi, address, cover, photos, categories and contacts on a single screen.
• The address reads as a small line under the home's name on iPhone. Android gives it its own "address" card.
• Owners also see a plan card at the top: "Get HomieHub Plus" at "$3.99/mo" when not subscribed, or "HomieHub Plus active" with the renewal date when it is. Android shows a "HomieHub Plus" card with a "See Plus" button.
• Tapping a member's row anywhere but the three dots opens their profile — see "Open a housemate's profile" in Your profile & privacy.
• The things that repeat here — bin night, the cleaner, the veg box — are the home's chores, kept on the "schedules" card and edited from it. See "Change or remove a chore" in the calendar area.

Being in exactly one home means the iPhone Household tab opens that home rather than a list, so the + button that creates and joins homes is not on screen. The same two choices sit at the bottom of the home's own page.

1. Open the Household tab. It shows your one home's page.
2. Scroll to "Manage households" at the bottom.
3. Tap "Add household".
4. Choose "Create Household" to start a new one, or "Join with Code" to type in a code somebody gave you.

Worth knowing

• The + button people are told to look for lives on the "Your homes" list, and iPhone does not show that list while you are in exactly one home. "Add household" is the same menu in a different place.
• Once you are in two homes the tab shows the "Your homes" list instead, and the same menu sits behind + at the top right.
• "Create Household" opens the Plus screen rather than the create form if you already own two homes. "Join with Code" is never gated.
• "Manage households" is on the page whether or not you own the home, so you do not need to be the owner of this one to add another.
• Android does not need this. Its Household tab is always the list, with "+ start another household" and "join with a code" at the bottom.

Owners add people. There are two routes that do different things: address the invite to a HomieHub username, or generate a code and pass it on yourself.

1. Open the home's page.
2. Tap "Invite a roommate" at the bottom of "Members" (iPhone) or "Invite" beside "housemates" (Android).
3. To reach a HomieHub user, tap "Invite by username" on iPhone and type their name under "Search username", or type it under "Search usernames" on Android, then tap them. On iPhone, confirm with "Send Invite"; Android sends on the tap.
4. To hand over a code instead, tap "Share invite link" (iPhone) or "Generate a code" (Android).
5. Tap "Share Code" (iPhone) or "Share code" (Android) to pass the code along however you like.

Worth knowing

• "Share invite link" and "Invite by email" both produce a plain code, and neither sends anything on your behalf. Only the username route puts an invitation into the other person's app.
• iPhone asks "How would you like to invite them?" first, with three options. Nothing to type in appears until you have picked one.
• Only owners see the invite control.
• Codes expire after seven days.
• Username search needs at least two characters, and somebody with no username set cannot be found this way.
• iPhone's option is called "Share invite link". What you get is the code, not a link.
• iPhone's third option, "Invite by email", does not email anybody. You type an address, tap "Generate Invite", and it hands you the same code in a share sheet to send yourself.
• The free plan tops out at two members in a home. Past that, the Plus screen appears, and on Android the home's page also grows a "This home is full" card.

The cover is the picture behind the home's name, on its page and on its card in "Your homes". It can be a plain colour, one of the drawn covers, or a photo of your own.

1. Open the home's page.
2. On iPhone, tap the "Edit" tile under "more to manage", or "Edit this household" under "Manage households". On Android, tap "Edit this home" under "manage".
3. Change the text in "Name".
4. On iPhone, tap "Change banner", then pick from "Colors", from one of the cover groups, or tap "Upload your own photo". On Android, tap a swatch under "cover art", tap one of the drawn covers, or tap "Use a photo instead".
5. On iPhone, tap "Save". On Android the cover has already saved; tap "Save" for the name.

Worth knowing

• The two apps save differently. On Android the cover art and the photos are written the moment you tap them, so "Save" covers only the text fields. On iPhone nothing is written until you tap "Save".
• There are 53 drawn covers, grouped as "City & skyline", "Mountains, forest & lakes", "Coast & harbour", "Suburbs, fields & hills" and "Desert & big sky".
• Ten colours are on offer, and they are the same ten on both phones, so a colour picked on one shows correctly on the other.
• If the cover is already a photo, iPhone's picker cannot show it as the current choice, so no colour and no cover is ringed. The preview keeps showing your photo until you pick something, and picking anything replaces it.
• On iPhone the "Save" button stays greyed out until you actually change something, and backing out with unsaved edits asks "Discard changes?".
• The colour of the cover also tints the household page below it, which is why two homes look different from each other.

"What's the wifi?" is most of what a house page gets opened for. The card carries the network name, the password masked, and a QR code a guest can point a camera at.

1. Open the home's page.
2. On iPhone, tap "edit" on the "wifi" card, or the "WiFi" tile under "more to manage". On Android, tap "Edit this home" and scroll to "wifi".
3. Type the network into "WiFi name" (iPhone) or "Network name" (Android).
4. Type the "Password".
5. Tap "Save".

Worth knowing

• The network name is what brings the card out, on both phones. A password saved on its own shows nothing on the page, because a QR code with no network named in it cannot connect anybody.
• If you have saved a password and no name, the way back in is the "WiFi" tile under "more to manage" on iPhone, which reads "Not set", or "Edit this home" on Android.
• To read the password on the card, tap the eye on iPhone or "Show" on Android.
• iPhone re-hides the password by itself after 30 seconds.
• Tap the copy icon on iPhone or "Copy" on Android to put the password on the clipboard. The iPhone copy expires after two minutes.
• The QR code uses the standard wifi format, so a phone camera recognises it and offers to connect. Nobody has to read a long password off a screen.
• The two apps lay the card out the other way round. iPhone puts the QR code on the left with the network name and masked password beside it. Android puts the name on the left, the QR code on the right, and "Show" and "Copy" on the line below.
• The password is masked rather than hidden. Anybody in the home can reveal it; the point of the mask is a shoulder in a shared kitchen.

Copies the home's events into a calendar on your iPhone, so they turn up beside everything else you already keep there. It is a switch, not a screen.

1. Open the home's page.
2. Find the "Cal sync" tile under "more to manage". Its value reads "on" or "off".
3. Tap the tile. The value flips, and iOS asks for your calendars the first time.
4. If calendar access is off, the tile stays "off" and a message headed "Calendar access is off" appears. Tap "Open Settings" to allow HomieHub, then come back and tap the tile again.
5. Tap it again to turn it off.

Worth knowing

• Every other tile in that grid opens a screen. This one acts on the tap, so people tap it expecting settings and switch it on by accident.
• There is nothing to save and no screen to back out of. The tile is the whole control.
• It makes a calendar of its own, named "HomieHub -" and then the home's name, so nothing lands in your existing calendars and turning it off leaves them alone.
• Turning it on also copies across events the home already has, so you do not only get the ones made from then on.
• The two things that can go wrong say so differently. Refused access gives you "Calendar access is off" and a way to Settings. Anything else reads "Couldn't create a calendar for <name>. Try again in a moment."
• Only the owner sees the tile, because the whole "more to manage" grid is the owner's. Android has no calendar sync at all.

A strip of pictures on the home's page. Tap one to open it full screen, with its caption underneath.

1. Open the home's page.
2. On iPhone, tap the "Photos" tile under "more to manage", or "edit" on the "photos" card. On Android, tap "Edit this home" and scroll to "photos".
3. On iPhone, tap "Upload photos" and choose up to ten pictures. On Android, tap "Add a photo" and choose one.
4. Wait for the upload to finish. iPhone counts them off, for example "Uploading 3 of 10…".

Worth knowing

• Neither app offers a caption field when you add a photo, although a stored caption does show under the picture.
• Photos are saved as soon as they upload. There is no separate save step, on either phone.
• iPhone takes up to ten at a time; Android takes one per tap.
• To delete one: tap the x on the photo on iPhone, or "Remove" beneath it on Android.
• If one photo in an iPhone batch fails, the rest still go up. The message afterwards does not say which one failed, and if several fail you only see the first complaint, so count the strip against what you picked.
• Photos are visible to everybody in the home, not only to the owner, but only the owner can add or delete them.

Leaving takes away that home's posts, chats, bills and calendar for you. What happens next depends on whether you own it and who else is still in it.

1. Open the home's page.
2. On iPhone, tap "Leave this household" under "Manage households". On Android, tap "Leave this household" on the card at the bottom.
3. If you are a member, iPhone first asks "Is the owner unresponsive?" — tapping "No, just leaving" leaves straight away, with no further confirmation. Android asks "Leave <name>?" — tap "Leave".
4. If you are the only owner and other people are in the home, pick who gets it, then tap "Transfer & Leave" (iPhone) or "Transfer & leave" (Android).
5. If you are the only person in it, the app says leaving deletes the home. Tap "Delete Household" (iPhone) or "Delete" (Android) to go ahead.

Worth knowing

• If you own the home and you are the only person in it, leaving deletes the home and everything in it. There is nobody to hand it to, so there is no quiet exit.
• A home has to have an owner, so the last owner cannot walk out of an occupied home without handing it to somebody first.
• A home has exactly one owner, so there is never a second owner to carry it on for you. Either you hand it over on the way out, or you were not the owner to begin with.
• On iPhone, treat "Is the owner unresponsive?" as the confirmation. "No, just leaving" acts on the tap, and nothing asks again.
• Coming back needs a fresh invitation from somebody still inside.
• iPhone offers the takeover route inside the leave flow, before the destructive option. Android puts it on the same card as its own button, "Ask to take this home over".
• Android's card explains which of the three cases you are in before you tap anything, for example "You own this home. You'll pick who gets it on the way out."

The free plan covers two people per home. If a home has more than that and its owner has no HomieHub Plus, everybody past the first two is locked out until the owner subscribes.

The feed lives on the Today tab, underneath your greeting, your balance, who's home, up next and the stories ring. It shows posts from every home you belong to, newest first.

1. Tap Today in the bar at the bottom.
2. Scroll past the greeting and the cards to reach the posts.
3. Keep scrolling to the bottom and the next batch of older posts loads on its own.
4. Pull down on the list to refresh it.
5. Tap Today again while you are already on Today to jump back to the top.

Worth knowing

• New posts from your housemates appear on their own while you are looking at the screen. Likes and comments do not — the heart and comment numbers on a feed row only move when you pull the list down to refresh. Inside an open post, likes and comments do arrive live.
• Each post row carries a small coloured pill next to the author's name. That is the home the post went to — the feed mixes all your homes together, so the pill is the only thing that tells them apart.
• The time under the name is relative — "2 hours" on iPhone, "2h ago" on Android. Android switches to a plain date ("5 Aug") once a post is more than a week old; iPhone stays relative however old the post is.
• A post that has been reworded is marked. iPhone shows a small pencil next to the time; Android writes "· edited" after it.
• If you are not in a home yet you get "No households yet" instead of a feed. Both phones send you to the Household tab: iPhone reads "Join or create a household from the Household tab to start posting.", and Android says the same and adds a Start a home button underneath.

A home nobody has posted in yet shows a short message where the posts would be. Nothing is broken; there is nothing to show yet.

If you belong to more than one home, the feed shows all of them at once. The filter next to the menu button narrows it to one.

1. On Today, tap the filter control just to the right of the menu icon in the top bar.
2. Pick the name of the home you want.
3. To go back to everything, open it again and tap All Households on iPhone, or All homes on Android.

Worth knowing

• On iPhone the filter changes the posts but not the balance or who's-home cards above them, so the top of the screen can still be talking about a home you have filtered out.
• Android hides the filter until you are in more than one home. iPhone shows it as soon as you are in any home at all, where it reads All.
• Android's filter narrows the whole screen — the balance card, who's home and up next all follow it too. iPhone filters only the list of posts; the cards above keep counting every home.
• Whatever the filter is set to becomes the home a new post starts on when you open the composer.
• Android puts a tick next to whichever option is currently on.

A post is the ordinary way to tell the house something — the bin went out, the boiler is making a noise, there is cake.

1. Open Today and tap the compose icon in the top right.
2. On iPhone, check that POST is selected in the pill at the top of the sheet, then type in the box marked What's on your mind?. On Android a screen called New post opens; type in the box marked Share something with the household….
3. Tap Post — top right on iPhone, the wide button at the bottom on Android.

Worth knowing

• The "Who can see this? Public" line on iPhone reads like a privacy setting and is not one. Nothing you post is visible outside the home you picked.
• The two phones handle an empty post differently. iPhone dims Post and will not let you tap it until you have written something, added a photo or recorded a voice note. Android leaves the button live and tells you why nothing happened: "Write something, or add a photo."
• The iPhone sheet has a row at the very bottom reading "Who can see this?" with Public beside it. That is a label, not a button. You cannot change it, and it does not mean the internet — the post goes only to the home you chose.
• On iPhone the same sheet also makes stories: the POST / STORY pill at the top switches between them. On Android stories are made from the + on the stories ring instead, and the compose icon only makes posts.
• iPhone greys out the compose icon entirely until you are in a home. Android lets you open the screen and says "This belongs to a home. Create or join a household first." when you tap Post.
• To back out without posting: Cancel in the top left on iPhone, the back arrow on Android.

If you are in more than one home, a post belongs to exactly one of them. The composer asks which before you post.

1. On iPhone, look under your name in the composer for the small capsule with a house icon — it names the home the post is going to. Tap it and choose from the list.
2. On Android, the top of New post has a which home heading with one row per home. Tap the one you want.
3. Then write the post and tap Post.

Worth knowing

• Posting to the wrong home is easy and quiet — the choice is a small capsule on iPhone, and nothing warns you afterwards apart from the pill on the post.
• Android hides the question when you only belong to one home — there is nothing to choose. iPhone shows the capsule either way.
• If you had the feed filtered to one home, the composer opens already set to that home.
• There is no way to move a post to a different home afterwards. If it went to the wrong one, delete it and write it again.
• The home is shown on the finished post as a coloured pill beside your name, so a mistake is visible to everyone.

You can attach pictures from your phone's library to a post.

1. In the composer, tap the photo icon — the two stacked rectangles in the row of icons near the bottom on iPhone, or the button marked Add photos on Android.
2. Choose the pictures you want.
3. They appear as a row of thumbnails. Tap the small x on a thumbnail to drop that one.
4. Tap Post.

Worth knowing

• Picking photos a second time on Android throws away your first selection instead of adding to it.
• The photo picker offers four at a time on iPhone and ten on Android. On iPhone the four is only the picker's limit — photos you take with the Camera button are added on top of it, so a post can end up with more.
• iPhone adds what you pick to what is already there and quietly keeps only as many as still fit in the four. Android replaces the whole selection each time you pick from the library, so picking again starts over.
• Android also shows "3 selected" beside the buttons and a Clear link that drops all of them at once.
• In the Android feed a post shows its first four photos; open the post to see any beyond that.
• Photos cannot be added to or removed from a post after it is posted. Editing changes the words only.

For the "look at this" kind of post, you can take the picture there and then instead of hunting for it in your library afterwards.

1. In the composer, tap the camera icon on iPhone, or the button marked Camera on Android.
2. Take the shot and confirm it.
3. It lands in the thumbnail strip with any photos you already picked.
4. Tap Post.

Worth knowing

• iPhone opens a camera inside HomieHub and asks for camera access the first time. Android hands you to your normal camera app, so HomieHub never needs camera permission of its own.
• A photo you take is added to the strip rather than replacing what is there — on Android this is the one way to add to a selection instead of replacing it.
• Android says "No camera available." if it cannot hand off to a camera app.
• One shot at a time. Tap the button again for another.

A post can carry a short spoken note instead of, or as well as, typed words. Everyone plays it back straight from the feed.

1. In the composer, tap the microphone icon on iPhone, or the button marked Voice note on Android. Allow the microphone if you are asked.
2. Speak. iPhone shows a bar reading Recording 0:04 with a Stop button; Android's button becomes Stop recording.
3. Tap Stop, or Stop recording, when you are done.
4. The finished note appears — with a play button on iPhone, or as "Voice note · 0:07" on Android. To throw it away, tap the red bin on iPhone or Remove on Android.
5. Tap Post.

Worth knowing

• One voice note per post. On iPhone the microphone icon disappears once you have recorded one; delete the note to record another.
• If you tap Post on Android while still recording, the recording is stopped for you and kept.
• Android throws away anything shorter than about half a second and says "That was too short to send."
• Refuse the microphone on Android and you get "HomieHub needs the microphone to record a voice note."
• In the feed, iPhone plays a note with a play button, a progress bar and a 0:03 / 0:07 readout. Android shows a single row you tap to play and tap again to pause.
• A note recorded on one phone plays on the other.

iPhone stops a recording on its own after one minute. Android does not stop it at all. It is worth knowing which phone you are holding before you start a long message.

Paste a web address into a post and the app looks the page up for you, so housemates see what the link is before they open it.

A post with a web address in it carries a preview card, and the address can be opened from the post. Which part you tap depends on the phone.

The heart is the quick way to say you have seen something without writing a comment.

1. Tap the heart under the post. It fills in and the number beside it goes up by one.
2. Tap it again to take your like back.

Worth knowing

• The heart fills the instant you tap, before the app has told the server. If the request fails it flips back on its own.
• In the feed the count is hidden while nothing has been liked, and Android's comment side reads "Comment" until there is at least one. Inside an open post on iPhone both numbers are always shown, including 0.
• You can like from the feed row or from inside the post — both work, on both phones, and it is the same like.
• The author is told: a like shows up in their Notifications, and tapping it there opens the post.

The number next to the heart does not say who. Open the post to see faces.

1. Open the post — tap the comment bubble on the row on iPhone, or tap anywhere on the post card on Android.
2. Under the heart there is a row of small round faces. Those are the people who liked it.
3. Tap a face to open that person's profile.

Worth knowing

• The row stops at twenty faces on both phones. There is no full list beyond that.
• The row is not there at all when nothing has been liked.
• Someone you have blocked is left out of the row on both phones. On iPhone the number beside the heart leaves them out too, in the feed and in the open post, so the count matches the faces. On Android the feed row's number still counts them, so it can read one higher than the faces the open post shows.

Comments are the thread under a post. Anyone in the home can add one.

1. Open the post: on iPhone tap the comment bubble on the row, on Android tap anywhere on the post card.
2. Type into the box at the bottom — Add a comment... on iPhone, Add a comment… on Android.
3. Tap the send arrow to the right of the box.

Worth knowing

• On iPhone, tapping the body of a post does not open it. Only the comment bubble does.
• On iPhone the comment bubble is the only way into a post. Tapping the words or the photo does nothing.
• On Android, tapping the comment count inside an open post puts the cursor straight into the box.
• The send arrow stays greyed out until you have typed something.
• Comments and likes from other people appear while you are reading, without a refresh.
• An empty thread reads "No comments yet" on iPhone and "No comments yet." under a comments heading on Android.
• The author is told about your comment in their Notifications.

Post text can be selected, which is the easy way to lift a wifi password, a door code or an address someone posted rather than retyping it.

1. Press and hold the words of the post.
2. Drag the handles to cover the part you want.
3. Tap Copy.

Worth knowing

• This works both on the feed row and inside the open post.
• Android lets you select comment text as well. iPhone does not — only the post's own words can be selected there.
• Inside an open post on iPhone a web address in the words is a live link, so a tap on it opens the page. To copy an address rather than open it, do it from the feed row, where the words are plain text.
• Photos and voice notes cannot be selected or copied this way.

You can reword something you posted. The change is marked so nobody who read the first version is left wrong about what it said.

1. On iPhone, tap the ... at the top right of your post in the feed, then tap Edit.
2. On Android, tap the post to open it, tap the ⋮ at the top right of the post, then tap Edit.
3. Change the words.
4. Tap Save.

Worth knowing

• The menu that edits a post is on the feed row on iPhone but inside the open post on Android, so instructions from one phone do not fit the other.
• The menu is in a different place on each phone. On iPhone it is on the feed row and the open post has no post menu at all. On Android it is inside the open post and the feed row has no menu.
• Only the words change. Photos and voice notes on a post cannot be swapped, added or removed by editing.
• Everyone sees that it was edited. Android writes "· edited" after the time both in the feed and in the open post. iPhone shows a small pencil beside the time on the feed row only — open the post and the mark is not there. The iPhone editor says so: "Edited posts show a small pencil so roommates know the wording changed."
• Android keeps Save switched off until you have actually changed something. iPhone switches it off only when the box is empty.
• Edit and Delete only appear on your own posts. On someone else's, the same menu offers Report and Block instead.

You can take down anything you posted. It goes for everybody, not just for you.

1. On iPhone, tap the ... at the top right of your post in the feed. On Android, open the post and tap the ⋮ at the top right.
2. Tap Delete.
3. Read the warning and tap Delete again to confirm, or Cancel to keep it.

Worth knowing

• iPhone asks "Delete this post?" and warns "It'll be removed for everyone in the household. This can't be undone." Android asks "Delete this?" and warns "It will be removed for everyone in the household."
• The likes and comments on the post go with it.
• There is no undo and no bin to fish it out of.
• On Android you are returned to the feed once it is gone.
• You can only delete your own. Someone else's post offers Report and Block in the same spot.

Your comments carry the same menu as your posts, and it sits at the end of each comment row.

Reporting flags something for a person to read. The first question the form asks is who that person should be, and it matters more than the rest. It is the same sheet everywhere in the app — a post, a comment, a chat message, a story, a board card or a person — so it is written out here once, and the other report entries point back to it.

1. On iPhone, tap the ... on the post in the feed and tap Report post. For a comment, open the post, tap the ... beside the comment and tap Report comment.
2. On Android, open the post and tap the ⋮ on the post or on the comment, then tap Report.
3. Under Who should see this — Android writes it as WHO SHOULD SEE THIS — choose Report to the home's owner or Report to HomieHub.
4. Under What's wrong — WHAT'S WRONG on Android — pick a reason.
5. Add anything useful in the box marked Anything that would help, in your words. This is optional.
6. Tap Send. "Thanks — we've got it" confirms it landed; tap Done.
7. To stop seeing that person as well, tap Block and their name in the same menu — see "Block someone, and unblock them" in Your profile & privacy.

Worth knowing

• People pick the wrong destination. Most house arguments are for the owner to settle; reporting to HomieHub is for the case where the owner cannot be the one to settle it, including when the owner is the problem.
• The two destinations do different jobs. The home's owner "can see who posted it and sort it out inside the house". HomieHub is for "anything the owner shouldn't handle — including if the owner is the problem" — the owner cannot read those reports at all.
• The form says it plainly: "Reporting doesn't delete anything on its own. Someone reads it and decides."
• Reporting the same post or comment a second time replaces your first report rather than stacking another one, so picking the wrong reason is fixable — report it again with the right one.
• The reasons are the same on both phones, in this order: Harassment or bullying, Inappropriate content, Child safety or exploitation, Spam, Misleading or false, and Something else.
• Child safety or exploitation behaves differently from the rest — it decides the destination for you. See "Report something involving a child's safety" below.
• Reporting does not hide anything from you. If you also want them out of your feed, block them — see "Block someone, and unblock them" in Your profile & privacy.
• You cannot report your own post — your own menu shows Edit and Delete instead.

One reason in the report form is handled differently from the others. A report about a child's safety never goes to the home's owner, because the owner could be the person it is about. It is the same sheet everywhere in the app, so this is how the reason behaves wherever you report from — a post, a comment, a message, a story, a board card or a profile.

1. Open the report form the usual way: the ... on the post on iPhone and Report post, or the ⋮ on the post or comment on Android and Report.
2. Under What's wrong, pick Child safety or exploitation.
3. The destination moves to Report to HomieHub on its own, and Report to the home's owner fades out and stops responding.
4. Read the note under the details box, add anything that would help, and tap Send.

Worth knowing

• Choosing this reason takes the choice of destination away from you, and that is deliberate: nobody in the house sees these reports. The faded "Report to the home's owner" left on screen is a rule, not a fault.
• The note reads: "This goes straight to HomieHub, ahead of everything else, and not to anyone in the house. If a child is in immediate danger, contact emergency services first — you can also report to NCMEC at report.cybertipline.org, whether or not you tell us."
• Emergency services first. A report inside the app is read by people, not answered in seconds, and it does not reach them — that call is a separate thing you make yourself.
• This is not a politer version of Inappropriate content. Reports filed under it are picked out and dealt with ahead of the rest, so use it for what it names.
• Pick a different reason and the destination unlocks again. It stays set to HomieHub until you move it back yourself.
• The home's owner cannot be the destination and cannot read the report.
• The reason is on the list wherever you can report anything — board cards, posts, comments, messages, stories and profiles — and the wording, the reason and the lock are identical on both phones, so a report filed from either reads the same to whoever picks it up.

The board is a pinboard of cards. Each card is either a list you tick things off or a note you write on. It is the first tab in the bottom bar.

1. Tap Board, the first icon in the bottom bar.
2. Tap a card to open it.
3. Press and hold a card until it lifts, then drag it where you want it.
4. Tap the ⋯ in a card's top corner for that card's own options.

Worth knowing

• The board covers every home you are in, not one home at a time. When you are in more than one, each card shows a dot and the home's name in its corner. With a single home the badge is left off, because it would say the same thing on every card.
• Before you add anything, iPhone says "Nothing on the board yet" and "Add a list or a note, then drag it wherever it belongs." Android says "Nothing pinned yet. Notes you make show up here."
• On iPhone, pull down on the board to refresh it. Android has no pull-to-refresh, because the cards already own the drag gesture — it reloads itself each time you come back to the tab.
• A list card on iPhone shows only what is still to do, up to five rows, then "+2 more". A list with nothing left to do says "Nothing to do", and so does a list nobody has written on yet, because neither has anything outstanding to show. An Android card shows ticked rows too, struck through.
• A note card shows the first lines of the note. On iPhone that is five lines, then "+2 more", the same as a list card, so a long note is always cut off on the board. An empty note says "Empty note" on iPhone.

A list is for anything you tick off: the shop, the chores, what to pack. Everyone in the home can add to it and tick things off it.

1. Open the Board tab and tap the plus button at the top right.
2. On iPhone, tap List on the Add to the board screen. On Android the New list box opens straight away.
3. Type the name. The field is called What's this list for? on iPhone and What's it for on Android.
4. Tap Create.

Worth knowing

• The plus does nothing until you are in a home. On iPhone it is greyed out; on Android Create stays disabled.
• Create is greyed out while the name is empty.
• iPhone asks List or Note first, on a screen headed Add to the board, and describes a list as "Shopping, chores, anything you tick off." Android's plus goes to New list, with Write a note instead at the bottom for the other kind.
• On Android you can rename a list later from the open card, in the List name field. On iPhone the name is fixed once the list is made.

By default everyone in the home can see a card and change it. You can narrow that to named people instead. Seeing and changing are two separate questions.

1. On iPhone, tap Who can see it while making the card, or open the card, tap ⋯, then Sharing…. On Android, tap ⋯ on the card, then Who can see this….
2. Choose Everyone in the home or Only people I choose.
3. On iPhone, set Who can change it as well, from the same two options.
4. Under People, set each person: No access, Can view or Can edit on iPhone; None, View or Edit on Android.
5. Tap Done on iPhone, or Save on Android.
6. To back out instead, tap Cancel. Both apps have it beside the save button, and nothing you changed on the screen is kept.

Worth knowing

• People look for two switches per person and find three states instead. There is no "can change but not see", because changing something means seeing it.
• Narrowing who can see it narrows who can change it. On iPhone Who can change it greys out and the screen says "When only chosen people can see it, only chosen people can change it."
• iPhone can do "everyone in the home can see this, only the people I pick can change it" — leave Who can see it open and restrict Who can change it. Android sets both together, so that combination can only be made on an iPhone.
• On Android the list of people only appears once you have chosen Only people I choose. Until then there is nothing to set.
• Whoever made the card always has full access. On iPhone they are left out of the People list; Android lists everyone in the home, so you will see the card's author — and yourself — in the list, with no effect on their access.
• Only the person who made a card can change its sharing. iPhone hides the option from everyone else; Android shows it and the save is refused.
• A restricted card is flagged on its face: a small padlock on iPhone; "shared with some" — or "shared by" and the name — on Android.
• If you are the only person in the home yet, iPhone says "You're the only one here so far." and Android says "Nobody else has joined this home yet."

Open a note to read or change it. A note is one block of text that the whole house shares, so two people writing at the same time have to be handled.

1. Tap the note's card on the board.
2. Change the Title, or the text below it — on Android that box is labelled Note once the card is open.
3. On iPhone, tap Save at the top right. On Android, tap Done, or close the note — it saves either way.

Worth knowing

• On iPhone a note is not saved until you tap Save. On Android it saves when you close it. Someone used to one app will lose work in the other.
• iPhone does not save on its own. Save is greyed out until you change something, and leaving the note without tapping it loses what you typed.
• iPhone shows when it was last touched under the text: "Last edited 2 hours ago".
• If a housemate saved while you were writing, iPhone shows "This note changed" with Reload and Keep editing — Reload replaces your text with theirs, so copy anything you want to keep first. Android tells you afterwards: "Somebody else changed this note while you had it open. Your version wasn't saved — here's theirs."
• If the note was deleted while you had it open, iPhone closes it when you tap Reload.

A note can hold a bulleted, numbered or tickable list inside its text. The markers are ordinary characters, so a list started on one phone reads correctly on the other.

1. Open the note and tap into the text.
2. On iPhone, use the three buttons above the keyboard: bulleted list, numbered list, checklist. On Android, use • List, 1. List and ☐ List under the text.
3. Type the first line, then press return. The next line starts with the same marker, and numbers count up on their own.
4. Press return on an empty item to end the list.
5. To take the markers off again, put the cursor on those lines and press the same button a second time.

Worth knowing

• The three buttons look like they add a whole list block. They mark the line you are on, and pressing again unmarks it.
• Formatting works a line at a time. Whichever line the cursor is on gets the marker, and a selection takes whole lines with it — you cannot bullet half a line.
• Pressing a list button twice looks like it does nothing. It is removing the markers you just added, rather than stacking a second set.
• A ticked line (☑) continues as an empty box (☐) on the next line.
• Android has a Tick button that flips ☐ and ☑ on the line the cursor is on. iPhone has no such button — change the character by hand, or keep things you tick off in a list card instead.
• On a note shared with you to read, Android leaves the formatting buttons out altogether.
• On iPhone, tap Done above the keyboard to put the keyboard away.

Every card has a colour and a paper style, so a board of twenty cards can still be read at a glance. There are five colours and four papers.

1. Tap the ⋯ in the card's top corner.
2. On iPhone, open Colour and pick Butter, Sage, Terracotta, Aubergine or Dust. On Android, tap one of the five circles under colour.
3. On iPhone, open Paper and pick Plain, Ruled, Grid or Index card. On Android, tap one of those four names in the same menu.

Worth knowing

• Both apps now give a new card a different colour from the last one, working through Butter, Sage, Terracotta, Aubergine and Dust by how many cards the board already holds. Nobody has to choose, and a board does not end up a wall of one shade.
• Colour and paper belong to the list or note itself, not to where it sits, so everyone in the home sees the same card and it looks the same on your other devices.
• The colours are a fixed set of five rather than a free choice, which keeps the writing on a card readable in both light and dark mode.
• The current choice is marked: a filled circle on iPhone; a ring round the colour and a ✓ beside the paper on Android.
• The colours and papers are offered even on a card you can only read, and changing one then needs permission you do not have. Android says "That colour didn't save — you may not have permission to change this card." and puts the old colour back.

A card can nudge the house at a time you choose — bin night, the shop before Saturday. The reminder is part of the card, so everyone who can see the card gets it.

1. Tap the ⋯ in the card's top corner.
2. Tap Remind me….
3. On iPhone, pick a date and time in the calendar and tap Set. On Android, tap This evening, Tomorrow, In three days or Next week — or Pick a date and time… to choose exactly.
4. To cancel it, tap ⋯ then Clear reminder on iPhone; on Android tap ⋯, Remind me…, then Clear.

Worth knowing

• The reminder is not private to you. Everybody who can see the card gets it.
• Reminders are free on both apps. Nothing here needs Plus.
• The reminder belongs to the card, not to your phone. iPhone says so under the picker: "Everyone who can see this card gets the reminder on their own device."
• The reminder is a notification, so iPhone needs notification permission. The app usually asks for that on the Today tab, with a "Stay in the loop" card; if you have never answered it, the board asks the first time you set a reminder.
• Android's four quick choices are counted from now, so they land at whatever time of day it currently is — "Tomorrow" set at 11pm means 11pm tomorrow. Use Pick a date and time… for a morning reminder.
• Android delivers reminders within about five minutes after the time you set, rather than to the second — never early.
• The card shows the reminder in its corner. Once its time has passed it stays there, faded, until somebody clears it, so you can tell it happened.
• On iPhone, tapping the reminder when it arrives opens that card rather than the board.
• Clearing a reminder on one phone stops it on all of them, the next time each one opens the board.

A board reminder turns up as an ordinary notification on the phone. What it says, and where tapping it takes you, is different on the two apps.

These are two different things and it matters which you pick. Taking a card off the board leaves the list or note alone. Deleting destroys it for the whole house.

1. Tap the ⋯ in the card's top corner.
2. Tap Take off the board to unpin it. The list or note itself is untouched.
3. To get rid of the thing itself on Android, tap ⋯ then Delete.
4. On iPhone, open the card first, tap ⋯ inside it, then Delete note or Delete checklist.

Worth knowing

• The two read as the same thing and are not. Take off the board keeps the list; Delete destroys it for the whole house.
• Take off the board only forgets where the card was sitting. The card comes back in a free slot in the two-column grid the next time the board loads, because the list or note still exists. Treat it as a way to reset a card's position, not a way to hide it.
• Delete removes the list or note and everything on it, for everyone in the home. There is no confirmation and no undo.
• Only the person who made a card can delete it. iPhone hides the option from everyone else; Android shows it and the delete is refused.
• iPhone keeps Delete inside the open card, away from the board menu, on purpose — so a tidy-up of the board cannot destroy a housemate's shopping list.

A note or a list carries somebody's words the same way a post does. If a housemate puts something on the board that should not be there, you can report it or block them from the card itself.

1. Tap the ⋯ in the card's top corner. Both apps put the safety options at the bottom of that menu.
2. Tap Report list or Report note on iPhone — whichever kind of card it is — or Report this on Android.
3. Fill in the sheet the usual way: who should see it under "Who should see this", what is wrong, and anything that would help in your own words. It is described in full under "Report somebody's post or comment" in The feed.
4. Tap Send. Both apps answer "Thanks — we've got it", and then say who will read it.
5. To stop seeing that person's posts, stories, comments and messages, use Block and their name in the same menu — see "Block someone, and unblock them" in Your profile & privacy.

Worth knowing

• Blocking somebody does not clear their cards off the board. Those are house property and the board leaves them alone, so the shopping list stays where it was — see "Block someone, and unblock them" in Your profile & privacy.
• These options only appear on cards somebody else made. You cannot report your own, and neither app offers Block on it.
• iPhone carries the same two actions inside the opened card as well, with slightly different wording: open somebody else's note and tap ⋯ for Report note, or their list for Report checklist.
• Lists can be reported now, not only notes. Until recently iPhone showed nothing but "Shared by" and the author's name on a list somebody else made.
• The ⋯ menu inside somebody else's opened card also names them, as "Shared by" and the name, so you know who to ask about it.
• Choose "Child safety or exploitation" and the report goes to HomieHub only, never to anyone in the house — see "Report something involving a child's safety" in The feed.

The Calendar tab holds four views of the same information: Chores, Agenda, Availability and Month. It opens on Chores. Switching view does not reload anything, so you can move between them freely.

1. Tap Calendar in the bar at the bottom of the screen.
2. Tap Chores, Agenda, Availability or Month along the top. The active one has a squiggle under it.
3. Tap a day in the row of seven day chips to look at another day.
4. Tap Today at the top right to come back to today.
5. Tap + at the top right to add something.

Worth knowing

• People expect + to always add an event, so adding a chore from the Chores view surprises them. The view you are in decides which form opens.
• The + follows the view you are in. From Chores it opens the chore form; from Agenda, Availability or Month it opens the event form.
• iPhone shows the day chips above Chores and Availability. Android also shows them above Agenda.
• iPhone: tapping the Calendar tab again while you are already on it returns to Chores, jumps to today and reloads.
• If a housemate has a birthday within the next 30 days, a pale yellow ribbon appears under the view names. Tap it to open their profile.
• Android names the + button "Add a chore or event" for screen readers, because it does both.

Agenda is a list of the next fortnight: events, chores, and bills that fall due, grouped by day under "today", "tomorrow" and then the date.

1. Tap Calendar, then Agenda.
2. Scroll down through the day headings to read the fortnight.
3. Tap an event row to open the event.
4. Tap a bill row: iPhone opens the Bills list, Android opens that bill.
5. Tap a chore row to open the Chores view. Android also moves the day chips to that chore's day; iPhone leaves the selected day where it was.

Worth knowing

• An empty Agenda means nothing is on in the whole fortnight, not that nothing is on the day you have selected.
• Each row has a coloured stripe down its left edge. Bills are terracotta; an event uses its own colour.
• iPhone always starts the fortnight at today, whichever day is selected elsewhere. Android starts it at the day selected in the day chips, so you can read a fortnight from any date.
• Android marks a personal event with a small "personal" chip. It adds "3 going" to a household event once people have answered. iPhone shows the faces of everyone who answered Going or Maybe.
• A day with nothing on it is left out of the list.

Month draws a grid of the month with a dot on any day that has something on it, and lists the selected day underneath the grid.

1. Tap Calendar, then Month.
2. Tap an arrow to move a month at a time. iPhone puts both arrows together at the top right; Android puts ‹ and › either side of the month name.
3. Tap a day to select it. What is on that day appears under the grid.
4. Tap an event under the grid to open it, or a bill — iPhone shows the Bills list, Android shows that one bill.

Worth knowing

• The dots cover events and bills only, so a day with nothing but a chore on it looks empty in Month.
• Today is outlined or written in terracotta. The day you have selected is filled in.
• iPhone shows up to three dots on a day, one per item, each in that item's colour. Android shows a single dot meaning "something is on".
• Android: tapping the selected day a second time opens the Agenda at that day. The hint under the grid says "Tap a day to look at it; tap it again to open the agenda."
• Chores are not counted in Month. Use Chores or Agenda for those.

An event is something happening at a time: dinner, a viewing, someone's train. It goes on the household calendar unless you say otherwise.

Household events can be answered. Your answer shows on the event and on its row in the Agenda.

Only the person who created an event can change it. Everyone else can read it and answer it.

A chore is a recurring job with days, an optional time, and someone whose turn it is. Only a home's owner can add one; everyone else suggests one.

1. Tap Calendar, then Chores.
2. Tap + at the top right. Android also has an Add chore button beside the "chores" heading.
3. Name it: Chore on iPhone, What needs doing on Android.
4. Say which home it is for: pick it under Household on iPhone, or under "which home" at the top of the form on Android. Android only asks when you belong to more than one home.
5. Tap the day letters M T W T F S S to pick the days it lands on.
6. Give it a time if it has one: turn on At a set time and pick the time on iPhone; tap the "what time" row and use the time picker on Android.
7. Choose how it is owned under Who does it on iPhone, or "whose job" on Android.
8. Pick the person under Assigned to or Starts with on iPhone, or "who does it" / "starting with" on Android.
9. Tap Add on iPhone, or Add chore on Android.

Worth knowing

• The same four ways to own a chore are on both, worded differently. iPhone: Rotates weekly, Rotates every 2 weeks, Rotates monthly, Always the same person. Android: Always the same person, Rotates every week, Rotates every two weeks, Rotates every month.
• "Always the same person" needs a person. Leave it on Anyone on iPhone and the form says "Nobody has this one until you pick someone." — the chore saves, and its card shows no name until someone is picked.
• A chore with no days picked has no fixed day. On iPhone it stays in the Chores list whatever day you pick, but never appears in the Agenda. On Android it appears every day in both.
• Days and the time are picked rather than typed, so the weekday strip on the household screen lights up correctly.
• Android's time row reads "Any time" until you pick one, and offers Clear afterwards.
• iPhone greys nothing out. If the form is not ready, tapping Add says what is missing, such as "Give the chore a name." or "Choose which household this chore is for."
• Chores belong to a home. With no home yet, iPhone says "Chores belong to a home. Create or join a household first."
• Android calls the optional note Details (optional). iPhone calls the same box Notes (optional).

Each chore shows one person's name and face: whose turn it is on the day you are looking at. The app works this out from how the chore was set up, so nobody has to hand the job on.

1. Tap Calendar, then Chores.
2. Read the line under the chore's name. It says "Sam's turn", or "Your turn" on Android when it is you.
3. Tap another day in the day chips to see whose turn it is on that day.

Worth knowing

• Moving through the day chips changes the name shown on a rotating chore. That is the rotation being worked out for the new date, not the chore changing hands.
• "Always the same person" never moves. The rotations hand the chore to the next person in the home's member list each week, fortnight or month.
• The rotation counts from the day the chore was made, so the first turn belongs to whoever was picked as "Starts with".
• A chore set to "Always the same person" with nobody picked belongs to nobody, and both apps now show it with no name and no face. Pick a person, or choose a rotation.
• Both phones name the same person for the same chore on the same day, so it is worth checking the other handset if a turn looks wrong.
• iPhone lists every chore in the Chores view whatever day is selected, with a strip showing which days it lands on. Android lists only the chores that fall on the selected day.
• Anyone can do any chore. The name is who is expected, not who is allowed.

Anyone can mark a chore done, including for somebody else's turn. There is room for a line about it, such as "did it, the sink was already blocked".

1. Tap Calendar, then Chores.
2. Check the day chips are on the day you are logging.
3. Tap Mark done on the chore.
4. Type something in "Anything worth saying? (optional)", or leave it blank.
5. Android only: tick "Only the home's owner can read this" if the note is not for the whole house. The tick box appears once you have typed something.
6. Tap Done on iPhone, or Mark done on Android.

Worth knowing

• A done or skipped mark cannot be undone, and the buttons vanish once one is recorded.
• It is logged against the day selected in the day chips, which need not be today.
• iPhone does not ask who can read the note. Once you type something it says "Everyone in the home can read this.", and that is what happens.
• iPhone shows the note back: it appears under the chore on the Chores view for that day, for everyone in the home. Android keeps notes but never shows them again.
• A note ticked as owner-only on Android is hidden on iPhone from everyone except the home's owner.
• There is one record per chore per day. Once the chore reads Done or Skipped, the Mark done and Skip buttons are gone, and there is no undo in either app.
• Android says "covered" instead of "done" when the person who marked it was not the person whose turn it was. iPhone says "Done" either way.
• A note is a line of record, not a message. Nobody is notified about it, so anything that needs an answer belongs in Chats.
• The note is optional and the sheet can be cancelled. Cancelling does not mark the chore done.

Once someone has marked a chore, the card says so where the buttons used to be, and on iPhone anything they wrote sits underneath.

Members cannot add chores to a home. Filling in the same form sends a suggestion to the home's owner, who answers it in the Chores view.

1. Tap Calendar, then Chores, then +.
2. Fill the form in as normal. iPhone titles it "Suggest a Chore" and says "This goes to the home's owner to accept. You'll see their answer here."
3. Tap Suggest on iPhone, or Suggest chore on Android.
4. Look for the card in Chores. It carries a "suggested" tag and the line "Waiting on the home's owner."
5. Owners: tap Add it to turn a suggestion into a real chore, or No thanks to turn it down.

Worth knowing

• Members see "Suggest" where owners see "Add", which reads as the form failing. It is the app telling you a chore needs the owner's yes.
• A turned-down suggestion stays on the list marked "not added" rather than disappearing, so the person who asked gets an answer.
• Only the owner and the person who suggested it can see a suggestion at all.
• A suggestion carries the name, days, time and details, but not who does it. Once it is added it rotates weekly through the home's members until the owner replaces it.
• Suggestions are answered in the Chores list itself. There is no approvals screen.

Chores are edited and deleted by the home's owner. Android does it on the chore card; the iPhone does it from the home's own page, where the same records are called schedules — bin night, the cleaner, the veg box.

1. Android: tap Edit on the chore card in Chores, change What, "which days", When (optional) or Details (optional), then tap Save.
2. iPhone: open the home from the Household tab and tap the "Schedules" tile under "more to manage", or "edit" on the "schedules" card once the home has some.
3. iPhone: tap "Add schedule item" for a new one, or work down an entry that is already there.
4. iPhone: change Title, the days under Days, "At a set time" and its Time, or Details, then tap Save.
5. To remove a chore, tap Delete on Android. On the iPhone, tap the bin icon on the chore in Chores, or "Delete this chore" at the bottom of its section in the Schedules editor, or tap "Edit" at the top right there and swipe the row away.
6. Confirm with Delete chore, or back out with Keep it.

Worth knowing

• "Schedules" and "chores" are the same records under two names, which is why HomieHub looks as though it has both. The Chores view on the iPhone has a bin but no Edit, so renaming a chore or changing its days is done on the household page under Schedules — where the delete button inside an entry reads "Delete this chore". That wording is the giveaway.
• If you are a member rather than the owner, the edit and delete controls are not shown at all, because the change would be refused anyway. Everybody in the home can read these entries; only the owner can write them.
• On the home's page an entry reads as its title, a time pill and a week strip with its days lit. Leave "At a set time" off for something that happens on a day but not at an hour, and the row shows the day instead of a time.
• The days are tapped rather than typed, so the week strip lights the right days without you having to phrase them a particular way.
• On the iPhone, Save stays greyed out until you change something, and it writes the whole list at once rather than one entry at a time.
• While you are editing, the iPhone heads each entry "Schedule 1", "Schedule 2" and so on. The numbers only tell the forms apart; they appear nowhere else.
• Android's editor takes the time as typed text in When (optional), while the form that added the chore used a time picker. Write it the way the picker would have, such as 8:00 AM. Both apps keep what you type exactly, and iPhone's Schedules editor falls back to 08:00 for a wording it cannot read.
• Deleting takes the chore's whole history with it: "This removes the chore and everything logged against it."
• Neither app can change how a chore is owned after it is made. The rotation and the person it starts with are fixed at creation, so to change them, delete the chore and add it again.
• Android has no schedules card on the house page, but it reads the same entries and shows them as chores on its Calendar tab — so a schedule written on an iPhone still reaches everybody.

Availability is a grid with one row per housemate and 24 blocks each, for the day you are looking at. You can only fill in your own row.

1. Tap Calendar, then Availability.
2. Pick the day in the day chips.
3. Find your own row. On iPhone it is the top one.
4. Tap an hour block in your row. It becomes home.
5. Tap the same block again to move it on to maybe, then busy, then away, then back to not set.
6. Read the key under the grid: home, maybe, busy, away on iPhone; Home, Maybe, Busy, Away on Android.

Worth knowing

• Tapping cycles through five states rather than switching one on and off, so clearing a block back to "not set" takes several taps.
• The numbers along the top mark 0, 6, 12 and 18. The grid runs midnight to midnight in 24-hour time.
• Blocks are per day. Filling in Tuesday says nothing about Wednesday.
• Other people's blocks do nothing when tapped. iPhone says "tap your row to set"; Android says "Tap your own row to say where you'll be. Tap a face to ping them."
• Hours that are busy because of a repeating commitment on somebody's profile are worked out each time the grid is drawn. Nothing is written into the grid, so a commitment keeps blocking its hours week after week, and they clear the moment it is deleted.
• iPhone counts the cycle from what you have set rather than from what is drawn, so an hour that is busy only because of a commitment starts at not set: one tap says home and overrides the commitment for that day. On Android that hour moves between busy and away only, so to be free at it, untick "Show me as busy then" on the commitment.
• iPhone: cycling round to not set clears the block. If a commitment covers the hour it goes straight back to busy, which is the commitment being drawn again rather than a block refusing to clear.
• iPhone: busy hours in your row that you never set are leftovers from an older version of the app. Tap round to not set to clear one.
• The grid belongs to one home. If you are in more than one, blocks are read and written for the first home only, so housemates from another home look "not set" unless a commitment of theirs covers the hour.
• iPhone marks each state with a shape as well as a colour, filled or half-filled or a thin line, so the grid still reads in greyscale.
• With no housemates yet, iPhone says "No roommates yet" and points you at inviting people.

A banner on the Chores and Availability views shows the hours the house keeps quiet. It is built from what people have set on their own profiles.

1. Tap Calendar, then Chores or Availability. On Android the banner sits above the Agenda list as well.
2. Read the Quiet hours banner. It says something like "22:00 – 07:00, household-wide".
3. To set your own window, fill in Quiet hours in the profile editor — see "Set your quiet hours" in Your profile & privacy.

Worth knowing

• "Most overlap" is not a calculated overlap of everybody's hours. It is one person's times, shown because the house has not agreed on one answer.
• When everyone who set quiet hours set the same ones, the banner ends "household-wide". When they differ it reads "Most overlap:" instead.
• With nobody's quiet hours set, there is no banner.
• iPhone shows the banner under the chore list, and only when the home has at least one chore. Android shows it above the list.
• The banner is a statement, not a rule. Nothing in the app is blocked during quiet hours.

Bills is not one of the tabs along the bottom. It opens on top of whatever you were looking at, and there are three ways in.

1. Tap the menu icon in the top left of any screen.
2. Tap Bills.
3. Read the list: bills are grouped under outstanding and settled.
4. To leave, tap Close on iPhone or the back arrow on Android.

Worth knowing

• People hunt for Bills in the bottom tab bar and conclude the feature is missing. It lives in the side menu and behind the balance card.
• The dark card at the top of the home screen, headed "your balance this month", also opens Bills.
• A home's own page has a bills section every member can tap through. On iPhone there is also a Bills tile under "more to manage", but that whole grid appears only if you own the home — if you cannot see the tile, use the bills section instead.
• Opening Bills from a home's page on iPhone shows only that home's bills. Android always shows every home's bills in one list.
• Before you are in a household, iPhone shows "No households yet" and "Join or create a household first.", and the new-bill button is greyed out.

A bill with a due date is also a date in the diary. It appears on the Calendar screen on the day it falls due, and in the home screen's up next list.

1. Open Calendar and go to the day the bill is due. The bill sits among that day's events with a terracotta stripe down its left side.
2. Tap it. On iPhone the Bills list opens; on Android that bill's own page opens.
3. On the home screen, look under up next. Bill rows there are tappable and open the same way.

Worth knowing

• On iPhone tapping the bill on the calendar opens the whole Bills list rather than that bill, so it looks as though the tap went to the wrong place. Find the bill in the list.
• Only bills with a due date reach either place. A bill without one lives in Bills and nowhere else.
• A bill is listed under up next only while somebody still owes a share of it. Once every share is paid it drops off.
• On iPhone up next shows at most three rows. Android lists them all, and the section starts folded away — tap the heading to open it.
• On the calendar, iPhone labels the row "bill due" with the total on the right. Android writes "due" and the total on the second line.

The card at the top of Bills adds up what you owe against what you are owed and gives one figure. The same figure sits on the home screen.

1. Open Bills.
2. Read the figure on the card at the top.
3. Read the words beside it for the direction: on iPhone a small pill says "you're owed", "you owe" or "all settled"; on Android the line above says "you're owed", "you owe" or "you're all square".
4. When nothing is open, the figure itself reads Settled.

Worth knowing

• The big number reads like the amount of one bill. It is a running total across every bill in every home you are in.
• The figure never carries a minus sign. The direction is in the words, not the number.
• It counts your own unpaid share of every bill, plus everyone else's unpaid shares of bills you created. Two housemates settling up between themselves never moves your figure.
• The home screen card says "this month", but the figure covers every unsettled bill the app has loaded, not only the current month.
• iPhone adds a green and terracotta bar with "N paid" and "N outstanding" beneath it. Android shows "N open splits".
• Pull down on the Bills list to refresh it on iPhone. Android has no pull-to-refresh, and it does not re-read the list when you come back from a bill — a share you have just marked paid can leave the figure at the top looking unchanged.

The Bills list has two headings, outstanding and settled. Both phones mean the same thing by them, and both are describing the whole bill rather than your part of it.

1. Open Bills and read the two headings: outstanding first, settled below it.
2. A bill stays under outstanding while anybody on it still owes — housemates included, and including a bill you have no share in at all.
3. It moves to settled only once every share on it has been marked paid.
4. Open the bill itself to see where each person's share stands.

Worth knowing

• Settled means the house is finished with the bill, not that you are. A bill you have paid your part of stays under outstanding while housemates still owe you.
• Paying your own share does not move a bill down. It sits under outstanding until the last person's share is confirmed, and on Android the row says "your share paid" in the meantime so you can see your part is done.
• Android sorts outstanding by due date, soonest first, with undated bills last. iPhone lists both headings newest first.
• With nothing owed, iPhone writes "nothing outstanding, nice" under the first heading and Android writes "Nothing outstanding." On both phones the settled heading is hidden until there is something under it.
• There is no history limit and nothing on this screen needs Plus. A settled bill stays in the list rather than disappearing after a month.

Each row answers three questions without being opened: what the bill is, what it costs you, and how far along it is.

1. Open Bills and look at one row under outstanding.
2. The name is on the first line. iPhone puts the bill's total on the right of it; Android puts the home's name beside it in a small green pill.
3. Read the second line for the money. iPhone shows the due date as a pill and, at the right, "you owe …" while your own share is unpaid. Android writes "your share …" followed by "due" and the date, or "overdue" once the day has passed.
4. On Android, read the tag at the far right: "all paid" when everybody is done, "your share paid" when only your part is, "sent" when you have said you sent yours.
5. On iPhone the same thing is a green "all paid" pill on the second line, and nothing at all when your own share is paid but the house's is not.

Worth knowing

• A green tag on a row sitting under outstanding looks like a contradiction. It is not: "your share paid" is about you, and the heading is about the bill.
• "your share paid" and "all paid" are two different statements. Only the second one puts the bill under settled.
• A bill you are not split into shows the total instead of a share of yours — Android writes "… total".
• The coloured stripe down the left repeats the urgency. The colours are under "Give a bill a due date".
• Tap anywhere on the row to open the bill.

A bill is one thing the house spent, with a name and a total. Everything else — who splits it, who gets paid, when it is due — hangs off that.

1. Open Bills, then tap + in the top right on iPhone, or Add beside outstanding on Android. When the list is empty, Android's button says Add a bill.
2. Choose the home: the Household picker on iPhone, the list under which home on Android.
3. Name it: Title (e.g. April Internet) on iPhone, What's it for on Android.
4. Type the Total amount.
5. Add Notes (optional) if there is anything to explain.
6. Tap Create on iPhone, or Add bill on Android.

Worth knowing

• Android hides the home list when you are only in one home.
• iPhone keeps Create greyed out until the bill is valid, and never says why. Android leaves Add bill tappable and tells you what is missing when you tap: "Give the bill a name.", "Enter an amount.", "Choose who is splitting it."
• Neither app can edit or delete a bill after it exists. Check the total before you tap Create.
• New bills made on iPhone are always in dollars, whatever you picked under Preferences, Currency. Android uses the currency from your profile. A bill keeps whatever currency it was created in, and no amount is ever converted between currencies.
• Notes appear on the bill afterwards, under a Notes heading on iPhone.

Everyone in the home starts included, because splitting with the whole house is the usual case. You take people off rather than adding them.

1. Scroll to Split on iPhone, or who's in on Android.
2. Every member of the chosen home is listed and already ticked.
3. Tap the switch beside a name on iPhone, or the row on Android, to leave that person out.
4. Check who is left ticked before you save.

Worth knowing

• People expect an empty list to add names to. It arrives with everyone already selected, so it is easy to create a bill that names somebody who did not use the thing.
• You are in the list too, and you start ticked. Your own share counts towards the total and shows up on the bill as your row.
• Pick the home first. Changing the home reloads that home's members and re-ticks all of them, losing anything you had unticked.
• Only people who are actually in the chosen home appear. Housemates from your other homes are not offered.
• Leave everyone unticked and you cannot save: Android says "Choose who is splitting it."

An even split divides the total between everyone ticked. Exact amounts let you type a different figure against each name, for when one person used most of it.

1. Choose Equal or Custom on iPhone, or Split evenly or Exact amounts on Android.
2. For an even split, read the line under the list: "Each person owes …" on iPhone, "Roughly … each" on Android.
3. For exact amounts, type a figure in the box beside each ticked name.
4. Watch the running line under the list until it agrees with your total.
5. Tap Create or Add bill.

Worth knowing

• People type exact amounts that nearly add up and cannot work out why the save button will not respond. On iPhone the reason is a small orange line they have scrolled past.
• Exact amounts have to add up to the total exactly. iPhone keeps Create greyed out and shows "Splits sum to …, expected …" in orange. Android shows "… still unassigned" or "… over the total" in red, and says "The shares have to add up to the total." if you tap Add bill anyway.
• When the parts do agree, Android says "Adds up to …".
• An even split rarely divides cleanly. iPhone gives the leftover penny to the first person in the list; Android gives it to you, whoever is creating the bill.
• Someone ticked with the amount left blank, or at zero, is left off the bill entirely rather than added at nothing.
• iPhone's preview line is always written in dollars, even when the amounts are not.

One question with real consequences: are you the one out of pocket, or is somebody else. The answer decides whose phone shows the Pay buttons and who is allowed to confirm the money arrived.

1. Scroll to Payment on iPhone, or payment on Android.
2. Choose Members owe me on iPhone, or They owe me on Android, if you paid and want the money back.
3. Choose I owe a member on iPhone, or I owe someone on Android, if a housemate paid.
4. When you choose that, pick the person under Pay to.
5. Tap Create or Add bill.

Worth knowing

• Get the direction the wrong way round and the tick ends up on the wrong phone: the person who owes cannot mark themselves paid, and the person owed sees Pay buttons instead of a confirm control.
• Pay to only appears when you say you owe someone, because otherwise the answer is you. It never lists you.
• If you name nobody, whoever created the bill is treated as the person to be paid.
• That person is the only one who can confirm a share has landed, and the only one who can nudge. Choose it carefully — there is no way to change it afterwards.
• Open the bill later and you can check: iPhone shows Payee and, when it is not the plain case, a Type row. Android writes "Paid to you" or "Paid to <name>" under the title.

A due date is what makes a bill look urgent. Without one it never turns red and never appears on the calendar.

1. On iPhone, turn on Due date, then pick a day under Due.
2. On Android, type into Due date (YYYY-MM-DD, optional) — for example 2026-04-01.
3. Tap Create or Add bill.
4. Back in the list, the bill now carries a due marker and a coloured stripe.

Worth knowing

• Android's due date is a plain text box, so people tap it expecting a date picker and then type the date in the wrong order.
• Android takes typed text only, in year-month-day order with dashes. There is no calendar to tap, and the field will accept text that is not a date.
• iPhone writes "due today", "due tomorrow", "due in 3 days" or "due Apr 12". Android writes "due 2026-04-12", or "overdue" once the day has passed.
• The stripe down the left of each row carries the urgency. On iPhone: terracotta for anything due within a day — overdue, today or tomorrow; butter for due in two days to a week; plain grey when the date is further off or there is none; green once every share is paid. On Android: green once every share is paid, terracotta while the bill is overdue, butter otherwise.
• Nothing reminds you that a bill is coming. There is no notification three days before, and none on the day. The one bill notification either app sends is the one that goes out when a bill first names you — "Bill assigned to me" under Notifications, Bills on iPhone, "A bill names me" under money on Android.
• A bill due today or tomorrow can show up as a Live Activity on the iPhone lock screen, which is the closest thing to a reminder either app has.

Tapping a bill opens everything it was created with, above the list of shares.

1. Open Bills and tap the bill.
2. On iPhone, read the rows at the top: Total, Household, Due and Created. Payee appears when somebody was named, and a Type row appears when the bill is not the ordinary case.
3. On Android, the title is followed by the total, the due date and the home's name, then a line reading "Paid to you" or "Paid to <name>".
4. Below that comes one row per person, with their share and where it stands.
5. Keep scrolling for the receipts attached to the bill.

Worth knowing

• Nothing on this page can be edited, and there is no edit button to explain that. A wrong total means creating the bill again.
• Created is the day the bill was made, not the day it falls due. On iPhone the two rows sit next to each other.
• Notes typed when the bill was created sit under a Notes heading on iPhone, and as plain text under the title on Android.
• The heading above the shares on Android reads "You're owed by" when somebody actually owes you, and "Split between" otherwise. iPhone always says Splits.
• A bill without a due date has no Due row on iPhone and no due line on Android, rather than an empty one.

Your Venmo, Cash App or PayPal name, saved once. Without one, a housemate's Pay button has nowhere to send them and the only way to settle up is somebody's word.

1. Open your profile and tap Edit Profile on iPhone, or Edit profile on Android.
2. Scroll to Getting paid back on iPhone, or Getting paid on Android.
3. Fill in Venmo, Cash App or PayPal. iPhone shows the shape each one takes: @username, $cashtag, paypal.me name.
4. Use Anything else for whatever the three do not cover — "Zelle to my number, cash is fine".
5. Tap Save.

Worth knowing

• People expect to be asked for bank details and stop, worried about security. These are only the usernames your housemates would ask you for anyway.
• These are not shown on your profile at all. They surface in the "Pay" menu on a bill you are owed for, and your "Anything else" note appears there under "They also said".
• Only the people you live with can see them. They are public usernames, never card or bank details.
• HomieHub does not move the money. It opens the app you already use with the amount filled in, and cannot check whether a payment happened.
• Leading @ and $ are trimmed, so pasting "@alice" and typing "alice" both work.
• Until you fill one in, a housemate tapping Pay on iPhone sees "… haven't added a payment handle yet." On Android they see no payment buttons at all, only "I already sent it".
• Apple Cash is not offered. No app can address an Apple Cash payment, so it was removed rather than left as a button that only opened Messages.

On a bill where you owe, your own row carries the payment buttons. They open the app the other person asked to be paid in, with the amount and a note already filled in.

1. Open Bills and tap the bill.
2. Find your row: iPhone marks it "(you)" after your name, Android calls it You.
3. On iPhone, tap Pay, then choose Venmo, Cash App or PayPal. On Android, tap the Venmo, Cash App or PayPal button directly.
4. Finish the payment in that app.
5. Come back to HomieHub. Your row now reads "Sent … ago — awaiting confirmation" on iPhone, or "sent" on Android.

Worth knowing

• People assume HomieHub takes the payment, or at least checks that it arrived. It does neither. It opens the other app; the rest is the two of you agreeing.
• Only the apps that person has filled in get a button. Somebody with only a Venmo name gives you one button.
• "They also said" is that person's own note, for the rails no button covers. iPhone shows it inside the Pay menu under a They also said heading; Android prints it above the buttons as "They also said: …".
• The note that travels to the payment app is the bill's name, with "— HomieHub" appended on iPhone — but only the Venmo link carries it. The Cash App and PayPal links carry the amount and nothing else.
• If nothing opens, both apps say so — "Couldn't open Venmo. Pay however you like, then tap "I already sent it"." — and nothing is recorded. This matters: a tap that opens nothing must not tell your housemate the money is on its way.
• On a bill you are owed for there is nothing to pay on your own row, because you cannot send yourself money. iPhone shows a Pay button there anyway, pointed at your own handle — ignore it and tick the share off with the circle instead. Android labels the row "your share" and offers Mark paid.

Only the person being paid can close a share. This is the half that actually settles a debt.

Leave yourself ticked on a bill you paid for and you end up with a share of your own. It counts against your balance until it is marked paid, and you are the one who marks it.

1. Open the bill and find your own row: "(you)" after your name on iPhone, You on Android.
2. On iPhone, tap the circle at the right of your row. It fills green, the row reads "Paid", and the share stops counting.
3. On Android, tap Mark paid. The row changes from "your share" to "paid".
4. To put it back, tap the green tick again on iPhone, or Undo on Android.

Worth knowing

• Nothing on the bill asks you to close your own share, so it is easy to leave it open and wonder why the balance never reaches zero.
• Until it is marked paid, your own share counts as money you owe on both phones, so the card at the top cannot reach "all settled" or "you're all square".
• The bill will not move under settled either, because settled means every share on it is paid — yours as well.
• Your own row carries no payment buttons on Android and no Nudge on either phone. Sending yourself money and reminding yourself are not things either app offers.
• This is about the person being paid, whoever that is. If a housemate is the payee, theirs is the row only they can tick and yours behaves like everybody else's.
• Tracking-only bills work the same way. Whoever created one counts as the person to be paid, so they tick off every row, their own included.

A reminder aimed at one person about one bill. Once a day, and no more.

A photo of the plumber's invoice settles who actually paid. Anybody in the home can add one and everybody in the home can see it — you do not have to be named on the bill.

1. Open the bill and scroll to Attachments on iPhone, or receipts on Android.
2. On iPhone, tap Add, then Take Photo, Choose Photo or Choose File.
3. On Android, tap Camera to photograph one, or Add to pick a file already on the phone.
4. Wait for the uploading message to clear. The receipt then appears in the list with its file name and size.

Worth knowing

• 25MB per file. Anything larger is refused before it uploads: "File too large. Max 25MB." on iPhone, "That file is too large. The limit is 25MB." on Android.
• One file at a time on both apps.
• Photographing a receipt on Android uses the phone's own camera app, so it never asks for camera permission. On iPhone the camera opens inside HomieHub, so the first time you tap Take Photo iOS asks for camera access.
• iPhone's Choose File leads with PDFs, images, spreadsheets and text files, but it will let you pick most other kinds of file too. Android's Add offers anything on the phone.
• iPhone shows the receipts as a row of cards you swipe sideways. Android lists them one per line.
• New receipts appear on iPhone as soon as anyone adds one, without a refresh.

Receipts open inside the app. You can also save a copy out of HomieHub, and remove one you added yourself.

Chats is one of the five tabs along the bottom of the app. It lists every conversation from every home you are in, with the most recent at the top.

1. Tap Chats in the bottom bar.
2. Read down the list. Each row shows the name, the last thing said, and when.
3. Tap a row to open the conversation.

Worth knowing

• A row tagged household is the chat for a whole home. A row with one face is a one-to-one. A row with several faces stacked together is a group.
• The terracotta number on the right of a row is how many messages you have not read. It stops counting at 99+.
• On iPhone, a one-to-one row shows the person's name and @handle, and a small grey tag with the name of the home the chat belongs to.
• On Android, a household chat shows a row of small faces under the last message, so two homes are told apart by who is in them.
• Before you are in a home, iPhone shows "No households yet" and "Open the side menu to create or join a household." Android shows "No chats yet."
• On iPhone, pull the list down to refresh it. Android reloads the list every time you come back to the tab.
• Opening a conversation marks it read. You do not have to do anything else.
• Which messages your phone tells you about is set behind the bell rather than in Chats — see "Choose what you are told about" in Notifications, Plus & Settings. The unread number on a row keeps counting either way.

Every home gets one chat that everybody in it belongs to. You do not create it and there is no way to leave it or start a second one.

1. Tap Chats.
2. Tap the row tagged household. It carries the home's name.
3. Type in the box at the bottom and send.

Worth knowing

• People make a home, go looking for its chat and find nothing there. That is normal — the chat is not created until a second person joins.
• The home chat does not exist while you are the only person in the home. It appears the moment a second person joins, and everyone already in the home is put in it.
• Somebody who joins the home later is added to this chat without anyone doing anything.
• The row is named after the home, not "Household Chat". If you ever see that wording it is the same room.
• On iPhone the header shows the home's cover art, its name, and up to four members' faces with a "+3" for anyone who does not fit.

A home chat that has only just appeared, or a group you made a minute ago, has nothing in it. The two apps show that differently.

1. Tap Chats and open a conversation nobody has written in yet.
2. On Android, "Say something." sits in the middle of the empty thread. On iPhone the thread is blank.
3. Type in the box at the bottom and send. The thread starts with your message.

Worth knowing

• A blank thread on iPhone looks like a failure to load. It is not — there is nothing in the chat yet, so there is nothing to fetch and no error to show.
• In the list, a conversation with nothing in it reads "No messages yet" on iPhone. On Android the row shows who is in the chat, or the other person's status, so it looks like any other row.
• On Android a thread that is still loading shows a spinner rather than "Say something.", so waiting and empty are told apart.
• There is nothing to refresh while you wait. A message from somebody else appears in the thread as it arrives.

Typing is the same in every conversation, whether it is the home chat, a group or a one-to-one.

1. Open a conversation.
2. Tap the box marked "Type a message…" and write.
3. Tap the round send button to the right of the box. On iPhone it is an up arrow, on Android a paper plane.
4. Your message appears at the bottom of the thread.

Worth knowing

• The send button does nothing until there is something in the box. On iPhone that button is a microphone until you start typing.
• Your own messages sit on the right in a dark aubergine bubble. Everybody else's sit on the left in cream. On iPhone their photo and name sit above the bubble; on Android the photo sits beside it and the name is the first line inside it.
• The time inside a bubble is your own phone's clock, converted from wherever the sender was.
• The box grows as you write — up to five lines on iPhone, four on Android.
• A conversation loads its 50 most recent messages. Scrolling up does not fetch older ones.
• On Android, anything that fails to send shows as a line of terracotta text above the box. Tap the line to clear it.
• Messages arrive while you are looking at the thread without you refreshing anything.

A private thread with one person, made if there is not one already. Both of you have to be in the same home. There are two ways in: the New Chat sheet on iPhone, and the Message button on the person's profile, which is the only route on Android.

1. On iPhone, tap Chats, then the compose icon in the top right.
2. On the New Chat sheet, choose the home under Household.
3. Under Add Members, tap one person. The line underneath reads "Direct message".
4. Tap Start. The chat opens.
5. On either phone, open the person's profile — their tile in "who's home", their name on a post, or the member list on a home — and tap Message. It sits beside Call and Text.
6. If you already have a one-to-one with that person, both routes reopen it rather than making a second one.

Worth knowing

• On Android the obvious button — compose, on the Chats tab — always makes a group. One-to-ones are only started from the other person's profile, which is not where most people look.
• The compose button on the Android Chats tab is labelled "Start a group" and only makes groups. It will not make a one-to-one, so the profile is the way.
• On iPhone the compose icon is greyed out until you are in at least one home.
• Call and Text need a phone number on the person's profile: without one, iPhone greys them out and Android does not show them at all. Message never needs one.
• On iPhone, Call and Text are also greyed out when the person has turned "Show contact info" off, while Message still works.
• None of the three is offered on your own profile. iPhone greys Message out; Android shows no buttons at all.
• Message is greyed out on the profile of somebody you share no home with, because a chat has to belong to a home.
• On Android, a Message button that is still tappable and cannot open a chat says why: a note headed "Can't open that chat", usually reading "You don't share a home with them yet." It covers a connection that failed, and being taken out of the home while the profile was open.
• Somebody who has deleted their account has no buttons at all. Both apps show "This account has been deleted.", and their old messages stay in the thread under "Deleted user".
• If you and the person share more than one home, the app picks one of them for the chat.

A thread for some of the people in a home rather than all of them — the two paying the gas bill, the three organising a birthday.

1. Tap Chats, then tap the compose icon in the top right.
2. Choose the home under Household.
3. Under Add Members, tap two or more people. The line underneath reads "Group chat with 3 members".
4. Type a name in the box marked "Optional name" under Group Name, if you want one.
5. Tap Start.

Worth knowing

• On iPhone one person selected means a one-to-one and two or more means a group. The line under Add Members tells you which one you are about to get.
• On Android the compose icon opens New group instead. Pick the home under "which home" if you are in more than one, type a name in "Name it", tap people under "who's in it", then tap "Start the group".
• Android will not create the group until it has a name and at least one other person picked. On iPhone the name is optional, and an unnamed group is listed by the first few members' names.
• On Android a group can be you and one other person. On iPhone picking one person gives you a one-to-one instead.
• Everyone in a group has to come from the same home. Changing the home clears whoever you had already picked.
• Neither app can add or remove people once the group exists.
• iPhone says "No other members in this household yet." and Android says "There's nobody else in this home yet." when you are the only person in the home.

A picture you already have on your phone.

1. Open the conversation.
2. Tap the photo icon in the row of buttons to the left of the message box.
3. Choose one picture.
4. It uploads and appears in the thread on its own.

Worth knowing

• On iPhone, tapping Photo Library in the + menu does nothing at all. Nothing opens and nothing is sent.
• One picture at a time. Neither app lets you select several.
• On iPhone the same buttons live behind a single +. Tapping + gives you Photo Library, Camera and File.
• On iPhone, Photo Library does not open your library in this build. Camera and File both work.
• A picture sent through File arrives as a named attachment, not as a picture inside the bubble.
• There is no caption. The picture goes on its own — type a message after it if you need to say something.
• Both apps re-encode a picture before it goes, at the same quality and the same size limit, so the same photo costs the thread the same on either phone. A screenshot no longer arrives as several megabytes.
• On Android a picture taken with the phone turned on its side arrives the right way up, and a front-camera photo is not mirrored.
• On Android, a picture the phone cannot read is not sent. A line above the message box reads "That picture couldn't be read."

Photographing the thing you are talking about, without leaving the conversation — the blocked sink, the meter reading, the note on the door.

1. Open the conversation.
2. Tap +, then Camera.
3. Take the picture.
4. Tap Use Photo. It sends itself.

Worth knowing

• On Android there is a 📷 button in the row beside the message box. Tap it, take the picture, confirm it, and it sends.
• Android hands you the phone's own camera app, so it never asks for camera permission. iPhone asks the first time.
• There is no caption, and nothing to do after the camera's own confirm — accepting the shot sends it.
• A photo taken sideways arrives upright on both apps.
• On a device with no camera, iPhone falls back to showing your photo library.

A PDF of the lease, a spreadsheet of who owes what, a scanned receipt.

1. Open the conversation.
2. Tap +, then File.
3. Pick one file.
4. It appears in the thread as a document icon with the filename beside it.

Worth knowing

• On iPhone a file in a chat cannot be opened from the bubble. The name is all you get.
• On Android, tap the paperclip in the row beside the message box. Both apps let you pick any kind of file.
• One file at a time.
• On Android, tap the filename in the bubble to open the file in another app. On iPhone the bubble shows the name but cannot be opened.
• The filename is all the bubble says, so rename anything unhelpful before you send it.
• A picture sent this way stays a file. It will not show as a picture, and it is not shrunk on the way.

A spoken message, for when typing it out is more effort than saying it.

1. Open the conversation and leave the message box empty.
2. Tap the microphone button — on iPhone to the right of the box, on Android in the row of buttons to its left.
3. Speak. A moving waveform and a running timer replace the message box while you record.
4. Tap the up arrow to send it, or the terracotta X on the left to throw it away.

Worth knowing

• On Android, stopping the recording is the same action as sending it. There is no review step and nothing to cancel.
• On Android, tap the 🎙 button and it turns into ⏹. Tapping ⏹ stops the recording and sends it immediately — there is no send button and no way to discard it.
• Both apps ask for microphone permission the first time. If you have refused before, iPhone says "Microphone permission denied. Enable in Settings."
• iPhone stops recording on its own after one minute and nothing is sent, so send before you reach it.
• Android throws away anything shorter than about half a second rather than sending silence.
• On iPhone the microphone is only there while the message box is empty. Type one character and it becomes the send arrow.
• A note recorded on one phone plays on the other. Both apps record the same kind of audio file.

Voice notes play inside the bubble. You do not leave the chat and nothing is handed to another app.

A searchable library of animated GIFs, built into the message row.

1. Tap GIF beside the message box.
2. The picker opens on what is trending.
3. Type in Search GIFs to narrow it down, or scroll the grid.
4. Tap the one you want. It sends straight away.

Worth knowing

• Tapping a GIF is the same as sending it. People expect a preview and a send button, and there is neither.
• On iPhone the picker is a sheet titled GIFs with a Cancel button. On Android it slides up from the bottom of the screen; swipe it down to close it.
• Tapping a GIF sends it. There is no confirm step and no caption.
• On iPhone a GIF fills its bubble with no background behind it, so it looks different from a photo. On Android it sits in an ordinary bubble, like a picture.
• When the GIF service cannot be reached, iPhone says "GIFs unavailable" and offers Try again. Android says "Nothing matched.", which is also what it says for a search that found nothing.
• GIFs come from GIPHY, credited at the bottom of the iPhone picker.

A small emoji under a message, for answering something without sending a whole message back.

1. Press and hold the bubble.
2. Tap one of the six emoji along the top of the menu that opens.
3. The reaction appears as a small pill — under the bubble on iPhone, inside it above the time on Android.

Worth knowing

• iPhone needs a long press and Android needs a single tap. The gesture that works in one app does nothing in the other.
• On Android you tap the bubble once instead of holding it. The same six emoji sit at the top of the menu.
• The six are not the same in both apps. iPhone offers 👍 ❤️ 😂 😮 😢 🔥. Android offers ❤️ 😂 👍 🎉 😮 😢.
• Tap a pill to add the same reaction, or to take yours back. On iPhone your own reaction has a ring around its pill; on Android it is filled terracotta instead.
• A number on a pill is how many people used that emoji.
• You can react to your own messages as well as other people's.
• Copy sits in the same menu. On iPhone it only appears on a message that is nothing but text. On Android it appears on everything and copies nothing when there is no text.
• iPhone also shows Delete on your own messages. It does nothing yet.
• There is no wider emoji picker. The six on offer are all there are.

A small mark next to the time inside your own bubbles says whether the message has been read.

1. Send a message.
2. Look at the mark beside the time inside your own bubble.
3. A pale mark means it reached the server.
4. A green mark means everybody who shares receipts has read it.

Worth knowing

• A mark that never changes usually means the other person has read receipts switched off, not that they have not looked.
• iPhone uses one tick in two colours — pale for sent, sage green for read. Android uses one tick for sent and two ticks for read.
• In a group the mark only changes once every single person who shares receipts has read it. One person reading is not enough.
• If nobody in the chat shares receipts, Android shows no mark at all and iPhone leaves the mark pale for good. A pale mark is not proof you are being ignored.
• There is no "delivered" stage. The app has no way of telling whether a message reached someone's phone, so it does not claim to.
• Marks only ever appear under your own messages, never under anyone else's.
• To stop your own reading colouring other people's marks, turn the switch off — see "Turn read receipts off" in Your profile & privacy. You carry on seeing theirs either way.

Finding a conversation by its name, by who is in it, or by something said in it.

1. Tap Chats.
2. Tap the magnifying glass in the top right. A search field opens above the list.
3. Start typing. The list narrows from the first letter.
4. Tap a row to open that conversation.

Worth knowing

• Search tells you which conversation the words are in, not where in it. You still have to open the chat and read.
• iPhone's field says "Search chats". Android's says "Search chats and people".
• Searching matches the chat's name, the last message shown on the row, and who is in it — so typing a housemate's name brings up every chat they are in. On iPhone that includes everyone's @handle; on Android the handle is only matched in a one-to-one, and group members only by their first name.
• Words inside older messages are searched too, which is how you find something said weeks ago. That part needs two letters and takes a second to come back.
• Search narrows the list of conversations. It does not take you to the message it matched.
• Tapping the magnifying glass again closes the field and clears what you typed.
• Android shows Nothing matches "…" when nothing does. On iPhone the list simply comes up empty.

Both live on the message itself, in the same menu as the reactions.

A story is something you share for a short while rather than keep. It can be a photo, a video, a recorded voice clip, or a few words on a colour. It sits in a row of circles at the top of Today and goes away on its own, after a day unless the person who posted it chose longer.

Stories play by themselves and move on to the next one. The bars along the top show how many there are in the run and how far through the current one you are.

Everything you make goes through one screen. Nothing is shared until you tap the post button at the end, so you can back out at any point.

1. Open Today.
2. Tap your own circle at the start of the story row.
3. On iPhone the maker opens with STORY already chosen in the POST / STORY switch at the top. On Android a screen called "New story" opens.
4. On iPhone, pick CAMERA, TEXT or VOICE along the bottom. On Android everything is on one page, so scroll.

Worth knowing

• Tapping your own circle when you already have a story up opens what you posted rather than starting a new one. People read that as the "+" being broken.
• On iPhone you can also tap Compose (the pencil icon at the top right of Today) and then tap STORY.
• If you already have a story up, tapping your circle opens it rather than making a new one. Press and hold your circle instead and choose "Add to story".
• The two makers look nothing alike. iPhone's is a full-screen camera with tabs; Android's is a form with a preview card at the top.
• Nothing is posted until you tap "Post" (iPhone) or "Share story" (Android).

The long press on your own circle offers "View" as well as "Add to story". "View" is the reliable way back into what you have posted, whichever app you are on.

The first time you open the maker's camera, iPhone asks for the camera and for the microphone. Turn either one down and the CAMERA tab shows a notice where the picture should be.

1. Tap your own circle, then tap CAMERA.
2. Answer the two requests iPhone puts up, one for the camera and one for the microphone.
3. If you turned either down you will see "Camera access needed", with "Enable Camera and Microphone for HomieHub in Settings to record stories." underneath.
4. Tap "Open Settings" to go to HomieHub's entry in your phone's settings.
5. Turn Camera and Microphone on, come back, and tap CAMERA again.

Worth knowing

• Refusing only the microphone also blocks the camera, so people who meant to say no to the microphone conclude the camera permission did not stick.
• Both are needed. Allowing the camera but refusing the microphone leaves you on the same notice, because a video story records sound.
• The photo-library button goes with the camera, so while access is off you cannot pick a photo or video from your library on that tab either.
• TEXT still works with the camera off, and VOICE works as long as the microphone is allowed. If you only want to say something, you do not need the camera at all.
• Android has no equivalent for photos and videos. It hands you to your phone's own camera app, which asks for whatever it needs itself.

A photo can come from your camera or from what is already on your phone.

1. On iPhone, tap CAMERA, then tap the big white button to take a photo, or tap the photo icon at the bottom left to choose one from your library.
2. On Android, tap the preview card to pick a photo, or tap "Camera" to take one with your camera app.
3. On iPhone, tap "Retake" to try again or "Edit & Post" to carry on. On Android, tap "Remove photo" to start over.
4. Decorate it if you want to.
5. On iPhone tap "Done" to reach the "Post Story" screen, then "Post". On Android tap "Share story".

Worth knowing

• On iPhone the flash button is at the top right of the camera and cycles between automatic, on and off. Pinch the preview to zoom, and tap to focus.
• On iPhone, tap the camera-flip icon at the bottom right to switch to the front camera.
• On iPhone the three buttons down the right of the photo review — "Aa", the pencil and the rectangle — all open the same editor.
• Android hands you over to your phone's own camera app, so it asks for no camera permission of its own.
• You cannot post a photo on iPhone without passing through the editor, but you can go straight through it by tapping "Done".

A video story plays in the viewer and runs for as long as the clip. You can record one or use a clip you already have.

On iPhone you can record a story in pieces rather than in one take, and rearrange the pieces before you use them.

A strip of stills from the clip appears with a handle at each end. Drag them inwards to keep only the middle part.

With no picture at all, a story is whatever you type on a coloured card. This is the quickest kind to post.

1. On iPhone, tap TEXT. On Android, leave the preview card empty.
2. On iPhone, type on the coloured screen. On Android, type into "Say something".
3. Pick a background colour.
4. On iPhone tap "Post", then set the options and tap "Post" again. On Android tap "Share story".

Worth knowing

• The colour of the words changes on its own when you change the background. That is deliberate — white on Butter or Sand is unreadable.
• On iPhone the "Post" button stays dimmed until you have typed something.
• The words are shown in white or in dark aubergine, whichever reads better on the colour you chose. You cannot set it yourself, and it is worked out the same way in both apps and in both the maker and the viewer, so what you type is what gets read.
• iPhone text stories are always the same bold, centred type. There is no font or alignment choice.
• A text story goes through no editor on iPhone, so you cannot put stickers or a drawing on one.

There are eight colours, the same eight in the same order in both apps: Terracotta, Sage, Aubergine, Plum, Mauve, Butter, Coral and Sand. Terracotta is what you get if you do not choose.

1. Start a text or voice story.
2. On iPhone, tap the paintbrush button to the right of the record or Post button. Each tap moves to the next colour.
3. On Android, tap one of the eight circles under "background".
4. Watch the preview change. What you see is what gets posted.

Worth knowing

• Because iPhone only cycles forwards, people think a colour they saw once has gone. Keep tapping and it comes back round.
• On iPhone you can only step through the colours one at a time, in order. There is no way to jump straight to Sand except by tapping through to it.
• The colours are only for stories with no picture. Pick a photo or video on Android and the row disappears; in iPhone's camera mode there is no paintbrush at all.
• A voice story uses the same eight colours as a text story.
• These are the app's own colours rather than a general colour wheel, so a colour someone liked can be matched from the other phone.

A voice story is a recording of you on a coloured card. It plays by itself when someone opens it.

1. On iPhone, tap VOICE. On Android, leave the preview card empty.
2. On iPhone, tap the red button to start and tap it again to stop. On Android, tap "Record a voice story", then "Stop recording".
3. The length is shown when you finish, as "12s recorded" on iPhone or "Voice · 0:12" on Android.
4. On iPhone tap "Re-record" to try again, or "Use" to carry on.
5. Pick a background colour.
6. On iPhone set the options and tap "Post". On Android tap "Share story".

Worth knowing

• A voice story shows a waveform rather than a picture, so people who record one and then look for a thumbnail think it did not save.
• iPhone stops recording on its own at 60 seconds.
• Android asks for permission to use the microphone the first time. If you turn it down, the recorder does nothing until you allow it in your phone's settings.
• On iPhone, if the microphone is blocked you are told: "Microphone permission denied. Enable in Settings."
• Android also shows whatever you typed in "Say something" over the colour of a voice story. iPhone's voice screen has no way to type anything, so voice stories made on an iPhone carry no words.
• The clip plays automatically in the viewer on both apps. There is no play button to find.

You can put words on top of a photo or video and move them where you want. They are stored as positions rather than painted into the picture, so both apps redraw them.

Words placed on a picture come in eight colours: White, Ink, Terracotta, Coral, Butter, Sand, Sage and Plum. White is what you get if you do not choose.

Stickers are emoji dropped onto a picture. They move, resize and rotate like words do.

A frame draws a border around a photo or video.

You can scribble on a photo or video with your finger.

You can name what was playing. The title and artist are shown over the story.

Every story has an end date. A day is the default; you can stretch it to a week, or pin it so it has no end date at all.

A story goes either to one of your homes or to you alone. Kept to yourself, it can also be pointed at a privacy list — a group of people you have named in advance — and then those people see it as well.

1. Get to the last step of posting.
2. On iPhone, under "Destination", tap "Your story" or the name of a home. On Android, under "who sees this", tap "Just me" or the name of a home.
3. Choose a home and that is the audience: everyone in it. There is nothing more to set.
4. On iPhone, if you chose "Your story", pick "Public" or one of your privacy lists under "Who can see this?". On Android, if you chose "Just me", pick "Only me" or one of your lists under "who sees it".
5. Post the story.

Worth knowing

• "Public" on iPhone sounds like the whole internet. It means the opposite: no list, so nobody but you.
• The list picker belongs to a story you keep to yourself, in both apps. Neither app can send a story to a home and narrow it to a list at the same time.
• iPhone calls the no-list option "Public" and Android calls it "Only me". They do the same thing: the story goes no further than you.
• Pick a list and those people see the story in their own story row, even the ones you share no home with. See "Watch a story somebody shared with you".
• On Android the list picker is hidden completely until you have made a privacy list. On iPhone the section is always there once you pick "Your story", showing "Public" on its own until you make one. Make one in Privacy settings.
• You can set which list new stories use by default: Privacy settings, "Default audience for new stories". That choice is already selected for you at posting time, and you can change it for each story.
• On iPhone, if you belong to exactly one home that home is preselected. If you belong to several, "Your story" is preselected. Android always preselects your first home. Check this before posting.

When someone keeps a story to themselves and points it at one of their privacy lists, everybody on that list gets it. If you are on the list, it turns up in your story row — including when you share no home with the person who posted it.

On your own stories you can see who has looked and how long ago. Nobody else sees this.

Pinning takes the end date off a story so it stays up. Pinned stories also sort to the front of your run.

You can take your own story down at any time. It goes for everyone, straight away.

If somebody's story should not be there, you can report it or stop seeing anything from that person. Both options only appear on other people's stories.

Your profile is the page housemates land on when they tap your photo. It has a banner across the top, your picture overlapping it, then your name, your status and the details you have filled in.

1. Open the Today screen.
2. In the "who's home" row, tap the tile labelled "You".
3. Scroll down through About, Living Habits, Schedule, Interests and Connect.
4. Tap "Edit Profile" at the bottom on iPhone, or "Edit profile" under your name on Android, to change anything.

Worth knowing

• The side menu's "My profile" row goes to two different places: the editor on iPhone, the profile page on Android.
• Sections with nothing in them are hidden rather than shown empty, so a new profile is very short.
• On iPhone, the "My profile" row in the side menu opens the editor straight away, not this page. On Android the same row opens this page.
• Somebody else's profile opens the same way, from any of several places — see "Open a housemate's profile" next.
• A profile you are looking at keeps itself up to date, so someone's status or green dot can change while the page is open.

Everybody's page is laid out like your own: their status, how to pay them, and whatever else they have filled in. Wherever their name or face appears, it is a way in.

1. From the Today screen, tap their tile in the "who's home" row.
2. Or tap their name or photo on one of their posts or comments.
3. Or open the home's page and tap their row under "Members" (iPhone) or "housemates" (Android) — anywhere except the three dots.
4. On Android you can also tap the small round photo beside somebody's message in a chat, or the photo on a one-to-one row in the Chats tab.

Worth knowing

• The routes are not the same on both phones. An Android chat is a way through to the person; an iPhone chat is not, and people conclude the profile is hidden from them.
• Anybody in the home can do this. It is not an owner's thing.
• The three dots at the end of a member row are the owner's menu, not a way into the profile. The name and the picture are what open it.
• On Android you can also tap one of the faces on a home's card in "Your homes", without opening the home first.
• In the Chats tab only a one-to-one row carries a face: household and group rows show the home's cover art, and tapping those just opens the chat. Your own messages have no photo beside them either, so there is nothing to tap on your side of a thread.
• On iPhone the faces in a chat are not tappable at all. Reach the profile from the member list or from a post instead.
• A profile keeps itself up to date while you are looking at it, so somebody's status or green dot can change on screen.

Everything about you is edited on one long screen. Nothing is written until you save, apart from your photo and (on Android) your banner.

1. Open the side menu with the menu icon at the top left.
2. Tap "My profile". On Android this opens your profile page, so tap "Edit profile" as well.
3. Tap a row to open it, make the change, then tap "Done" to come back to the form (iPhone).
4. Tap "Save" at the top right on iPhone, or the "Save" button at the bottom on Android.

Worth knowing

• People fill in a section, back out, and find it gone. On iPhone every section except your photo needs the "Save" button at the top right.
• On iPhone the "Save" button stays greyed out until something has actually changed.
• If you back out of the iPhone editor with unsaved edits you get "Discard changes?" with "Discard Changes" and "Keep Editing". You cannot swipe the sheet away while there are unsaved edits.
• On Android, emptying a box and tapping "Save" is how you remove something. A blank box clears the field.
• On iPhone, a row you have never filled in shows "Add" in orange instead of a value.
• Some iPhone rows offer a red "Clear" at the bottom of their sheet: Pronouns, Birthday, Phone, Quiet hours and the living habits pickers. The plain text rows — Display name, Hometown, Bio, Work, Email and the socials — have none, so empty the field instead. On the chip rows, Languages, Pets and the Interests rows, tap the x on a chip to remove it.
• The iPhone Username sheet has no "Clear", and emptying the field does not remove a username. See "Set your @username".
• Two parts of this form are documented elsewhere, because that is where people go looking for them: "Getting paid back" is in Bills & money (see "Say where you want to be paid"), and the Recurring commitment rows are in the calendar area (see "Block the same hours every week").

The banner is the strip of colour or artwork behind your photo at the top of your profile. It also fills the top of your own side menu.

1. Open the editor.
2. On iPhone, use the "Color" / "Photo" switch under the preview. On Android, look for "your banner".
3. Tap one of the ten colours: Slate, Amber, Sage, Sky, Coral, Plum, Sand, Forest, Rust or Charcoal. The colour you tap is the colour you get, on both apps.
4. For a picture instead, tap "Upload Photo" on iPhone or "Use a photo instead" on Android, then choose an image.
5. On iPhone, tap "Save".

Worth knowing

• On Android a colour or photo takes effect the instant you tap it. On iPhone the banner is only stored when you tap "Save", even though the picture itself uploads straight away.
• If you have never picked one, both apps show artwork chosen from your account, so two people rarely share the same cover.
• The same ten colours are used for household covers and privacy lists.

Your username is how a housemate finds you when they send an invite. You are asked for one when you first sign up, and until your account has one both apps keep a "Pick a username" prompt on the Today screen, which is the shortest way to the field. You can change it once every 30 days.

1. Open the editor. If your account has no username yet, the quickest way in is the prompt on Today reading "Pick a username", with "Let your roommates find you easily" underneath: tapping it opens the editor for you, as a sheet on iPhone and a screen on Android.
2. Tap "Username" on iPhone, or the "Username" box on Android.
3. Type a name after the @. The app checks it and shows "Checking…", then "Available" or "Taken".
4. Once it says available, tap "Done" on iPhone, then "Save". On Android, tap "Save".
5. The prompt on Today goes as soon as a username is saved.

Worth knowing

• People try to change their username twice in the same month. The app refuses until 30 days after the last change, and tells you the date it will be allowed again.
• The prompt is only there while the field is empty, and it vanishes the moment you save one. Nothing else in either app ever tells you the field is empty, so an account can stay unfindable for months if you skip both this and the screen after the welcome tour (see "Pick a username after the tour" in Getting started).
• The rules are shown under the field. On iPhone: "Lowercase letters, numbers, _ and . 3 to 30 characters. Can change once every 30 days." On Android, more briefly: "Lowercase letters, numbers, _ and . Once every 30 days." Neither line says so, but a username must also start with a letter — break that and iPhone shows "Invalid format", while Android says "Start with a letter; letters, numbers, _ and . only".
• Capitals are folded to lowercase as you type and spaces are removed, so you do not have to fight your keyboard.
• The check runs a moment after you stop typing rather than on every letter. iPhone shows "Checking…" while it works; Android leaves the rules line in place, so give it a second before deciding a name is free.
• The 30-day clock only starts once you have changed the name. A username you have never changed can be changed straight away.
• While you are inside the 30 days, iPhone shows "Change rate limited" and a line reading "You can change your username again after" plus the date. Android greys the field out completely and shows the same date.
• On iPhone, "Done" only saves the new name once the check says "Available".
• Only Android can take a username away again, with the "Clear username" button under the field, and it hides that button while the 30-day wait is running — so a name changed in the last month cannot be dropped either. iPhone can swap one username for another but cannot leave you without one, so change it rather than trying to remove it.
• Clearing a username is not the same as changing it. An account with no username cannot be found when a housemate sends an invite.

Sleep, cleaning, cooking, guests, smoking and pets. These are the things that cause friction if nobody says them out loud, and they show as emoji chips on your profile.

1. Open the editor and find the living habits section.
2. Tap "Sleep schedule" and pick "Early Bird", "Night Owl", "Shift Worker" or "Flexible".
3. Tap "Cleaning style" and pick "Tidy", "Relaxed" or "Messy & Proud".
4. Tap "Cooking" and pick "Daily", "Often", "Occasional" or "Rarely".
5. Tap "Guests policy" on iPhone ("Guests" on Android) and pick your answer.
6. Tap "Smoking" and pick as many as apply: "Doesn't Smoke", "Cigarettes", "Vape", "Cannabis", "Other".
7. Tap "Pets" and add each animal, then tap "Save".

Worth knowing

• Smoking takes more than one answer, because cigarettes and cannabis are not mutually exclusive. On iPhone, choosing "Doesn't Smoke" clears the others for you. On Android it does not, so untap the others yourself.
• "Doesn't Smoke" is deliberately not shown on your profile. The chip row lists habits you have.
• On Android these are rows of words rather than sheets. Tap a word to choose it, and tap the chosen word again to unanswer the question. On iPhone use the red "Clear" at the bottom of the sheet.
• The guests options are worded slightly differently on the two apps — "Open Door", "Heads-Up" and "Rarely" on iPhone; "Open", "Heads Up" and "Rare" on Android. They are the same three answers.
• Pets are a list of your own words on iPhone (type and press return, or tap the plus) and comma-separated text on Android.
• Your answers show on your profile as chips: 🌙 sleep, 🧹 cleaning, 🍳 cooking, 👥 guests, 💨 smoking, 🐾 pets.

Who to call about you. This is separate from the household's own emergency contacts — the landlord, the plumber — which the owner of the home maintains. Nobody sees yours unless you switch sharing on.

1. Open the editor and scroll to "In an emergency".
2. Type their name in "Name" ("Their name" on Android).
3. Type their number in "Phone" ("Their number" on Android).
4. Type how you know them in "Relationship" ("How you know them" on Android).
5. Turn on "Share with my households" if you want housemates to have it.
6. Tap "Save".

Worth knowing

• There are two emergency lists and they are edited in different places. The house's — the landlord, the plumber, the neighbour with the spare key — is on the household page, and only the owner can change it. Yours is on your profile, and filling it in puts nothing in front of your housemates until you turn sharing on.
• Sharing is off by default. Until you turn it on, only you can see it. With it on, the contact appears in the emergency contacts of every home you are in.
• It is shown there attributed to you — "Sister · for Omar" on iPhone, "For Omar" on Android — so it is never mistaken for a house contact.
• Both apps keep "Share with my households" greyed out and untappable until you have typed a name: iPhone disables the switch and Android greys the tick, because a contact with no name is not stored at all.
• Clearing the name and saving removes the contact altogether rather than leaving a blank record behind.

A status is a small emoji and a few words about where you are — home, out, asleep. It shows as a badge on your photo everywhere in the app and as a line on your profile, and it can expire by itself.

1. On iPhone, open the side menu and tap the status pill under your name (it reads "Set status" when you have none). On Android, open your own profile page.
2. Pick one of the five presets: 🏠 "Home", 🚪 "Out", 😴 "Sleeping", 💻 "WFH", ✈️ "Out of town". On Android a preset is saved the instant you tap it, using the timing from Preferences → "Statuses clear after" and visible to everyone — the remaining steps apply only to the "Own words" sheet.
3. For your own wording, tap "Custom" on iPhone or "Own words" on Android, and type it.
4. Choose when it should end. On iPhone that is "CLEAR AFTER": "Don't clear", "In 1 hour", "Tomorrow morning" or "Pick a date…". On Android this only appears in the "Own words" sheet, under "clears": "Never", "In 30 minutes", "In an hour", "In 4 hours" or "Tomorrow".
5. Choose who can see it under "WHO CAN SEE THIS?" on iPhone, or "who sees it" on Android.
6. Tap "Done" on iPhone. On Android, tap "Set status" at the bottom of the "Own words" sheet — a preset needs no confirming, it is already set.

Worth knowing

• The status lives in different places on the two apps — the side-menu pill on iPhone, your own profile page on Android — and Android only asks about expiry and audience when you write your own words.
• On your profile the status reads as one line with its expiry, such as "🏠 Home until 8pm" or "✈️ Out of town until tomorrow morning". Once it expires it stops showing on its own.
• On iPhone you can only tap the status line on your profile when you already have one. With no status there is nothing there to tap, so set it from the side menu pill.
• Tapping one of the five presets on Android uses the timing from Preferences → "Statuses clear after". iPhone asks every time and starts on "Tomorrow morning".
• A custom status on iPhone always uses the pencil emoji. Android lets you type your own emoji next to the words, and takes up to 60 characters.
• iPhone remembers which clearing option you chose, so reopening the sheet does not land on "Pick a date…" by mistake, and a custom time is never set in the past.
• On iPhone, restricting a status to a privacy list hides it from other people's profiles and photo badges. Choose "Everyone" if you want the house to see it.
• On Android, "Only a list I choose" is offered in the "Own words" sheet only when you already have a privacy list.
• To remove it: "Clear status" in the iPhone sheet, the x on the side-menu pill, or "Clear" beside the presets on Android.

A read receipt is the coloured tick that tells whoever sent a message that you have opened it. The switch covers your own reads.

1. Open the side menu.
2. On iPhone, tap "Privacy" and find the "Read Receipts" section. On Android, tap "Preferences" and scroll to "sounds", where "Read receipts" sits with Sounds, Haptics and In-app banners rather than with anything privacy-shaped.
3. Turn "Share read receipts" off on iPhone, or "Read receipts" off on Android.
4. Leave the screen. Both apps save the change as you make it.

Worth knowing

• The switch is on the Privacy screen on iPhone, but on Android it is in Preferences under "sounds", next to Sounds and Haptics.
• With it off, your reads stop colouring anyone else's ticks. You carry on seeing theirs, on both apps, so turning it off costs you nothing.
• Both apps say so under the switch, in the same words: "Turning it off hides yours — you'll still see theirs".
• The setting follows your account rather than the phone, so switching it off on either phone covers both.
• Your own unread counts are not affected. Turning receipts off does not leave conversations looking unread to you.
• If iPhone cannot save the change it puts the switch back rather than leaving it showing a preference that was never stored.
• What the mark beside the time in your own bubbles means is a separate matter — see "Know whether a message has been read" in Chat.

A privacy list is your own group of people — "close friends", by whatever name you give it. Use one to share a story with some of the house rather than all of it, or to limit who sees you online.

1. Open the side menu. On iPhone, tap "Privacy" and find "Privacy Lists". On Android, tap "Privacy lists".
2. Tap "Create new list" on iPhone, or "New list" on Android.
3. Type a name: "List name" on iPhone, "Name it" on Android.
4. Give it an icon and a colour — type an emoji into "Emoji (optional)" on iPhone, or tap one of the eight icons under "An icon" on Android — then tap "Create".
5. Tap the list to open it. On iPhone tap "Add members", search, tick people and tap "Add (2)" — the button carries the number you have ticked. On Android tap somebody in the dialog to add or remove them.
6. Tap "Done".

Worth knowing

• iPhone has both an "Everyone" option and a built-in list called "Public". "Everyone" means anyone who can see your profile; "Public" is a list of all household members that you can point settings at.
• A list belongs to you rather than to a home, so the same list works across every home you are in.
• Members can only be people you live with. The iPhone picker groups them by home and searches by name or username.
• To use a list as the audience for new stories: on iPhone choose it under Privacy → "Default audience for new stories", where "Everyone" means no list. On Android tap "Make default" on the list, and "Unset" to undo it.
• iPhone comes with built-in lists marked "Default". Their membership follows your households — "All household members" or "Current roommates" — and they cannot be renamed or deleted.
• Only iPhone can rename a list or change its colour after it exists.
• In the Android list dialog, the button on the right is "Delete list" and the one on the left is "Done". Read them before tapping.

Every other report in the app is filed against one thing somebody posted. Reporting a profile is for the account itself — the pattern across a dozen posts rather than any one of them. It is on iPhone only.

1. Open the person's profile.
2. Tap the "…" button at the top right, over the banner.
3. Tap "Report profile".
4. Fill in the sheet the same way as anywhere else — the destination under "Who should see this", a reason under "What's wrong", and anything that would help under "Details" — as described in "Report somebody's post or comment" in The feed.
5. Tap "Send". A note reading "Thanks — we've got it" tells you where the report went.

Worth knowing

• Reporting a profile and reporting a post are different things. Point at a post when one post is the problem, and at the profile when the account is.
• "Report profile" is only in the menu when you share a home with the person, because a report is filed inside a home and there is nowhere to put one otherwise. Where you share none, the menu offers Block on its own.
• A profile report is about the account rather than one post — the pattern across a dozen posts. Point at a post when one post is the problem.
• Choosing "Child safety or exploitation" here does what it does everywhere: the report goes to HomieHub only, never to anyone in the house — see "Report something involving a child's safety" in The feed.
• Blocking is in the same menu and takes effect immediately, which reporting does not — see "Block someone, and unblock them".
• The "…" menu is not on your own profile.

Blocking hides someone's posts, stories, comments and messages from you, and yours from them. It takes effect immediately, with no confirmation step.

1. Find something they posted: a post, a comment, a chat message, a story or a board note.
2. Open its menu. On a post, story or board card that is the "…" or "⋯" button; on a chat message, press and hold it on iPhone or tap it once on Android.
3. Tap "Block" followed by their name. It lands on that tap — there is no "are you sure".
4. On iPhone you can also block the person straight from their profile: tap the "…" at the top right and tap "Block" followed by their name. Android has no block on a profile, so use something they posted there.
5. To undo it, open the side menu and tap "Privacy".
6. Find them under "Blocked People" ("blocked people" on Android) and tap "Unblock".

Worth knowing

• People expect blocking to remove a housemate from the house. It only hides social content — the shared money, chores, calendar and board are untouched. And unblocking does not always bring their content back: if they blocked you as well, the block that remains is theirs.
• Blocking works both ways, and both apps quote the scope: "You won't see their posts, stories, comments or messages, and they won't see yours."
• It does not remove anyone from a home: "Blocking doesn't remove them from a home — bills, chores and the calendar stay shared." You both still appear in the member list.
• What changes straight away: their posts and comments go from your feed, their circle leaves the stories ring at the top of Today, and their face leaves the row of people who liked a post. Android also drops you back on the feed.
• You can block from inside the story viewer as well, using the "…" while their story is playing. Android closes the viewer; iPhone drops the rest of that person's run and closes the viewer if there is nothing left to play.
• The board is deliberately left alone. A blocked housemate's list or note stays on the wall, because those are house property. If you want the card off your own board, that is "Take off the board" in the card's menu, which only resets where the card sits.
• On iPhone the button reads "a roommate" instead of a name when the name has not loaded yet or the person has left the home. The block itself still works.
• Reporting is a separate item in the same menus. A report is read by someone else later; a block takes effect now.
• With nobody blocked the screen simply reads "You haven't blocked anyone.", and the note under the list repeats what blocking covers.
• If they blocked you rather than the other way round, there is nothing on your side to undo.

There is no separate preview. A housemate's profile uses exactly the same layout as yours, so opening theirs tells you what yours looks like from the outside.

1. Open the Today screen and tap a housemate's photo in the "who's home" row.
2. Note which sections they have and which are missing — empty ones are hidden, not blank.
3. Look at the row of buttons: "Message", "Call" and "Text".
4. Open your own profile and scroll through. Everything you can see there, people you share a home with can see too — apart from your contact rows if you have turned "Show contact info" off.

Worth knowing

• Visible to the house: your name, @username, pronouns, status, bio, the About chips, the Living Habits chips, Schedule, Interests, and the Connect rows.
• iPhone also shows a role chip — "Owner" or "Member" — followed by "at" and the name of a home you share with that person.
• The "Message", "Call" and "Text" row is explained under "Start a one-to-one chat" in Chat, including when Call and Text are greyed out and what somebody who has turned "Show contact info" off leaves you with.
• Your payment handles are not on your profile. They only surface in the "Pay" menu on a bill you are owed for.
• Your emergency contact is not on your profile either. It appears in a home's emergency contacts only if you turned sharing on.
• If somebody deletes their account, anything they wrote stays attributed to "Deleted user", and both apps now replace their profile page with "This account has been deleted." and a line saying their posts, comments and messages stay under that name.

Almost everything in this section lives behind the side menu rather than in a tab. It is worth opening once so you know what is in it.

1. Tap the menu button (three lines) at the top left of any main screen.
2. Note the four tiles across the top: ONLINE, THEME, MUTE, and FREE PLAN (or PRO if you have Plus).
3. Under YOU you will find My profile, Notifications and Bills.
4. Under SETTINGS you will find Preferences and Privacy.
5. Tap HELP to unfold Help & FAQ, Send feedback, Rate HomieHub and Sign out.

Worth knowing

• People go looking for the notification switches in Preferences. They are not there; they are behind the bell.
• Android has one extra row under SETTINGS: Privacy lists.
• The switches for what you get notified about are not in Preferences. They sit behind your notifications list, described further down.
• On the iPhone, Preferences has Cancel and Save at the top, and most changes are not kept until you tap Save. On Android every change saves as you make it, and there is no Save button.
• Two Preferences rows are documented with your profile rather than here, because they are about what the house learns about you: the read-receipts switch, and how long a status lasts (Auto-Clear Status After on iPhone, Statuses clear after on Android).

Everything the app wants to tell you collects in one list. The bell in the top right corner carries the number of items you have not read yet.

1. Tap the bell at the top right of any main screen.
2. Read down the list: each row shows who did it, what it was, and how long ago.
3. Rows you have not read yet carry a small coloured dot on the left.
4. On the iPhone, pull the list down to refresh it. On Android it refreshes itself each time you come back to it.
5. Tap the back arrow at the top left to leave.

Worth knowing

• The bell counts up to 9 and then shows 9+. The Notifications row in the side menu shows the full number on the iPhone, and up to 99+ on Android.
• On the iPhone the same number appears on the app icon on your home screen.
• When there is nothing waiting, the iPhone says "Nothing to catch up on" and "New activity will land here." Android says "Nothing new."

Three filters sit at the top of the list. All and Unread show a count; Mentions does not.

1. Open the bell.
2. Tap All to see everything, Unread to see only what you have not opened, or Mentions to see only things aimed at you personally.
3. Tap All again to go back to the full list.

Worth knowing

• Mentions sounds like @-mentions, and it is not. It is a shortcut to the things about you rather than about the household.
• Mentions has nothing to do with typing someone's name with an @. It means things aimed at you rather than at the house.
• The two apps put slightly different things in Mentions. On the iPhone it is comments on your posts and direct messages. On Android it is those plus likes on your posts and invitations you have been sent.
• The filter resets to All the next time you open the list.

Opening an item marks it read. You can also clear items you have no interest in.

1. Tap any row. The dot clears and the app takes you to whatever the notification was about.
2. On the iPhone, swipe a row to the left and tap Dismiss to remove it from the list.
3. On Android, tap the ✕ at the right of a row to remove it.
4. On Android, tap Mark all read next to the unread heading to clear every dot at once.

Worth knowing

• iPhone users look for a Mark all read button that only Android has.
• There is no Mark all read on the iPhone. The number on the bell comes down as you open items, or as you dismiss them.
• Dismissing an unread item also takes it off the bell's count.
• Dismissing cannot be undone. The row is gone from your list, though whatever it pointed at (the post, the bill, the message) is untouched.

Every home has one owner, and ownership can move. Four kinds of message tell you about it, and each one opens the home it is about.

1. Tap "Someone asked to take over this home" to open that home. You are its owner, and someone in it has asked to take it on.
2. Tap "You now own this home" to open the home you have just been given.
3. Tap "Ownership of your home has moved" to open the home you used to own. You are still a member of it.
4. Tap "You're now the owner of a home" to open a home that was handed to you because its previous owner deleted their account.

Worth knowing

• Two of these read alike. "You now own this home" means you have gained a home; "Ownership of your home has moved" means you have lost one.
• A takeover request is a message, not a question with buttons. Nothing in either app accepts or refuses one. If you would rather hand the home over, do that yourself from the home's own screen; if you would rather keep it, there is nothing to tap.
• These four have no switch on the notification settings screen, so they reach you whatever else you have turned off. A mute holds them back while it runs.
• Whoever owns a home is who Plus is bought by, so ownership moving also moves who pays for the member limit.

When something happens while you have the app open, a small card slides down from the top with the person's photo, what happened and which home it came from. It goes away on its own after about four seconds.

1. Tap the banner to open whatever it is about. That also marks the item read, so the number on the bell comes down.
2. On the iPhone, flick the banner upwards to send it away early.
3. On Android, tap the ✕ on the banner to send it away.
4. To stop banners on the iPhone, open the side menu, tap Preferences, then under Sound & Haptics switch off Show toast banners.
5. To stop them on Android, open the side menu, tap Preferences, then under sounds switch off In-app banners.

Worth knowing

• Turning In-app banners off on Android does not stop the banners at the moment. The switch saves, and the banner keeps appearing.
• On the iPhone the purple bar under the banner is the four seconds running out.
• Only one banner shows at a time. A second arrival replaces the first and restarts the clock.
• The iPhone does not show a banner while you are already looking at your notifications list.
• Sending a banner away without tapping it leaves the item unread. It is still in your list with its dot on it.
• Switching Show toast banners off on the iPhone takes effect straight away, before you tap Save.
• On Android the In-app banners switch is remembered but is not acted on yet, so banners still slide in with it off.
• Your list and the bell's number stay up to date whatever you do with banners.

Your notifications list works whatever your phone allows. Banners on your lock screen need the phone's permission, and the two apps ask for it at very different moments. Android asks the instant you first open the app, before you have an account. The iPhone waits until you are inside, and asks with a card of its own first.

1. On Android, a dialog from the phone appears over the Welcome home screen the first time you open the app, asking whether HomieHub may send you notifications. Tap Allow, or Don't allow — either answer leaves you on the Welcome home screen.
2. On the iPhone, nothing is asked until you are signed in, past the welcome tour and in a home. A card headed "Stay in the loop" then appears at the top of Today.
3. Tap Enable on that card, then Allow in the phone's own prompt. Or tap Maybe later to leave it for now.
4. If you tapped Maybe later, open the bell, tap the gear at the top right, and use the row at the top under SYSTEM.
5. That row reads Turn on push notifications if you have not been asked yet, Push notifications on with a green tick if all is well, or Notifications off in Settings if the phone is blocking them.
6. Tap Notifications off in Settings to jump to the iPhone's own Settings and turn them back on.
7. If Android is blocking them, open the bell, tap What you're told about, and use the card headed "Notifications are turned off": tap Turn them on, or Open Android settings.

Worth knowing

• People set all the switches, get nothing, and assume the app is broken. The phone itself has to allow notifications first, which is what the top row of that screen is for. On Android the opposite catches people: the very first thing on screen is a question about notifications, before you have an account. It is not part of signing in, and answering it either way just puts you back on the Welcome home screen.
• The iPhone card is the app asking, not the phone. The real prompt only comes after you tap Enable, and the phone shows that prompt once per install — which is why HomieHub asks softly first rather than spending it on somebody who is busy.
• Maybe later brings the card back in seven days. Tapping Enable and then refusing the phone's own prompt does not: the card never returns, and the only way back is the iPhone's Settings app, which is what the Notifications off in Settings row does for you.
• On Android, Don't allow blocks every notification, including ones you later switch on inside the app. The Notifications screen then carries the card reading "Notifications are turned off" with a Turn them on button.
• The Android card checks again every time you come back to the app, so it disappears by itself once you have allowed them.
• Android phones older than Android 13 never show the dialog at all. Permission comes with installing the app.
• With the phone blocking notifications, none of the switches below can reach you, however they are set.

Eight switches, one for each kind of thing that can reach you. They are grouped by subject, and each one saves the moment you flip it.

1. Open the bell.
2. On the iPhone, tap the gear at the top right. On Android, tap What you're told about.
3. Flip any switch. There is nothing to save.
4. On the iPhone, work down the groups Stories, Engagement, Chat, Bills, Calendar and Household.
5. On Android, work down the groups the feed, chat, money, the calendar and the house.
6. For messages, use the two switches under Chat: New direct message and New household chat message on the iPhone, Direct messages and Household chat under chat on Android.
7. On the iPhone, tap Done to close the screen. On Android, use the back arrow.

Worth knowing

• The switches are per account and shared between your phones, while the light or dark setting is per phone. It is easy to expect both to behave the same way.
• All eight start on. Switch off whichever you would rather not hear about.
• Between them they cover new stories, comments on your posts, likes on your posts, direct messages, household chat messages, a bill that names you, an event added to the household calendar, and someone joining your home.
• The two chat switches are independent, so you can keep one-to-ones coming through and drop the home chat, or the other way round.
• These switches only change what your phone tells you. The unread number on a row in the Chats tab is separate and keeps counting.
• Three of them cover a little more than their label says. Bill assigned to me also covers a nudge about a bill; Household event added also covers an invitation to an event; Member joined also covers an invitation to a home.
• Some things reach you whatever the switches say, because they have no switch of their own: news about who owns a home, word that someone who owed you money has deleted their account, and a housemate asking you to buy Plus. A mute holds those back.
• The two apps word the switches differently for the same thing. "Bill assigned to me" on the iPhone is "A bill names me" on Android; "New story by household member" is "New stories"; "Member joined" is "Somebody joins".
• Each switch has a line under it on the iPhone explaining exactly when it fires, for example "When a new bill split is assigned to you".
• The settings belong to your account, not to the phone, so switching something off on one phone switches it off on the other.
• This screen decides what the app sends. Whether it arrives is also up to your phone, so check the row at the very top as well.

Muting stops HomieHub sending notifications to your phone for a set time, without touching any of your switches. It is a length of time rather than an on-off switch. It only silences your phone, though — while you are muted, things still land in your notifications list, the bell still counts them, and in-app banners still slide in while you have the app open.

1. Open the side menu.
2. Tap the MUTE tile.
3. Choose Mute for 1 hour, Mute for 8 hours, or Mute until I turn it back on.
4. The tile now reads MUTED. Tap it and choose Unmute to end the mute early.

Worth knowing

• The mute lives on a tile in the side menu, not among the notification switches, so it is easy to miss.
• Muting does not reset anything. When it lifts, your switches are exactly as you left them.
• A mute beats every switch, including the things that have no switch of their own.
• Android has a second way in: open the bell, tap What you're told about, and use the Mute for 8 hours row at the top under everything. It shows Muted until, and the time, while a mute is running, and the button changes to Unmute.
• The iPhone has no mute inside the notification settings screen. Use the MUTE tile in the side menu.
• "Mute until I turn it back on" does not expire on its own in any practical sense, so remember to unmute.

The first of the four tiles in the side menu says whether the house sees you as online. It acts on the first tap, with nothing to confirm.

1. Open the side menu.
2. Tap the ONLINE tile. Its dot fills in green when you are online and goes grey when you are not.
3. Tap it again to put it back.

Worth knowing

• Turning the tile off on the iPhone is not a way to stay hidden, because the next time you open the app it goes back on. Use the online-status setting in Your profile & privacy for that.
• There is no confirmation and no undo prompt, so it is easy to flip by accident on the way to another row. Tap it again and you are back where you were.
• On the iPhone it does not stay off for long. Opening HomieHub sets you online again, and leaving the app for about a minute sets you offline.
• On Android nothing sets it for you, so you are online only while you have tapped the tile on.
• Who is allowed to see this is a separate setting, on the Privacy screen on iPhone and in Preferences on Android — see "Choose who can see you are online" in Your profile & privacy.

You can force a light or dark look, or let the phone decide.

1. Open the side menu and tap the THEME tile.
2. On the iPhone, a sheet headed "Choose your vibe" appears. Tap Light, Dark or Auto and then Done.
3. On Android the tile opens Preferences. Under appearance, choose Follow system, Light or Dark.

Worth knowing

• Auto on the iPhone and Follow system on Android mean the same thing: match whatever the phone is set to.
• This setting is kept on the phone, not on your account, so setting dark on one phone does not change the other.
• The iPhone sheet shows a small preview of each look before you commit to it.

The iPhone app can put the household's balance, who is home and what is next on your home screen and lock screen. These four switches decide which of those surfaces it uses.

1. Open the side menu and tap Preferences.
2. Under Home Screen, switch Home-screen widgets, Lock-screen complications, Live Activities and Dynamic Island on or off.
3. Close Preferences. These four apply immediately and do not need Save.

Worth knowing

• Dynamic Island cannot be tapped until Live Activities is on, which looks like a broken switch.
• Dynamic Island is greyed out until Live Activities is on, because it is part of the same thing.
• Switching any of these off hides the surface. It does not delete anything.
• The widget may take a little while to catch up after you change a switch, because the home screen refreshes on its own schedule.

Plus is the paid version. It lifts the two limits of the free plan: how many people can be in a home you own, and how many homes you can own. It is the same page that appears once at the end of your first run.

1. Open the side menu.
2. Tap the FREE PLAN tile (it reads PRO once you have Plus).
3. Read the two perk rows: Unlimited roommates and Unlimited homes. Those are the only two limits the free plan puts on you.
4. Read the two plan rows underneath, each with its real price in your own currency.
5. Tap Close on the iPhone, or Not now on Android, to leave without buying.

Worth knowing

• It looks like a paywall you have to get past to use the app, especially at the end of first run. It is not: dismissing it is a normal outcome, and the free plan covers a two-person household indefinitely. Reaching Plus from the side-menu tile also shows wording written for a limit you may not have hit — the iPhone names your first home as being full, and Android talks about starting another home.
• The free plan covers 2 people in a home and 2 homes that you own. Those two ceilings are the whole of what Plus lifts.
• The same page appears by itself once at the end of first run — once per account on that phone. Dismissing it changes nothing, and the same account on a new phone is offered it again along with the tour.
• Nothing is offered for a home you joined with somebody's code, because that home belongs to whoever made it and only its owner can lift its limits.
• A brand-new account that has not created a home yet sees nothing on the screen at all. You meet the offer later, when you create a home and hit the member limit.
• Plus belongs to you, not to a house. One subscription covers every home you own.
• Joining somebody else's home with a code costs nothing and never has, however many homes you are already in.
• Your bill history is not shortened on the free plan. Every old bill is there either way.
• Reminders on board cards are free on both phones as well. They are not part of Plus.
• If the plan rows read "Loading plans…" or show a spinner, the store has not answered yet. Give it a moment rather than concluding Plus is unavailable.
• The page also comes up when you try to invite another person to a home that is already full. On the iPhone it comes up when you try to start a third home too; on Android that screen opens as normal and offers a See Plus link on your homes list instead.
• On the iPhone the wording is shared with the screen you get when a home really is full, so it can say a home you made a minute ago "is full at 2 members on the free plan". Android names the real member count.
• On Android, if the wall was raised for a home somebody else owns, it says "Plus is bought by whoever owns this home." Buying it yourself would not lift that home's limit.
• Already paid, on a new phone or after a reinstall? Restore Purchases is on this page, under the big button — see "Get Plus back on a new phone".

Two plans, shown as cards you pick between. The yearly one carries a badge saying how much it saves.

1. Open the Plus page from the FREE PLAN tile in the side menu.
2. Read the two cards. The yearly one is called Annual on the iPhone and Yearly on Android, and shows what it works out to per month alongside a SAVE badge.
3. The monthly card says Cancel anytime.
4. Tap the card you want. The yearly plan is chosen for you to begin with.
5. Tap Continue with Plus Annual or Continue with Plus Monthly on the iPhone, or Get HomieHub Plus on Android.
6. Finish the payment in your phone's own payment sheet.

Worth knowing

• The same plan is called Annual on the iPhone and Yearly on Android.
• Prices come from the App Store or Play Store, in your own currency. If you see a spinner or "Loading plans…" instead of prices, the store has not answered yet; wait a moment rather than tapping through.
• The SAVE badge is worked out from the two prices in front of you. If it is missing, the yearly plan is not actually cheaper in your currency.
• The subscription renews by itself. Cancel it in your Apple ID settings on the iPhone, or in the Play Store on Android — not in HomieHub.
• Terms of Use and Privacy Policy links sit at the bottom of the page.

The HELP part of the side menu folds away. It holds answers to common questions, a way to write to us, and a link to the store.

1. Open the side menu and tap HELP to unfold it.
2. Tap Help & FAQ for a list of questions. Tap a question to unfold its answer, and Done or the back arrow to leave.
3. Tap Send feedback to write to us. The message is already addressed to [email protected] with a subject filled in, and nothing is sent until you send it yourself.
4. Tap Rate HomieHub to leave the app for the App Store or the Play Store.

Worth knowing

• Send feedback does not send anything by itself. It opens a message with the address and subject filled in, and nothing reaches us until you send it.
• On the iPhone, Send feedback opens a mail sheet inside HomieHub, with a few lines about your phone and app version already at the bottom of the message. On Android it opens your own mail app instead.
• The iPhone's Help & FAQ also carries Rate HomieHub and Email support underneath the questions.
• The last row in this same section is Sign out — see "Sign out" next.

Signing out ends the session on this phone and puts you back on the Welcome home screen. Nothing is deleted. The row is in the side menu, inside the HELP section at the bottom, which is folded shut when the menu opens.

1. Tap the three-line menu icon in the top left of any main screen.
2. Scroll to the bottom of the menu and tap HELP to unfold that section.
3. Tap Sign out.
4. You are returned to the Welcome home screen straight away.

Worth knowing

• Nothing about signing out is visible when the menu opens: it is inside HELP, folded away under a heading that does not sound like it would hold it. And signing out is not deleting your account — sign out leaves everything in place, while Delete Account, described next, cannot be undone.
• There is no "are you sure". One tap signs you out.
• HELP is folded shut when the menu opens, on both phones, so the row is not on screen until you tap the heading.
• There is a second way to it on each phone. On the iPhone, tap My profile in the menu and scroll to the very bottom of Edit profile for the red Sign Out button. On Android, tap Preferences and scroll to the bottom, under account.
• Save any profile edits first. Signing out from the bottom of the iPhone editor closes it, and unsaved rows are lost the same way they are any other time you leave.
• Signing out removes nothing. Your homes, posts, bills, chores and calendar are all still there when you sign back in, and it is not a way to leave a home.
• Both apps drop this phone's notification registration on the way out, so alerts for your account stop arriving here until you sign back in.
• The welcome tour is remembered per account on that phone, so signing back in on the same phone does not replay it. A housemate signing in on your handset does get it, because it is a different account.

Deleting removes your profile and your data, takes you out of every home you are in, and signs you out for good. It cannot be undone, so both apps put two gates in front of it, and the second one makes you type a word.

1. Open the side menu and tap Preferences.
2. Scroll to Account Management on the iPhone, or account management on Android, where it sits just above Sign out at the very bottom, and tap Delete Account.
3. Read the list of what will happen, then tap Yes, continue.
4. Type DELETE in the box headed "Type DELETE to confirm".
5. Tap Delete permanently.
6. Or take the other route: side menu, then Privacy, then Delete my account — the last row on the iPhone, under "your account" on Android. The iPhone asks "Delete your account?" with Continue, then ends in a Final confirmation sheet with Delete my account permanently; on Android the box to type DELETE into appears in the card itself.
7. Wait. The app signs you out and returns to the sign-in screen by itself.

Worth knowing

• Delete Account sits in two different places in each app, and the wording of the buttons differs between them, so instructions from one screen do not quite match the other. It is also not the way to leave one household — it removes you from all of them and ends the account for good.
• What happens: your profile, status, photos, stories and privacy lists are removed; you are taken out of every home; a home you own is handed to another member, so nobody in the house loses it, and that member is told they now own it; posts, comments and messages you sent stay but read as "Deleted user"; and anyone who owes you money, or who you owe, is notified.
• Your old profile page becomes a short note reading "This account has been deleted." on both phones, with no Message button on it, rather than an empty-looking profile.
• You will not be able to sign back in with the same Apple ID or email.
• The iPhone accepts delete in lower case and ignores a stray space either side. Android upper-cases what you type and wants exactly DELETE.
• Tap Cancel at either gate and nothing happens. The first tap on Delete Account removes nothing — the typing step is the dangerous one.
• Tapping away from the confirmation does not call it off once the request is in flight. Both apps hold the dialog open until it finishes.
• If you only want out of one house, leave that home from its own screen instead. Deleting the account is not the way to do it.