Open Point Sprout and pick the button that matches whose device this is. Parents tap Sign in with Apple. A child's own device uses I'm a Kid, which signs in anonymously so no child account or email is created. The footer on that screen says "Your data is private and only shared with family members you invite." — that is the whole model: your family's data stays between the people you invite.
The first parent to sign in creates the family, and everyone else is invited into it later.
Only one parent should do this. If your partner has already created the family, you join theirs rather than making a second one.
After you create the family, Point Sprout walks you through eight steps that build your starting setup. It opens with a welcome step and a Get Started button, then moves through Who are we raising?, What earns points?, What loses points?, Build your schedule, What can they work toward?, Set reward goals, and Invite a co-parent. Use Next and Back to move between steps, and Let's go! to finish. Nothing you choose here is locked in — activities, rewards, and schedules can all be changed later from inside the app.
Go to the Kids tab and tap + (its accessibility label is "Add kid"). The New Kid sheet asks for a Name, an optional Choose photo, and a Starting Balance. Tap Save and the child appears across the app. If your Home screen is still empty, the entry point is a button labeled Add a Kid instead — it opens the same sheet.
This happens when your family has no children in it yet. With zero kids, the History, Rewards, and Kids tabs return you to Home, because each of them needs at least one child to show anything. Settings is unaffected — the gear icon at the top right of Home works in every state, so you can still sign out, manage your subscription, invite a co-parent, or switch families. Add a child using the Add a Kid button on Home and the other tabs become available immediately.
There is no Settings tab. Point Sprout has exactly four tabs — Home, History, Rewards, and Kids — and settings open as a sheet titled Settings from the gear icon at the top right of the Home tab. The path is Home tab → gear icon → Settings. The gear is there in every state, including before you have added any children.
On the child's device, open Point Sprout and tap I'm a Kid rather than Sign in with Apple. That signs the device in anonymously, then asks for the 6-character family code — you'll find it in a parent's Settings under Invite a Partner, or the child can scan it as a QR code. The device then waits until a parent approves the join request from their own device, and once approved, Kid Mode setup starts on the child's device. One detail worth knowing up front: a child's screen-time threshold is set only during Kid Mode setup step 3, Screen Time Control, on the child's own device. There is no parent-side control for it, so if the threshold needs to change you will need the child's device in hand.
Point Sprout requires iOS 17.0 or later and runs on iPhone and iPad — a shared iPad works well as a Kid Mode device. One annual subscription covers the whole family, so co-parents and kids do not each need to buy it. Billing, cancellation, and refunds are handled entirely by Apple. To cancel, tap Manage Subscription in Point Sprout's Settings — it opens your Apple Account subscription page — or go to your device's Settings → Apple Account → Subscriptions. The Apple Watch app is a companion only: it lets you answer today's scheduled check-ins from your wrist, and everything else happens on the phone.
Open the Home tab → gear icon → Settings → Invite a Partner. That section shows a 6-character code and a QR code, plus Share Invite Code to send the code by message or email. The other person enters the code on their own device, and then you approve them — the code alone does not add anyone.
You can do this even before adding any kids — the Home header and its gear icon are always shown, so Settings and the invite section are always reachable. The only zero-kids quirk is that the other tabs return you to the Home tab.
Entering a code only files a request. Someone already in the family has to approve it before you are in. After you submit the code you will see Waiting for approval, and nothing else moves until then.
Tell the person who gave you the code to open, on their device: Home tab → gear icon → Settings → Join Requests, and tap Approve on your row. Only the family owner and co-parents see that section — a caregiver cannot approve you. Once they tap Approve, your device joins on its own; you do not re-enter the code.
Go to Home tab → gear icon → Settings → Join Requests. Each pending row says what the person asked for: Wants to join as co-parent, Wants to join as caregiver, or Kid device. Tap Approve to let them in or Deny to reject the request.
The section appears only when a request is pending, and only for the owner and co-parents. Kid devices go through the same approval step as adults.
On the new adult device, at Set Up Your Family, choose the Join a family card ("Your partner already created a family"). Fill in What should we call you? at the top of the screen first — the Join a family button stays greyed out until both your name and the full 6-character code are entered. Then type the code into Family code, or use Scan QR code to read the QR from the other phone, and tap Join a family.
You will land on Waiting for approval. Leave the app open or come back later — once the owner or a co-parent approves the request, the family loads.
On your child's device, tap I'm a Kid, then at Join Your Family choose Enter family code ("Get the code from a parent's PointSprout app"). Enter the 6-character code under Family code, or use Scan QR code, then tap Join Family.
The request then waits for you. Approve it from Home tab → gear icon → Settings → Join Requests — the row will read Kid device.
Both can run the day-to-day app: giving and taking points, handling requests, and messaging. The difference is control over the family itself.
You pick which one you are handing out when you generate a code: Generate New Code offers New co-parent code and New caregiver code.
Codes are deliberately short-lived. The app states it plainly: "Codes are single-use and expire after 24 hours — generate a new one anytime." A code stops working the moment you approve someone with it, and it expires 24 hours after it was created. Both limits are enforced on our server, not only in the app.
To issue a fresh one, go to Home tab → gear icon → Settings → Invite a Partner → Generate New Code. The app first asks "Generate a new invite code?" with two choices: New co-parent code and New caregiver code. Pick the one that matches the person you are inviting, and the button reads Generating… while the fresh code is created.
Yes. Under Home tab → gear icon → Settings → Families you will find Switch Family (N), where N is how many families you belong to; the one you are in now is labelled "<name> (current)". Use Join Another Family to enter a code for a second family, or Create New Family to start a fresh one.
Each family keeps its own kids, points, rewards, and history, stored separately on your device. Switching families swaps the whole app over — nothing is shared or merged between them.
Go to Home tab → gear icon → Settings → Families → Leave This Family. What you are asked to confirm depends on your role and on whether anyone else is still in the family. You will see one of four actions: Leave Family (you step out and the family carries on), Delete Family or Delete Everything Forever (you own the family and no other adults are in it, so the family and its data go with you), or Choose New Owner (you own a family other adults are still using). Kid devices don't keep a family alive: if only your kids' devices remain, leaving still deletes the family and their data.
Deletion is permanent — points history, rewards, and messages for that family are gone and cannot be restored.
If other adults (co-parents or caregivers) are still in the family, you must hand it over first. The leave flow offers Choose New Owner, which opens the Transfer Ownership sheet; pick an existing co-parent or caregiver and tap Transfer & Leave. They become the owner, and you leave. Ownership can only go to someone already in the family, never to a kid device. If only kid devices remain, there is no one to hand it to — leaving deletes the family instead.
Your subscription does not move with the ownership. The app says it directly: "Heads up: you pay for this family's subscription. It keeps billing your Apple Account after you leave and stays linked to this family — it can't fund another one. To stop it, cancel in Settings → Subscriptions." Billing is handled entirely by Apple — PointSprout can't cancel the subscription for you. The quickest route is the Manage Subscription link in Settings (under Subscription, and also shown on the Transfer Ownership screen), which opens Apple's subscription page where you can cancel. You can also go to iOS Settings → Subscriptions or contact Apple Support for renewal dates and refunds.
Award points from the Home tab.
The entry lands in the History tab right away, and the kid's balance updates on their card.
Same path, different button: Home tab → the kid's card → Subtract. The sheet that opens has the same Kid, Reason, Points, and Note cards, and you finish with Save. Reasons are kept in two separate lists, so Subtract offers your lose activities rather than your earn ones. The third button on the card, Message, sends a note without moving any points.
Use the All Kids menu on the Home tab. It offers Add Points for All, Subtract from All, and Message All Kids. Each child still gets their own entry in History, so you can review or undo them individually afterward. This is the fastest way to handle something the whole family did together, like a shared chore or a group slip-up.
Go to Home tab → gear icon → Settings → Activities & Rewards → Earn Activities or Lose Activities. From there, tap Add from suggestions to pull in a ready-made activity, or + to write your own. The editor has sections for Title, Description, Default Points, Category, and Icon. Earn activities get one more section, Schedule — check-ins are an earn-side feature, so a lose activity's editor doesn't show it.
One thing to know: with no kids in the family yet, the other three tabs send you back to Home — but the Home header and its gear icon stay visible even then, so Settings is always reachable.
Open the same list — Home tab → gear icon → Settings → Activities & Rewards → Earn Activities or Lose Activities — and tap the activity to reopen the editor. Changes to Default Points apply to entries you record from then on. Entries already in History are a permanent record and are not rewritten, which is deliberate: the ledger is meant to be something you and your kids can trust. If a past entry was wrong, correct it with a new entry rather than by editing the activity.
Open an Earn Activities entry — only earn activities can be scheduled — and turn on Enable check-in schedule in its Schedule section. That reveals a Frequency picker and a check-in time picker. On a brand-new daily activity you also get Times per day (Once, Twice, or 3 times) — choosing more than once creates a separate morning/afternoon/evening routine per slot — and choosing Weekly swaps in a Day of week picker. Save the activity and its check-ins start appearing on the Home tab at those times.
Schedules only look forward. An activity you create today won't generate check-ins for days before it existed, so a new bedtime routine won't arrive already showing a week of blanks. Settings also has a Schedule entry that opens a sheet titled Schedule, with Cancel and Save.
Scheduled check-ins appear in the Check-ins section of the Home tab. Each row has Done and Missed. Days with two or more waiting check-ins also get All Done and All Missed buttons for clearing the whole day at once.
Once three or more are waiting, the section collapses into a single row reading "N activities pending" — tap it to open a sheet titled Check-ins and work through them there. Clear the last one in that sheet and it reads All Done! with "All check-ins have been answered." On the Home tab itself there is nothing to see when nothing is outstanding: the Check-ins section is not drawn at all.
No. Missed records a zero-point informational entry — it shows up in History as a record that the check-in went unanswered, but the balance doesn't move. If you want a missed routine to carry a real consequence, record it separately with Subtract on the kid's card. Keeping the two apart means you can track patterns without every lapse turning into a penalty.
Yes, for today's scheduled check-ins. The watch app is a companion for exactly that — it doesn't award or subtract arbitrary points, and it doesn't reach back to earlier days. The phone is the source of truth, so anything you answer on the watch is recorded there.
If a co-parent or your own iPhone answers a slot first, the card on the watch disappears without a message. That's intended: the check-in is handled, and there's nothing left for you to decide.
Open the History tab. Every point change is listed there in order, newest first, including earns, spends, losses, missed check-ins, requests, transfers between kids, and balance edits. If you have not recorded anything yet, the tab shows No transactions yet. At the bottom of the tab there is a collapsible Message Log that gathers family messages separately from the ledger; when there are unread ones, it reads "Message Log (N unread)".
Yes. The History tab has eight filter chips across the top: All, Earned, Spent, Lost, Missed, Requests, Transfers, and Edits. Tap one to narrow the list, and tap All to go back to the full ledger. Edits is the one to reach for when you want to see balance corrections a parent made by hand, and Missed shows scheduled check-ins that went unanswered.
Two routes, both in the History tab:
An undo writes its own entry rather than erasing the original, so the record stays honest. Each entry can only be undone once — if you undo something and then want the points back, record a new transaction instead.
Swipe right on a row in the History tab and tap Edit to change the entry's note — for example, to add context. The points, kid, and date on an entry cannot be edited; the ledger is append-only. To fix any of those, undo the entry and record a new one.
Go to the Kids tab → tap the kid → Edit Kid → section Balance. From there you can set Current balance or Starting balance directly. The Quick Actions section just below has Reset to Starting Balance and Set Balance to 0 if you want a clean slate for one child — each asks you to confirm first. The section footer says it plainly: "Changes to balances are recorded in the history for accountability." Corrections made here show up in the History tab under the Edits filter, so nothing happens silently.
The kid editor floors the balance at zero, so a parent cannot type a number below it. This is deliberate: a hand-typed negative balance is almost always a mistake. Balances can still go negative through loans between kids, which is by design — a child who borrows points and has not paid them back is meant to show it.
Open the Home tab and look for the Make-Up Opportunities section. When a child has missed check-ins, a row appears reading "N pts missed this week", labeled Offer Make-Up. Tap the row to open the Make-Up Challenge sheet, or swipe left on it and tap Skip to pass on the opportunity. In the sheet, the Make-Up Task field takes a short description (the placeholder reads "e.g. Clean your room"), and Send delivers it to the child. Accepted challenges appear under Make-Up Confirmations; if the child declines, the offer moves to Declined Make-Ups, where you can swipe left on the entry and tap Dismiss to clear it.
Open the Home tab → gear icon → Settings → section Data Management. These are the actions that reset your data, and the first two cannot be undone:
There is no in-app backup and no way to recover data after a reset, so treat both of the first two as final. The gear icon is always at the top of the Home tab, even before you've added any kids.
Open the Rewards tab and tap the + button (its accessibility label is "Add Reward"). The New Reward sheet has sections for Title (placeholder "e.g. Movie night pick"), Description, Point Cost, Category, and Icon. Fill in what you need and tap Add in the top right — the Done button only closes the keyboard. Note that with no kids in the family yet, the other tabs return you to Home — add a kid first, then come back to the Rewards tab.
In the Rewards tab, swipe left on the reward and tap Edit to reopen the same sheet, this time titled Edit Reward. (You can also tap a reward in Settings → Rewards.) Every field is editable, including Point Cost, so you can raise or lower a price as your family's economy shifts. Tap Save to keep your changes.
If a child doesn't have enough points, the row reads "Need N more pts" instead of offering Redeem.
In Kid Mode, the reward card's button reads Request, or "Need N more" when they're short on points. Tapping Request opens the Send Request? alert ("Ask your parent to approve <reward> for N points?"). After they tap Send Request, they see Request Sent! with the note "Your parent will see your request and can approve or deny it." The points aren't spent until you approve.
Open the Home tab and find the Reward Requests section, which shows a badge reading "N pending". Each row has a checkmark button (accessibility label "Approve — <reward title>") and an X button ("Deny — <reward title>"). Tapping the X opens a sheet titled Add a Note with a Reason (optional) field and the footer "Your child will see this message." — write a short explanation there, then tap Deny.
Yes. In Kid Mode, the Suggest an Idea section has three buttons: Reward, Challenge, and Penalty. Each opens a matching sheet — Suggest a Reward, Suggest a Challenge, or Suggest a Penalty — where your child describes the idea and taps Submit. A Ready to send? confirmation screen follows, and Send it! sends the suggestion to you for review. Nothing your child suggests takes effect until a parent approves it.
They can, from a chat thread in Kid Mode. Your child opens a thread with a sibling, taps the menu, and chooses Send Points, which opens the Send Points sheet. When Require Approval for Transfers is on (the default), the sheet carries the footer "A parent will need to approve this gift." — the sibling accepts the gift first, then it waits for your approval. If you've turned that setting off, the points move as soon as the sibling accepts.
Both live in the same chat-thread menu in Kid Mode, alongside Send Points:
A loan can push a child's balance negative — that's intentional, so borrowing has real weight and has to be paid back.
Gifts and loans appear on the Home tab under the Transfer Requests section, which shows "N pending" — they land there after the receiving sibling has accepted. Joint rewards appear under Reward Requests instead, once the second kid accepts the proposal. Either way, each row has its own approve and deny controls, and no points change hands until you act.
Yes. Open Home → gear icon → Settings and turn off Require Approval for Transfers. Gifts and loans then settle between your kids without landing in Transfer Requests first. Turn it back on at any time — the setting applies going forward and doesn't reverse transfers that already went through. Remember that Settings is a sheet on the Home tab, not a tab of its own — the gear sits in the Home screen header and works even before you've added any kids.
Kid Mode is a separate, child-facing interface that runs on your child's own device. It is not a view inside the parent app — you turn a device into that child's device, and the app opens into Kid Mode from then on. Your child sees their own balance, activity, and rewards rather than the parent tools. A parent PIN guards the way back out.
Set it up on the device the child will keep, using these steps:
If this device already has a parent PIN from your family (for example after a reinstall), the PIN step is skipped — you'll see a notice that the existing PIN will be used, with a Reset option if the device is signed in as a parent.
On a device signed in as a parent, a final confirmation appears at the end of setup, just before the device converts: "Turn this device into <kid>'s device?" with Continue and Cancel. The gear icon on the Home tab is always there, even before you have added any kids.
The PIN is the lock on the door out of Kid Mode. Without it, the child stays in their own interface and cannot reach the parent tools, family settings, or the ledger controls. Choose something your child will not guess, and keep it to yourself — the setup step says as much: "Only share this with the parent. It's needed to exit kid mode." Write it down somewhere you will still have it in six months.
Inside Kid Mode, scroll to the bottom of the screen and tap Parent Access. A PIN pad appears; enter the parent PIN to leave Kid Mode.
Every three failed attempts start a cooldown, and each round is longer than the last: 30 seconds, then 2 minutes, 10 minutes, 30 minutes, and an hour. The ladder resets as soon as a correct PIN goes in, and it survives force-quitting the app, so slow, correct entry beats guessing.
On the device with the PIN, go to Home → gear icon → Settings → section This Device → Reset Parent PIN. The footer under that row reads: "Reset the PIN if you've forgotten it — you'll confirm with Sign in with Apple." The reset row appears only when a PIN has been set and the device is signed in with Apple, because Sign in with Apple is what proves you are the parent.
Here is the limitation, plainly: a device that was signed in anonymously through I'm a Kid has no Apple account to confirm against, so Reset Parent PIN does not appear and the PIN itself cannot be recovered on that device. Record it somewhere safe at setup time. If you are already locked out, though, you can free the device from your own phone: remove that kid device from the family in Settings → family members. The device exits Kid Mode — its PIN and screen-time limits are cleared, so any app locks drop — and returns to the join screen, where you can set it up again with a fresh PIN. If anything goes wrong, contact us through this support site.
Kid Mode gives your child a read-and-request view of their own account: their point balance and recent activity, the rewards available to them, and the ability to send requests to you. Requests go to a parent for approval rather than taking effect on their own. Your child can also message siblings and send point gifts or loans from Kid Mode — the recipient must accept, and with Require Approval for Transfers on (the default), a parent must also approve before points move. If you turn that setting off, kid-to-kid gifts and loans complete without parent approval, and loans can take a balance negative. Your child can never create points, edit activities or rewards, or change family settings from Kid Mode.
They can choose one, but it does not apply right away. A photo or background picked in Kid Mode is held for parent approval and only takes effect after a parent approves it. Nothing a child selects becomes visible to the family before that approval.
No — both happen on the child's own device. Kid Mode is enabled on the device that will become the child's, and the screen-time threshold is set during step 3, Screen Time Control, on that same device. There is no parent-side editor for a child's screen-time threshold.
Changing it means going back to that device, leaving Kid Mode with Parent Access and the PIN, and running setup again from Home tab → gear icon → Settings → section This Device → Enable Kid Mode. That section holds only Enable Kid Mode and Reset Parent PIN — there is no separate screen-time row to jump to.
It ties a set of apps on your child's device to their point balance. You pick the apps on the child's device and set a point threshold; when the balance is at or above that threshold the apps are available, and when it falls below, those apps are blocked. You can also lock apps by hand at any time from your own phone, regardless of the balance — note that a hand lock blocks essentially all apps and web content on the child's device, not just the ones you chose; only the automatic threshold rule is limited to your selection. This uses Apple's Family Controls, so the blocking is enforced by iOS itself, not by our app watching over your child's shoulder.
Setup happens only on the child's own device, during Kid Mode setup — there is no way to do it from your phone. Add the child on your device first, then on the child's device open Kid Mode setup and continue to step 3, Screen Time Control.
If you would rather not turn this on, tap Skip for now — Kid Mode works fine without it.
You can't, and this is the most common surprise. There is no parent-side editor for a child's screen-time threshold anywhere in the app. Changing the number means having the child's device in hand and running its Kid Mode setup again:
We know this is inconvenient when the child's device isn't in the room.
Go to the Home tab and find the child's card. When the child is at or above their point threshold, the lock button reads Temp Lock; tap it to lock. Once you've locked, it reads Apps Locked; tap it again to unlock. This manual override is useful at dinner or bedtime.
One wrinkle: when the child is below their threshold and you haven't locked anything, the button already reads Apps Locked — their apps are blocked by the threshold, not by you. Tapping it then doesn't release a lock; it awards the child enough points to clear the threshold (rounded up to the nearest 5, logged in their history as an earned "Screen Time unlocked" entry) so the apps open.
The header of the Kids section on that same tab carries a Temp Lock button of its own. Tapping it manually locks every child who isn't already locked — for a below-threshold child this applies a full manual lock rather than the per-card points top-up — and it reads Apps Locked only once every child is manually locked (children blocked only by their threshold don't count); tapping it then unlocks everyone.
Locking freezes the balance at 0 and writes a zero-point entry into their history, so the lock is visible in the record without costing them anything. Unlocking restores the balance that was saved when you locked. Nothing is earned or spent by the lock itself — the history entry is informational, and the child does not lose progress.
The small badge under the child's name reports what their device has actually confirmed, not what your phone hopes happened. There are nine states:
Check the badge on the kid's card first — it tells you which of these is happening.
If the badge has sat on Locking… or Device unreachable — locks when back online long after the child's device has been used, unlock and lock again to resend.
That device never finished step 3, so there are no apps for iOS to block. Take the child's device, open Kid Mode setup, go to Screen Time Control, tap Authorize Screen Time, then Choose Apps to Control, set the threshold, and tap Enable Screen Time & Start. The badge changes to Locked on device once that device confirms the block. This badge can also appear if the child uses more than one device and only one of them was ever set up.
Apple's Screen Time authorization on that device has lapsed — usually after the device was reset, restored, moved to a different Apple Account, or had Screen Time turned off in iOS Settings. Nothing is being blocked until it's restored. First, simply open Point Sprout on the child's device — it re-asks for Screen Time authorization automatically when it has lapsed, so approve Apple's prompt there. If you re-run Kid Mode setup instead, go to Screen Time Control, tap Authorize Screen Time, and note that you must also re-pick the apps under Choose Apps to Control before Enable Screen Time & Start appears. If Apple's prompt doesn't appear, check that Screen Time is enabled for that device in iOS Settings first.
No. There is no request-more-screen-time flow in the app. A child gets their apps back by earning enough points to reach the threshold — the badge on your Home card shows exactly how many are left as +N pts to unlock — or by you tapping Apps Locked on their card to release a manual lock.
The apps your child selects stay on their device and are never uploaded to us. Apple's Family Controls hands the app choices to the system as opaque tokens, so Point Sprout never learns which apps were picked, and we have no list of them on our servers. What syncs is the point balance, the threshold number, the lock state, a status report from the child's device (whether Screen Time is set up and authorized and whether the lock actually applied — this is what powers the badges), and the expiry time of any temporary screen-time extension. None of these identify which apps were picked.
That's how the app is built, not a bug. Only the family owner can buy the subscription, so on a co-parent's phone the paywall shows Waiting on the family owner instead of a purchase button, with the note: "Your family doesn't have an active subscription yet. Once the family owner subscribes, this device unlocks automatically — you won't need to do anything." (A device set up in Kid Mode never shows a paywall at all — it keeps running Kid Mode locally.) One purchase covers everyone, so there is nothing for the second parent to buy. If the co-parent is the person who actually made the purchase on their own Apple Account, Restore Purchase is still offered to them under "Already subscribed on this Apple Account? Restore it here."
One annual subscription unlocks the whole app for your whole family. The paywall reads Unlock PointSprout, with the subtitle "One subscription for your whole family — both parents and every kid's device." That covers co-parents and every kid device you set up. There are no feature paywalls, no à-la-carte purchases, no ads, and no data sold — the paywall's value rows say exactly that: No ads, ever, We never sell your data, Cancel anytime in Settings, and Covers co-parents and kid devices.
Open the paywall and tap the primary button — it reads Start Free Trial when a trial is available to you, and Subscribe when it isn't. Apple handles the payment through the Apple Account signed in on the device. The paywall also links to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy if you want to read them first. Once the purchase goes through, every other device in your family unlocks on its own.
When a trial is available on your Apple Account, the paywall's primary button reads Start Free Trial rather than Subscribe. During the trial, Home tab → gear icon → Settings → Subscription shows Status: Free trial and a Free Trial row counting down — "N days left", then "1 day left", then "Ends today". If the button says Subscribe instead, Apple has determined no trial is available for that Apple Account, and we can't grant one from our side. The trial converts to a paid year unless you cancel at least 24 hours before it ends.
Go to the Home tab → gear icon → Settings and scroll to the Subscription section. Status shows one of: Free trial, Active, Active — payment issue, Active — covered by your family, Not subscribed, Lapsed, or Checking… while it verifies. Below that you'll see Free Trial (during a trial) and Current Period Ends. Manage Subscription, which hands off to Apple, appears only for the owner or the person who paid.
With no kids in the family yet, the other tabs bounce back to Home — but the Home header and its gear icon are always shown, so Settings and its Subscription section stay reachable. No need to add a kid first.
Nothing is deleted and nobody is locked out — parent devices go view-only, while kid devices keep working normally and simply pause syncing until the subscription is active again. On parent devices a banner appears above the tabs reading View-only mode. The owner sees "Your subscription has lapsed. Resubscribe to add points and make changes — your history is safe." Everyone else sees "Your family's subscription has lapsed. Ask the family owner to resubscribe — your history is safe." Only the owner gets a Resubscribe button. All of your points, transactions, rewards, and history stay exactly where they are and come back when the subscription is active again.
Tap Restore Purchase on the paywall. That asks Apple to re-check the Apple Account signed in on the device and re-apply a purchase it already has on record. Restore only finds purchases made with the Apple Account currently signed in on that device — if you bought it on a different Apple Account, sign in to that one and try again. If Status in Settings → Subscription reads Checking…, give it a moment on a live network connection before restoring.
Cancelling is handled by Apple, not by us. On your device, open Settings → your name → Subscriptions, pick Point Sprout, and cancel there. Owners can also reach the same place from the Home tab → gear icon → Settings → Subscription → Manage Subscription. You keep access until the end of the period you already paid for, and after that the app moves to View-only mode rather than shutting you out.
We can't — Apple processes every purchase, so refunds go through Apple. Request one at reportaproblem.apple.com, sign in with the Apple Account that made the purchase, and choose the Point Sprout subscription. Apple decides the outcome and issues any money back. We have no ability to cancel a subscription or issue a refund on your behalf.
That means Apple has an active subscription on file but couldn't take payment — usually an expired card or a billing address that needs updating. Fix it in your device's Settings → your name → Subscriptions, or through Manage Subscription in the app's Settings — it's shown to the family owner and to whoever pays for the subscription, and if you're seeing this status, that's you. The app keeps working while Apple retries. If the retries run out, the subscription lapses and the family drops to View-only mode with your history intact.
No. The single family subscription covers every kid device you set up for Kid Mode, along with co-parents. A kid device never shows a paywall — if the family isn't subscribed, Kid Mode keeps working on the device and quietly pauses syncing, and when the owner subscribes, syncing resumes on its own with no action needed on the child's device. On a co-parent's device — or after a parent exits Kid Mode with their PIN — Status in Settings → Subscription reads Active — covered by your family; Kid Mode itself never displays subscription status.
Signing out ends your session on one device and leaves everything else untouched. The app says so on the screen: "You'll be signed out on this device — nothing is deleted." Your family, your kids, their balances, and your history all stay where they are, and signing back in with the same Apple Account puts you back in the same family. Deleting your account is a separate, permanent action that removes your data. Treat the two as unrelated.
The gear is always available at the top of the Home tab, even before you've added any kids.
Go to the Home tab → gear icon → Settings → Account → Delete Account. A confirmation titled Delete Account? appears and describes exactly what will happen to your families. Read that message before you continue — it reflects your particular setup, including whether a subscription is involved. Tap Delete Everything to confirm. You'll then be asked to verify with Sign in with Apple — deletion only goes ahead after that succeeds, and cancelling it leaves everything untouched. There is no undo.
Deleting your account removes your data from every family you belong to, in one step. What happens to each family depends on who else is in it:
Because a family with no other adult in it goes away for everyone, tell the other people in it before you delete.
No. The subscription is an Apple subscription, and Apple handles billing, renewals, and cancellation — not Point Sprout. Where this applies, the Delete Account? message tells you plainly that the subscription keeps renewing and must be cancelled in Settings → Subscriptions on your device. Cancel there first, then delete the account, so you aren't paying for a renewal you can no longer use.
No ads, no tracking SDKs, and your data is never sold. Screen Time app selections stay on the child's own device and are never uploaded. Children cannot create an account or change settings independently. The full policy is at /privacy and the terms are at /terms — read those for the complete and authoritative version. The policy commits to responding to privacy requests within 30 days.
Point Sprout runs on iPhone and iPad; iOS 17.0 is the minimum version. Each parent and each child in Kid Mode uses their own device, signed in to the same family. There is an Apple Watch companion app, and its scope is narrow: it answers today's scheduled check-ins, nothing else.
Email patrick@cypressavenuedesign.com. That's the right address for anything about a specific child's data, a billing question, or a bug. Include the child's name and roughly when the problem started — it saves a round trip. For refunds and cancellations, Apple is the only party that can act, so start there.
Email patrick@cypressavenuedesign.com. Tell us what you tapped and what happened — screenshots help.
Please don't include your child's full name, photo, or anything you'd rather not put in an email. We can answer every question here without it.
Billing, cancellations, and refunds are handled by Apple, not by us — see the note at the top of this page.
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