Squishiverse

Squishiverse is a place for a child to keep track of their squishy toys. Take a picture of each one, give it a name, rate how it squishes, and tag what it looks, feels, sounds and smells like. Made for ages 9 to 11. WHAT IT DOES WITH YOUR CHILD'S PICTURES AND WORDS The camera is the only way to add a picture. The app cannot open the photo library, and never asks to. Any face the phone finds gets covered up before the picture is saved. The phone paints a solid block over it, nothing is uploaded to do it, and a block cannot be undone the way pixelation sometimes can. The picture is shrunk to at most 1600 pixels and re-saved from scratch, which drops where it was taken, when, and on which phone. The original is not kept. There is no account and no sign-up, and no server of ours. The collection is stored on the phone and, if the phone is signed in to iCloud, copied to your family's own iCloud account. The notes your child writes stay on the phone, in a separate place that is not connected to iCloud at all. No ads, no analytics, no crash reporting, and no code from any company other than Apple. SHOWING IT TO A FRIEND Sharing is off when the app is installed. The invite button is not on the screen until a grown-up turns sharing on, past a question written out in words rather than digits. Invitations go to named people, one at a time: your child picks a friend from Contacts or types a phone number or email address, the app checks that an Apple Account uses it, and gives back a link to send. A forwarded link does not let anyone else in. Nothing is searchable or public. A friend can send back two things: a reaction from a fixed set of six symbols, or a trade offer. There is no chat and no message box anywhere in the app. Trading is its own switch, also off until a grown-up turns it on. There is no money and no prices. A friend offers up to three of theirs for one of your child's, your child says yes or no, and any real swap happens between two families. Notifications are off until somebody asks for them, and that switch is behind the grown-up question too. They arrive batched into one message about a minute later. WHAT A CHILD DOES WITH IT Adds a squishy in five short steps. Only the name is needed; every other step can be skipped. Rates it on eleven things: overall, satisfying, squish, softness, stretchiness, texture, sound, smell, cuteness, tough and rarity, with half stars. Tags type, filling, colors, size, texture, sound, smell, and where it came from. Picks a number one and a top five, keeps notes that are theirs alone, and sees what they collect most on the Stats screen. Looks at the whole collection as a grid, searches it, and filters it. Points friends at one squishy to say "look at this one". No words go with it. FOR THE GROWN-UP Notifications, sharing, trading and saving a copy sit on one page behind one question, a sum written out in words. Saving a copy writes the whole collection to a file and puts one back; it is behind the question because that file includes the notes. Every friend's collection has a "Tell a grown-up" button, which explains how to remove that friend's share and offers to write us an email. Two things worth hearing from us rather than finding out. Face detection finds most faces, not every face: one in profile, partly hidden, very small or in a reflection can be missed. Turning the sharing switch back off stops new invitations, but it does not take back access already given. Privacy policy: https://mayiborrowyourcalculatorplease.github.io/squishiverse/privacy.html Questions, from parents or anyone else: [email protected]