FamHQ
Getting started
What is FamHQ?
FamHQ is one shared home for your family's calendar, chores, lists, meals, recipes, trips, reminders and more. Everyone in the household sees the same up-to-date picture, on any phone, tablet or computer. FamHQ Hosted runs at app.famhqapp.com and we look after it for you. If you'd rather run it on your own computer, the software is free and open source: see Hosted vs. self-hosted.
Can I look around before I sign up?
Yes. Try the demo opens a made-up family's household that you can poke at freely. You don't need an account, and we don't ask for your name or email. Anything you add is deleted with the demo after 24 hours.
How does the free trial work, and what does it cost?
Every new household gets 30 days free. You add a card when you start, and we email the household owner a few days before the trial ends. If you cancel before then, you won't be charged. After the trial, FamHQ Hosted is $6.99 a month or $59 a year per household, plus any tax. One subscription covers everyone in your family, on every device, with every feature.
Can I put FamHQ on my phone's home screen?
Yes. Add it to your home screen and it opens full screen with its own icon, just like an app. Our step-by-step guide covers iPhone, iPad and Android. iPhone and Android apps are on the way. When they arrive, you'll sign in to the same household, with nothing to move.
Family & logins
Does everyone in the family need their own sign-in?
No. One grown-up signs in, and everyone else just taps their own profile, which is perfect for a shared tablet on the kitchen counter. Add profiles for each family member, including the kids, in Settings → Family Member Settings. Children never need an account. A parent or guardian creates and looks after their profile.
How do I invite another adult to their own sign-in?
Go to Settings → Invite & Manage Users and invite them by email. They need to be 13 or older. If the email gets lost, you can resend it (up to 3 times a day) or copy the invite link and send it yourself. The person who created the household is its owner. The owner can hand ownership to another admin who has their own sign-in, on the same page.
How do I keep little hands out of my profile?
Set a profile PIN in Settings → Set profile PIN. After that, switching into your profile asks for the PIN. It's a good idea for anyone who connects Google Calendar on a shared device, so only you can change your Google events.
Calendar & Google
How do I connect Google Calendar?
Go to Settings → Calendar → Calendar sync and connect your Google account. Then pick the calendars you want in FamHQ. We only sync the calendars you pick. When you add an event in FamHQ, you can choose one of your synced Google calendars for it, and it appears there too.
Who can see and change my Google events?
Everyone in your household can see the events from the calendars you pick, the same as any other family event, so only pick calendars you're happy to share. Only you can change or delete them. When you delete a Google event in FamHQ, we ask first, because it's deleted from Google Calendar too.
What happens if I disconnect Google?
Turn it off any time in Settings → Calendar → Calendar sync. We remove our access with Google straight away, delete the stored keys and delete the Google events we brought in. Events you added to Google from FamHQ stay in your Google Calendar. Disconnecting never deletes anything from Google.
Can I add a school, club or team calendar?
Yes, if it has an iCal link (it usually ends in .ics). Paste it on the Settings → Calendar → Calendar sync page, and its events show up on the shared calendar for everyone. FamHQ checks for changes every hour.
Billing
How do I cancel?
The household owner can cancel any time in Settings → Subscription → Manage subscription. You'll keep full access until the end of the period you've paid for, and you won't be charged again. If you cancel during the free trial, you won't be charged at all.
How do I update my card, switch between monthly and yearly, or fix a failed payment?
The household owner can do all of these in Settings → Subscription → Manage subscription, which opens our secure payment page (run by Stripe). You'll also find your past invoices there. If a payment fails, we email the owner, and updating the card there is the quickest fix.
What happens to our family's things after we cancel?
Nothing is deleted straight away. After your plan ends, we keep everything for 90 days so you can download it or come back. During that time FamHQ shows the date it'll be deleted, with buttons to resubscribe or download everything. If you resubscribe within the 90 days, it's all just as you left it. After that, it's permanently deleted.
Why have the AI features paused?
AI features include a monthly allowance: 50 requests per household each month, or 15 during the free trial. When you reach it, AI features pause until the start of next month. Everything else keeps working as normal. You can see how many you've used in Settings → AI.
Privacy & data
Do you sell our data or use it to train AI?
No. We don't sell your data, show ads, or share it with advertisers or data brokers. We don't use your family's content to train AI, and our AI provider doesn't either. Our Privacy Policy has the details, in plain words.
How do I download a copy of our data?
An admin can go to Settings → Export data. You can download each part as a JSON file, or everything at once as a full backup. Downloads keep working for 90 days after a subscription ends, too.
How do I delete our household?
The household owner can delete it in Settings → Subscription → Delete household. Everything is deleted straight away and the subscription is cancelled, so download a copy first if you'd like to keep one. Copies in our encrypted backups are gone within 30 days.
Can we turn the AI features off?
Yes. AI features are optional and stay off unless a household admin turns them on. An admin can switch them on or off any time in Settings → AI. The rest of FamHQ works just the same without them.
Troubleshooting
FamHQ looks out of date, or a new feature is missing.
FamHQ updates itself. If an update arrives while you're using it, you'll see a "Refresh" message: tap it and you're on the newest version. If you don't see one, close FamHQ completely and open it again.
Does FamHQ work without internet?
Your lists do. You can open them, add items and tick things off with no signal, and FamHQ syncs your changes as soon as you're back online. A small banner shows how many changes are waiting. The rest of FamHQ needs a connection.
I'm not getting notifications.
Check they're turned on in Settings → Notifications on each device you use. On iPhone and iPad, add FamHQ to your Home Screen first (here's how), because Apple only allows notifications from home-screen apps. Also check that notifications for FamHQ are allowed in your phone's settings.
Something's not working. How do I tell you?
In FamHQ, go to Settings → Report a problem or idea. To save you explaining, we receive a screenshot and a record of what you did in the app in the last 10 minutes. We delete them once the problem is fixed, or after 60 days at the latest. You can also email [email protected]. If FamHQ won't open at all, status.famhqapp.com shows whether we already know.