Family Needs Documentation
A picture list for the whole house — tap a picture to say what the home needs, and everyone reads it in their own language
On this page
Overview
Family Needs is a family app for the things a home runs out of. Anyone in the house — a child, an elderly parent, or a helper who does not speak the household's language — says what is needed by tapping a picture. Everyone else reads that same request in their own language. Groceries and household supplies, medicine, and asking the house for help are what it covers.
The idea that makes this work is that a request carries an item, not a word. The helper taps a picture of olive oil; one person in the home reads Olive oil, another reads زيت زيتون, and the list sent to a relative doing the shopping says Huile d'olive. Nobody translates anything, because nothing was ever written in one language to begin with.
Who it is for
- The adults who run a home — to see who needs what, buy it, look after the household's medicine, and add the people who live there.
- Helpers who work in a home — to say what is missing without needing the household's language.
- Children — to ask for things and record their own medicine, without having to read.
- Elderly parents — with a simple screen of large buttons, bigger text and item names read out loud.
Family Needs is free, with no advertising and no purchases.
Key features
Everything is a picture
Choose a shelf and tap a picture to say the house needs something. Tap it again for more. A switch says whether a tap means running low or all finished. Nobody has to type or read.
Ten languages
English, العربية, Français, Español, हिन्दी, اردو, தமிழ், മലയാളം, සිංහල and Filipino. Arabic and Urdu switch the whole app to right-to-left. Each person chooses their own language.
One list for the home
Who asked, who has seen it and what has been bought — with each requester's face beside their row. The house keeps one request per thing, so the list stays short.
Send the list to anybody
Press Send, choose the language it should be written in, check it, and share it through the messaging app the family already uses. The person receiving it does not need Family Needs.
Help in one press
Please come to me, I do not feel well, I have fallen, Something is wrong in the house. Every screen in the home shows who is calling, and the other phones in the home sound an alarm.
Medicine records and reminders
What each person takes, when it is due and how much is left. Record a dose with one tap, get a reminder on the phone, and a refill goes on the shopping list by itself when the stock runs low.
A simple screen
For anyone who would rather have a few big buttons: ask for something, ask for help, and their own medicine. No menus. Turned on per person.
Read out loud, larger text
Item names can be spoken as they are tapped, in the reader's language, and text can be made larger. These settings belong to the person and follow them to whichever phone they use.
Join by scanning a code
The adult who runs the home shows each person a code. They scan it and they are in — no account, no email address, no password, and never asked to sign in again.
Your own things
Add anything the catalog does not have, photograph the actual package, and name it in as few as one language. Hide what your house never buys to keep the grid short.
Shelves for your country
The country you choose decides which items appear. In some places the grid also carries the local brands people ask for by name, as drawings in each pack's colours.
Every phone in step
The home is kept on the Family Needs service so every phone in it sees the same list. Each phone also keeps its own copy, so without a connection it shows what it last knew.
How it works
- Choose your language. The app opens on a list of ten languages, each written in itself, and changes as you press one. A short three-page introduction follows; you can skip it or replay it later with See how it works.
- Get started. Choose Create account or Sign in if you run the home, or Someone gave me a code if another member of your family is adding you.
- Set up or choose your home. After signing in, pick one of your homes or set up a new one: where it is, what it is called and your name, the language the shopping list is sent in, and a short notice about your information and the medicine features that must be acknowledged before you start.
- Add the people who live there. In Family, add each person with their role and language, then press Show code for them to scan with their own phone.
- Tap, read, buy. Anyone taps pictures; whoever does the buying sees who is waiting and what they asked for, marks it seen and bought, or sends the list out.
The user guide walks through each of these, and every other screen, step by step.
Platforms
Family Needs is one app built with .NET MAUI Blazor Hybrid and MudBlazor, produced from the same project for phones, tablets and computers. A household uses it in the app; the Family Needs website carries the public introduction, the privacy policy, account deletion and the administration site for whoever runs the service.
| Platform | Minimum version | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Android phones and tablets | Android 7.0 (API level 24) | Medicine reminders with the app closed. Help alarms, including on a phone whose app is closed once the service has push delivery set up. Reminders can arrive a few minutes late until the phone is allowed to keep exact times — the medicine screen offers the switch. |
| iPhone and iPad | iOS / iPadOS 15.0 | Medicine reminders with the app closed. Help alarms, including on a phone whose app is closed once the service has push delivery set up. When a call is answered, the message that takes the alarm down can be held back by iOS; the alarm then comes down when the app is next opened. |
| Mac | Mac Catalyst 15.0 | The same app as on iPhone and iPad, built for the Mac. |
| Windows | Windows 10 version 1809 (build 17763) | Does not give medicine reminders and cannot sound the help alarm; the screens say so rather than offering a switch that does nothing. |
Accounts and sign-in
Who signs in, and who does not
- The adult who runs a home signs in. Creating an account or signing in happens through The Tech Idea's identity service, in the Family Needs sign-in journey. Family Needs itself never sees a password.
- Everybody else joins by scanning a code. A helper, a child or a grandparent scans a code shown on the guardian's phone. They give no email address, phone number or password, and are never asked to sign in again. The guardian can take a phone back at any time from Family → Phones, and it stops working immediately.
Ways to sign in
Continue with Apple and Continue with Google appear where the device and the service support them, and Sign in to Family Needs in the browser is available on every platform. Create account opens the Family Needs sign-up page in the browser. The sign-in methods on offer are set by the identity service.
Managing your account in the app
| In the app | What it does |
|---|---|
| Settings → Sign-in methods | See the ways you sign in, and remove one as long as another remains. |
| Settings → Signed-in phones | Every phone and tablet signed in to your account. Sign out one you no longer have and it stops reaching your account at once. |
| Settings → Switch home | For a guardian who belongs to more than one home. Nothing is deleted; you can switch back whenever you like. |
| Settings → Sign out | This phone forgets you. Your home stays on the service for your next sign-in. |
| Settings → Delete my account | Deletes your account and every home you are the only owner of. See Leaving and deleting. |
Sign-in is all the identity service does for Family Needs. Roles in a home (Owner, Adult, Helper, Child), household permissions, the phones that joined by code, and the catalog are kept by Family Needs itself.
Running the service
The Family Needs service has an administration website for whoever runs it. It manages the service, not anybody's home: it shows counts and the catalog, and nothing about any household — no names, no lists, no medicine.
- The first administrator. On a new installation, the first person to sign in at the administration site with a verified email address and a second sign-in factor becomes its administrator. Creating an account in the mobile app never grants administration.
- More administrators are invited from Users. An invitation lasts seven days and is accepted by signing in at the administration site with a verified email address and a second factor. The last administrator cannot be removed.
| Area | What it is for |
|---|---|
| Overview | Counts only — accounts, homes, people, phones and things on lists — plus the catalog's state and a checklist of what is left to set up. |
| Catalog and Data banks | The shelves and items every home chooses from: names in all ten languages, pictures, quantities and which countries each item is offered in, plus importing items from a CSV file. Every phone picks up the new catalog without an app update. |
| Website | The text of the public introduction page, drafted, previewed and published. |
| Settings | The push services that let a call for help reach Android phones and iPhones whose app is closed. |
| Users | Administrators and invitations. |
| Activity | The security record: sign-ins, join codes, phones joining or leaving, and administrators' actions. |
| What went wrong | Failures the service recorded, each with a reference, which can be searched and marked resolved. |
Privacy and your data
No advertising, no tracking
No advertising, no analytics and no tracking. Nothing is sold or given to anybody for their own use, and no profile of you is built.
Only your household sees it
A home is kept on the Family Needs service so every phone in it sees the same thing, and it is visible to the people in that home and nobody else — including other households and the service's administrators.
The list leaves only when you send it
The shopping list, or a call for help, leaves the app only when somebody presses Send, and only to the app they choose. Family Needs contacts nobody outside your home on your behalf.
Calls for help
To make the other phones in your home ring, a call for help travels through Google's Firebase Cloud Messaging (Android) or Apple's push service (iPhone). Only the caller's name and which of the four pictures they pressed go that way — never medicine, the list or photographs.
What is kept
| For | What |
|---|---|
| An account (a guardian who signs in) | A display name, an email address if one was provided, the identifiers that connect your sign-in to your homes, and the phones you are signed in on. |
| A household | The home's name, language, country and time zone; the people in it (name, role, language, text size, and a photograph if one is added); what the house needs and who asked, saw and bought it; calls for help; medicines and doses; photographs; the phones of the home; and a numbered history of changes, so a phone that was away receives what it missed. |
| A security record | Each sign-in and sign-out, each refused sign-in or code, each code made for a phone to join, each phone joining, leaving or being taken out of a home, each home made, linked or deleted, and each account deleted — with the network (IP) address it came from. It holds identifiers only and each entry is deleted after 90 days. |
- Medicine is health information. The app says so in the reader's own language before a household records any of it, and the person setting up the home must acknowledge it.
- Children never create an account and never give contact information; they join by scanning a code an adult shows them, and the adult can remove them and everything about them at any time.
- Kept only on the phone: a profile PIN (stored as a salted hash in the device's own secure storage) and the phone's own What went wrong on this phone record are never sent to the service.
- The catalog of shelves and pictures needs no account to download and tells the service nothing about you. Your own photographs stay in your household and are never part of what is published.
- How long: a household's information is kept for as long as the household exists. A home kept without an account that no phone has reached for two years is deleted.
- Deleting: Leave this home, Delete everything and Delete my account are in Settings, and an account can also be deleted on the web. See Leaving and deleting.
The full privacy policy, in all ten languages, is at familyneed.thetechidea.app/privacy and is a press away in the app under Settings → Your information.
Getting help
Common questions
| Situation | What to do |
|---|---|
| A join code did not work | A code works once and lasts ten minutes. Ask whoever runs the home to press New code. |
| The camera will not read the code | Type the code in the box under the camera instead. If the app may not use the camera, allow it in the phone's settings. |
| The app says this phone is no longer part of the home | It was removed or left. Press Join with a new code and ask whoever runs the home for a new one; nothing in the home is lost. |
| No connection | The app shows what it last knew and keeps trying by itself. Settings → Keeping in step → Update now tries straight away. |
| Medicine reminders are off | The medicine screen says so and offers Turn on reminders. On Android, also allow exact times so reminders are not late. |
| A phone did not ring for a call for help | A phone that is switched off, has no signal, or has notifications turned off for Family Needs cannot ring. The help screen says which applies to your phone and offers the way to turn notifications on. |
| The app asks you to sign in again | Your home is still on the service. Sign in again and the phone catches up with the family. |
When something goes wrong
A screen that cannot finish says so and shows a reference. On the phone, the home's owner can read everything the phone could not do under Settings → What went wrong on this phone; it stays on that phone. If you contact us, quote the reference.
Contact
Write to The Tech Idea at admin@thetechidea.app — the contact address in the Family Needs privacy policy — for help, or to ask for a copy, correction or deletion of what is kept about you.
In the app, Settings → Your information explains where your information lives, in your own language.