Your co-parenting record now locks behind your face
Face ID, Touch ID, and Android biometrics arrive in version 1.3, because the record you keep about your family should open for you and nobody else.
Open a co-parenting app on any given Tuesday and look at what is actually in there. Two years of messages. A calendar with every pickup, drop-off, and school closure. A journal written on the nights when the details still felt sharp. Medications, teachers, shoe sizes, the name of the dentist.
That is not a folder of files. That is the record of a family, and for a lot of separated parents it is the most sensitive thing on their phone.
As of version 1.3, it can be locked behind the same biometrics that unlock the phone itself: Face ID and Touch ID on iOS, biometric unlock on Android.
Here is what the lock covers, how to turn it on, and what it does not do.
What is actually in the record
The lock is not for one screen. It covers everything the app holds.
Messages sit at the center of it. The thread with a co-parent is often the only written history two people share, and it tends to include the exchanges that took the most effort to get right.
Around that sits the schedule, the journal, and the details about the children themselves. None of it is dramatic on its own. Together it is a complete picture of how a family runs.
- Messages, including the threads that took work to write
- The calendar: pickups, drop-offs, and whose week is next
- Journal entries, written while the details were still fresh
- Children's data: schools, appointments, sizes, medical notes
Why a phone passcode is not always the whole answer
Most phones are already locked. The gap is what happens after they are unlocked.
A phone gets handed to a seven-year-old for a game in a waiting room. It sits face up on a kitchen counter while dinner is happening. It gets passed across a table so someone can look at a photo. In each of those moments the passcode has already done its job and stepped aside.
For most apps that is fine. For a record that includes a co-parenting history and a child's medical notes, it is worth one more door.
How to turn it on
The feature ships with the latest build, so the update comes first.
If the Security section does not show a biometric option, the app is on an older version. Updating takes a minute and everything stays exactly where it was.
- Update to version 1.3 in the App Store or on Google Play
- Open Settings inside the app and go to the Security section
- Toggle the biometric lock on
- Enroll using the face or fingerprint the phone already recognizes
What changes day to day
Very little, and that is deliberate.
Opening the app asks for a face, a fingerprint, or whichever biometric the device uses. It is the same gesture that already unlocks a hundred other things in a day, so it does not register as a step.
The second part matters more. After five minutes away from the app, the lock comes back on. Return, unlock, and the app picks up exactly where it was: same screen, same thread, same half-finished message.
A security feature that makes people avoid the app has failed. This one is meant to be forgettable.
What the lock does not do
It is worth being clear about the edges. A biometric lock protects the app on one device. It does not undo a calendar that has already been shared with a grandparent, and it does not replace a phone passcode, which is still the first line of defense.
It also is not a statement about anyone's co-parent. Plenty of separated families are calm, cooperative, and completely trusting of each other. The lock is not about suspicion. It is about the ordinary fact that a phone travels through a lot of hands in a week, and a family's record deserves a door of its own.
The record is yours. Now the door is too.
Version 1.3 is live in both stores now. Update just parent, open Settings, and turn the lock on.