Using Family Tasks

A walk-through from first launch to everyday use.

Family Tasks shows one household's chores for a given day, colour-coded per person, and keeps everything — tasks, people, colours, the goal and the parent PIN — in a calendar you control. Set it up once on one tablet and every other tablet pointed at the same calendar picks up the same family automatically.

1. Connect to a calendar

On first launch, open the menu (⋮, top-right) and choose Settings. If a parent PIN has already been set, you will be asked for it first.

Choose the account type: a CalDAV server, or a calendar on this device.
CalDAV: enter the server address, username and password. You can type a bare domain — the app finds the calendar address itself — then pick which calendar to use.
Device calendar: grant calendar access when asked, then pick a calendar from the list. Only calendars you can write to are offered.
Tap Test connection. A green tick means everything is working; if it fails, the reason is shown so a wrong password is never mistaken for an empty list.

Using Gmail?

Google no longer accepts a password for CalDAV. Add the Google account to Android the normal way (Settings › Accounts) with Calendar sync on, then choose Calendar on this device here and pick that calendar. See Requirements for the detail.

2. Add the family

In Settings, tap People.
Add each family member with a name and a colour.
That's it — the people and colours are stored in the calendar, so every other tablet shows the same names and colours without being set up again.

3. Create a task

Tap the + button on the task list (behind the PIN, if one is set), then fill in:

Title, date and time — the basics.
Who it's for — one person, several, or leave it as Everyone for a shared chore.
An icon and a note — an optional picture for the row, and a line of detail shown when the task is tapped.
Repeat — daily, weekly (choose the weekdays) or monthly, with an optional end date.
Multi-day — let the task span several days; it shows on each day of the window and is flagged on the last.
Optional — mark a nice-to-do that should not count for or against the scores.

4. Tick tasks off

Ticking is always open — a child never needs the PIN to complete their own chore.

Today: tap the checkbox. The tick registers instantly.
A past day: allowed, but behind the parent PIN — for the chore that really was done late last night.
A future day: read-only; a chore that hasn't come round yet can't be done.
Repeating chores: only the viewed day's occurrence is ticked, so tomorrow's is still waiting.

5. Move between days

Use the arrows either side of the date to step back and forward; tap the date to jump straight back to today. Nearby days are cached, so paging is instant. The rings along the bottom always show today, whatever day is on screen.

6. Edit and delete

Tap a task to expand it and reveal its notes, plus Edit and Delete (both behind the PIN).

A one-off task is removed immediately.
A repeating task is stopped from the day you're viewing onwards — earlier days, and their ticks, are kept. If completed days lie ahead, the app asks whether to keep them.
Editing a repeating task splits the series at the change, so past days keep their old details and last month's scores don't move.

7. Scores and the monthly goal

Switch the scoreboard between Today and This month.
Set the monthly goal in Settings; in the month view a marker shows the target and a star marks anyone who has reached it.
Shared (Everyone) chores count towards every person, so the family only reaches 100% once the shared jobs are done too.
Tap a person's ring to filter the list to just their tasks; tap it again — or wait a minute — to return to the whole family.

8. The parent PIN

Set a PIN in Settings to put creating, editing and deleting behind it. Ticking stays open.
It re-locks when the app is backgrounded, or after a few minutes idle.
Forgot it? Tap "I forgot my PIN" — a one-time code is emailed, or written into the calendar if no email server is set up. The current PIN keeps working until you redeem the code and choose a new one, so a child tapping it changes nothing.

9. Monthly summary email (optional)

If you set up an SMTP server, you can switch on a monthly summary in Settings. It is sent on the first sync after a month ends, so a sleeping tablet never misses it. Send report now mails the current month so far — handy for checking the email actually arrives.

A note on linked chores

Two chores can be tied together so that completing one completes the other, even when the partner is days ahead. Links are marked on the tasks themselves (a small tag added by a companion tool rather than in the app's own editor); once marked, the app keeps the pair in step whenever either is ticked or un-ticked. Homework Sync uses that for optional weekend homework and the matching day-before task.