# Doodle Turtle — Slow drawing for preschoolers

> Slow drawing for preschoolers (iPhone/iPad app by AO TANG.)

- Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/doodle-turtle/id6795541758 (this page in markdown: same URL + `.md`)
- Developer: [AO TANG](https://appshunter.io/developer/1896032613)
- Category: Education, Entertainment
- Price: Free
- Age rating: 4+
- Requires: iOS 15.0 · 21 MB
- Languages: American English
- Released: 2026-08-09
- Data updated: 2026-09-26
- User reviews in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/doodle-turtle/id6795541758/reviews.md

## What is Doodle Turtle?

Doodle Turtle draws at the speed of a three-year-old.

Every other drawing app moves at a grown-up's pace. A line appears, then another, then another, and your child is still working on the first one. So you end up hovering over the pause button, rewinding, pausing again. Ask any parent of a preschooler how that goes.

Doodle Turtle fixes it in the simplest possible way. It draws one line, slowly. Then it stops. And it waits, with a real and generous pause, long enough for a small hand to finish before the next line begins. No pause button required. Nobody is rushing anybody.

That is the whole app.

HOW IT WORKS

1. Your child picks a picture: a cat, a fish, a house, an ice cream.
2. Doodle Turtle draws it once, all the way through, so your child can see where it is going.
3. Then it starts again, one stroke at a time, with a warm voice saying what to draw ("A big round face!"), a gentle ding, and a quiet pause while your child draws that stroke on their own paper.
4. At the end, their drawing goes into a picture frame. Because it should.

WHAT IS INSIDE

- Slow, stroke-by-stroke drawing lessons made for ages 3 to 5
- A spoken cue for every single stroke, clear and encouraging
- Two speeds: Turtle for the youngest hands, Bunny once they are confident
- Tap mode, where your child taps when they are ready, so the app never moves first
- Draw on the screen: trace over a faded guide with a fingertip
- Free Doodle: a blank canvas for when they just want to invent something
- Printable tracing sheets for every picture, for crayons and real paper
- Works completely offline, in the car, on a plane, in a waiting room

BUILT FOR SMALL PEOPLE

- No ads. Not one, anywhere, ever.
- No in-app purchases, no subscriptions, no upsells.
- No accounts and no sign-in. Nothing to type.
- No data collected. No analytics, no tracking, no server. The app makes no network requests at all.
- The one link that leaves the app sits behind a parental gate a young child cannot pass.
- Big buttons, no menus to get lost in, nothing breakable.

WHY A TURTLE

I built this for my daughter, who is three and a half, who loves to draw, and who was getting frustrated with every drawing video we tried because all of them went too fast. She picked the turtle. He is slow, and that is entirely the point.

Doodle Turtle is quiet, patient, and never in a hurry. Neither is your kid.


## Version history (last 4 releases)

### 1.3 — 2026-09-17

A whole new look for Doodle Turtle.

- Meet the new turtle: a friendly buddy built from the same circles and triangles your child learns to draw. It draws beside the paper while it shows each line, then closes its eyes and waits with an hourglass while your child takes a turn.
- Calm new colours and rounded letters everywhere, with the picture categories right at the top so every drawing is easy to find.
- Steadier for little hands: resting a hand or tracing on the screen no longer skips ahead, drawings stay lined up when the iPad is turned, and the home screen no longer slides sideways.
- Grown-up settings (lesson pace, your child's name, deleting or saving pictures) now sit behind the lock, so small taps can't change them.
- On iPhone in landscape, the finish screen keeps its buttons on screen.

Still no ads, no purchases, no accounts, no network.

### 1.2 — 2026-09-14

A calmer home screen, made for the smallest hands.

- Four big pictures to choose from at the top, instead of a wall of thumbnails. The rest of the collection sits below on simple shelves: Animals, Under the Sea, Minibeasts, Yummy Things, Outside, Things That Go, Fun Stuff and a spooky one for October.
- Everything a grown-up needs — ages, stroke counts, search, printables, favourites, your child's name — now lives behind one lock button, out of reach of small fingers.
- The lesson says what it is doing in words a three-year-old understands: "Watch me" first, then "Your turn", with the buttons beside the paper instead of on top of it.
- The finish screen is down to two choices: draw another, or keep this picture.
- Bigger buttons everywhere. Nothing a child taps is smaller than a fingertip.
- Fixes: the turtle no longer sits on top of the lines while it draws, and a few labels that came out the wrong size on iPhone are back to normal.

Still no ads, no purchases, no accounts, no network.

### 1.1 — 2026-09-03

73 pictures now, up from 30: sea animals, minibeasts, things that go, yummy things, a spooky shelf for October, and more.

- The home screen is sorted into shelves (Animals, Under the Sea, Yummy Things...) so a small person can find "the cat" without scrolling through everything. Recently finished pictures sit at the top under "Draw again".
- A crayon now rides along the line while the turtle draws, so your child can see exactly where a stroke starts and which way it goes.
- Drawing on screen got a much bigger canvas, with the colours and buttons beside it instead of on top of it, and it no longer draws stray lines when a resting palm touches the glass.
- Her own name: type it once, and she can trace it in a dotted school font.
- Kept drawings open big, come to life stroke by stroke, and stay safe on the device even if the iPad runs out of space.
- A little tap you can feel on each ding.
- Fixes for iPhone: the launch screen no longer crops the turtle, and everything fits when the phone is held sideways.

Still no ads, no purchases, no accounts, no network.

### 1.0 — 2026-08-07

No release notes.

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*Data collected daily from the US App Store and indexed by [AppsHunter](https://appshunter.io/). User reviews are verbatim App Store reviews. Ratings, prices and chart positions refresh continuously; this snapshot is from 2026-09-26.*