Riverkin

Riverkin draws your family as a river. Everyone stands at the year they were born and every line runs from parents to children, so a whole family reads in one look: who came when, who overlapped, who is still here. Someone in your family has usually done the typing already. Riverkin keeps a family in a single file. Send it by AirDrop, mail or message, or hold your screen up to the phone across the table and let it read the codes. Opening a file adds the people you were missing and fills in the dates you did not have — and where two copies disagree, it asks you rather than quietly overwriting anything. EVERYONE AT THEIR YEAR Drag along the years and the river shows who was alive in that one. Turn the phone sideways for the whole family on a single screen. Each branch of the family has its own colour, and a person's page is tinted with the colour of their own line. HOW YOU ARE RELATED Say who you are, and every person carries their tie to you: your first cousin two generations younger, your half-sister, your stepfather, your partner's aunt. None of it is stored. Every tie is walked from the parents each time it is shown, so it stays right the moment you correct something. BIRTHDAYS Today tells you whose birthday it is and what is coming in the next fortnight, with ages worked out for you. Reminders arrive on the morning itself. MORE THAN ONE FAMILY Keep your mother's side and your father's side as separate families and switch between them. Step-parents and the families they bring with them have a place too. EVERYBODY, FOUND Search a name, a town, an e-mail address or a year. Call, message, mail or find your way to anyone whose details you have written down. YOURS ALONE Riverkin runs entirely on your phone. There is no account to make, no sign-in, nothing uploaded and no server anywhere — it does not use the internet at all. Lock it behind Face ID, Touch ID or your passcode, and it covers itself when you swap apps. IN ENGLISH AND IN DUTCH Every screen, every date and every word for a relative, including the ones English runs together and Dutch keeps apart. On iPhone and on iPad.