# Small Hours - Parent's Journal — One photo a day, for everyone > Shared private journal for parents to document child's early memories with daily photos. (iPhone/iPad app by Hugh Gilmore.) - Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/small-hours-parents-journal/id6787871821 (this page in markdown: same URL + `.md`) - Developer: [Hugh Gilmore](https://appshunter.io/developer/6787871823) - Category: Lifestyle, Photo & Video - Price: Free - Rating: 5.00/5 from 1 App Store ratings - Age rating: 4+ - Requires: iOS 26.0 · 12 MB - Languages: American English - Released: 2026-07-23 - Data updated: 2026-09-07 - Monetization: freemium - User reviews in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/small-hours-parents-journal/id6787871821/reviews.md ## What is Small Hours? Small Hours is a shared journal for your child's littlest years. It is built on the ritual of posting one photo a day. The limit is the point: a year later you have 365 pictures worth looking at, instead of four thousand you'll never scroll, sitting in your camera roll. Each day gets one photo, so every one counts. Around it add all the notes, milestones, songs, places, videos and voice notes you like. Every memory lands on both parents' phones. Each one arrives as an instant photo dropped onto a pile, captioned in real handwriting and dated with their age. The small hours are long. The little years are short. This app helps you keep them. THE FRIDGE Grandparents, aunts, uncles, godparents, and anyone else you choose get their own little app. It is called the Fridge, and you choose which memories go up. They see only those, held up by fridge magnets. All they can do is love them, so no commenting, no sharing links, just quiet little hears. When Nana hearts a photo it lands right back on your memory with a little burst. There is no account for her to make, she simply taps the link you share to join your Fridge. It works both ways. When your sister sends her family's Fridge link it opens inside your own journal. Her kids show up in your feed. Both journals stay separate. YOURS, AND ONLY YOURS There is no Small Hours server and there is no account to create. Your journal lives in your own iCloud, synced by the same Apple infrastructure that carries Photos and Notes. Everything is encrypted. Notes are end to end. With Advanced Data Protection your photos are too. No ads, tracking, or analytics. You are never locked in either. One tap exports the whole journal as a zip of full resolution files for you to download. ALSO IN THE BOX • A look-back every morning. This day one week, one month and one year ago • Month recaps that play like little films and export as real videos • A growth log with weight and height charts • Streaks, stats, and a photo a day nudge you can schedule or let surprise you • Home Screen and Lock Screen widgets • Face ID lock for quiet privacy • Search the whole journal. Notes, places, songs, people SMALL HOURS PLUS The journal is free. Photos, videos, notes, milestones, places, songs, scanning their artwork, sharing, the Fridge, search and export. None of it is capped. None of it will ever move behind a paywall. Plus adds the keepsakes. Memory Lane plays any day of the year as one story. The Soundtrack builds every song you saved into an Apple Music playlist. The Year Book lays out a whole year like a real book, ready to keep or print. The Artwork Book binds their drawings, each one framed under the title they gave it. Year in Review plays the year back as a little film. Then & Now sets the same little face side by side, months apart. Themes change the paper and the pens. Growth curves draw their measurements on the real WHO percentiles. $12.99 a year with the first week free, or $34.99 once. Family Sharing is included, so two parents never pay twice. Viewers, followers and grandparents never see a price at all. Small Hours requires an iCloud account. Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ ## Key features - Daily photo journal - Shared family journal - Private memory sharing - Growth and milestone tracking - Video and photo recaps - Secure iCloud storage - Searchable memories ## Frequently asked questions about Small Hours ### What is Small Hours? Small Hours is a private, shared journal app for parents to document their child's early years. It focuses on capturing daily photos and allows for adding notes, videos, and voice recordings to create a rich memory archive. ### How does Small Hours handle privacy and security? All data is stored in your personal iCloud account with end-to-end encryption. With Advanced Data Protection, photos are also encrypted. The app has no servers, no accounts to create, and no ads or tracking. ### Can I share memories with family members using Small Hours? Yes, you can invite grandparents and other family members to a separate 'Fridge' app. You choose which memories are shared, and they can interact by 'loving' photos, which appears back in your journal. ### What is the 'Small Hours Plus' subscription? The core journal features are free. Small Hours Plus offers additional keepsake features like a Year Book, Year in Review film, Then & Now comparisons, themes, and WHO growth curves. It costs $12.99/year or $34.99 once, with Family Sharing included. ### Does Small Hours have ads? No, Small Hours is completely ad-free. The developers emphasize a private and uninterrupted experience for users to focus on their memories. ### What devices does Small Hours support? Currently, Small Hours is supported on iPhone. It requires an iCloud account for data storage and synchronization between parents. ### How often is Small Hours updated? The latest version, 4.1, was released on August 7, 2026, indicating active development and regular updates to enhance features and reliability. ### Can I export my memories from Small Hours? Yes, you can export all your memories as a single zip file containing real files at any time. This ensures your data is never locked into the app. ## Version history (last 5 releases) ### 5.3 — 2026-09-07 Small Hours 5.3. Undo, everywhere it matters. • Delete a memory, swap a photo or take something off the Fridge, and a small note offers it back for a few seconds. No more "are you sure" dialogs. • Took a better photo at bathtime? The add menu now offers to swap today's. • Songs and voice notes can be shared as cards, like photos and milestones. • Grandparents can play the day's look-backs as one story, and the Fridge says how many memories are new. • A note or a milestone opens on the memory itself, not on a picture of its kind. • The growth log shows the percentile as a figure, says which curves it was read against, and can undo a deleted measurement. • A memory added to an earlier day says where it went, with a Show Me. • Every figure and label is set in one face across the app, and every confirmation looks the same wherever it appears. • Dozens of smaller refinements: the composers all run in the same order, the paywall leads with the price, a purchase opens the thing you tapped, and every long render can be stopped. ### 5.1 — 2026-09-06 Small Hours 5.1. An audit of everything that could lose a memory, and the app learns to be read out loud. WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN LOST • Six ways the journal could lose what it was just given, all closed. Each one needed something to go wrong at the wrong moment. Each one is the kind of thing you would never get back. • The other parent's edit could disappear if two phones raced. Their copy is kept now. • A followed fridge's photos were being backed up as if they were yours. They belong to the family who posted them, so they are not taken any more. • A memory whose day was already spoken for is answered honestly, instead of quietly going somewhere else. THE APP CAN BE READ OUT LOUD NOW • Every photo in the journal can be opened full screen with VoiceOver. The way in was a tap on the picture, and VoiceOver spends its own tap on something else, so there was no way in at all. • Months are headings. The rotor can jump between them, so reaching last March is not a swipe past every card in between. • Four screens that said nothing now say what they are. • Screens that had no way back have one. • Reduce Motion is answered in the journal. Cards stop scaling under your thumb, and a memory arriving fades in rather than growing. • Haptics can be turned off. THE PUBLIC FRIDGE • A fridge could end up with two live pages, and only one of them was the real one. It keeps a single page now, and knows which. SMALLER THINGS • The feed does no work between frames, so a long journal scrolls the way a short one does. • A video that will not play says so, instead of showing you nothing. • A song preview lets go of the audio when it is finished, so the next one can start. • Opening the app from a shortcut no longer lands on top of a half written note. • The apostrophes are the real ones. • The reminder about tomorrow no longer arrives alone. The rest of the week comes with it. ### 5.0 — 2026-08-27 Bug fixes, sync improvements, and overall polish. ### 4.8 — 2026-08-20 Bug fixes and performance improvements ### 4.6 — 2026-08-17 Bug fixes and better iPad support: • iPad Split View camera fix • Photos and videos fill their frame on the big screen instead of being cropped in half • Keyboard support. Escape closes a photo or a story. Arrow keys page through one. ⌘N starts a memory, ⌘F finds one • If Small Hours can't check iCloud for a journal you already have, it says so and lets you try again, instead of risking a second one • Fixed Fridge Heart syncing • A photo that failed to download quietly tries again instead of leaving a blank card • Smoother scrolling, faster big imports, less battery spent on things you've already closed ## More apps by Hugh Gilmore - [Landed — Wine Pricing](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/landed-wine-pricing/id6791839536) - [Liquid Gold: Milk Tracker](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/liquid-gold-milk-tracker/id6793794187) - [Marathon Mode: Run Tracker](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/marathon-mode-run-tracker/id6794143871) All apps by Hugh Gilmore: https://appshunter.io/developer/6787871823 --- *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 2026-09-07.*