Memory Handoff vs Small Hours
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Memory Handoff
Capture fleeting childhood moments with daily prompts. Record videos, photos, or notes to build a beautiful, lasting memory book for your child. Your memories are private and stored on your device.
- Daily memory prompts
- Record video, photo, or text
- Organized memory collection
- Timeline view from birth to 18
- Create printable scrapbooks
- Generate memory reels (films)
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You will forget almost everything — not the milestones, but the small ones. The mispronounced word. The song they invented in the bath. Their first opinion about clouds. Memory Handoff is built to catch them before they're gone. HOW IT WORKS Every day, one gentle question — chosen for your child's age. Answer it in thirty seconds: record a video, snap a photo, scan a drawing, or type a line. Then let it go. WATCH A CHILDHOOD TAKE SHAPE • Today — your daily prompt and the fastest way to capture a moment • Memories — every kept moment, beautifully collected • The Arc — see all the days from birth to eighteen, and the moments you've saved along the way • Keepsake — turn it all into something to hold YOUR MEMORIES REMAIN YOURS Everything is stored on your device and backed up to your own iCloud. Nothing is ever sent to our servers. No ads. No selling your data. Ever. CREATE SOMETHING TO HAND THEM When the time comes, weave every video, photo, and note into a printable Scrapbook or a Memory Reel — a little film of the small things — and give your child a piece of a childhood they could never have remembered on their own. Start today. By their eighteenth birthday, you'll have something no one else could give them. PRICING & TERMS Memory Handoff is free to use. Premium is an optional auto-renewable subscription — $6.99/month or $49.99/year — or a one-time $399 lifetime purchase. Payment is charged to your Apple Account at confirmation. Subscriptions renew automatically unless turned off at least 24 hours before the period ends; manage or cancel anytime in your device Settings. Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ Privacy Policy: https://memoryhandoff.com/privacy.html
Small Hours
This app allows parents to create a shared digital journal of their child's early years, focusing on one photo per day. It enables private sharing of memories with family members and offers features like growth logs and video recaps.
- Daily photo journal
- Shared family journal
- Private memory sharing
- Growth and milestone tracking
- Video and photo recaps
- Secure iCloud storage
- Searchable memories
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Small Hours is a shared journal for your child's littlest years. It is built on the ritual of posting one photo a day. A year later you have 365 pictures worth looking at instead of four thousand 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 handwriting and dated with their age. The small hours are long, but the little years are short. This app helps you keep them. START BEFORE THEY'RE BORN Add a due date and keep a photo a day of the bump. Each memory is dated in weeks of pregnancy. When the baby arrives, tap They're Here and the journal carries on. Bring in the photos taken since the birth, and Small Hours picks one from each day for you to check. 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 there are no comments and no sharing links. When Nana hearts a photo it lands right back on your memory with a small burst. There is no account for her to make. She taps the link you share and joins 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. PRIVACY 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 every photo, video and voice note, named by date. ALSO IN THE BOX • A look back at this day weeks, months and years ago • Month recaps that play as a story and save as a video • Quotes for the things they say, and letters to them • A camera you can open from the Lock Screen or the Action button • Save a note with Siri without opening the app • A birth announcement card with their weight and the time they arrived • Search by words, dates or ages, like "6 months" or "last Christmas" • A growth log with weight and height charts • A daily photo nudge you can schedule or leave as a surprise • Home Screen and Lock Screen widgets, for one child or all of them • Face ID lock 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. Watch Them Grow makes a film of the daily photos with their face lined up from day to day. Watching the last 30 days is free. The Year Book lays out any year of their life or any calendar year, ready to keep or print. Year in Review plays the year back as a film. Memory Lane plays any day of the year as one story. The Soundtrack builds every song you saved into an Apple Music playlist. The Artwork Book binds their drawings, each one framed under the title they gave it. Then & Now puts the same face side by side months apart, or two siblings at the same age. Letters can be sealed until a day you choose. Themes change the paper and the pens. Growth curves draw their measurements on the 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/
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Small Hours at none against Memory Handoff's 3. Memory Handoff's advantage is ratings volume (3 vs 1) and iOS requirement (14.0 vs 26.0). On price, rating, update cadence and ads there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Memory Handoff sells 3 in-app purchases, starting at $6.99 per month. Small Hours asks for nothing beyond the download.
On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 5.0 for Memory Handoff against 5.0 for Small Hours. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 3 and 1 respectively.
Memory Handoff ships an update every 5 days, Small Hours every 2 days. The most recent releases landed on October 11, 2026 and October 9, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Memory Handoff | Small Hours |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (3 ratings) | 5.0 (1 ratings) |
| Number of ratings | 3 — better | 1 |
| Update frequency | Every 5 days | Every 2 days — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | No — better |
| Monetization | Freemium | Freemium |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 14.0 — better | 26.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 22 MB | 15 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | CompassCare LLC | Hugh Gilmore |
Customer experience
Memory Handoff
Small Hours
In-app purchases
Memory Handoff
- Premium Monthly3 Days trial$6.991 Month
- Premium Yearly3 Days trial$49.991 Year
- Lifetime Access$399.00
Small Hours
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is Memory Handoff free?
Is Small Hours free?
Which has better reviews, Memory Handoff or Small Hours?
Do Memory Handoff or Small Hours have ads?
Which is updated more often, Memory Handoff or Small Hours?
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