Set a timer, hand over the phone, and play along. Everything to read is under Guide.
Each child keeps their own age, favorites, progress and milestones. Tap a name to switch.
The activities change with age, from simple tap-and-hear to matching, counting and stories.
You'll get a quiet two-minute warning, then a calm "all done" screen.
Four digits. Needed to leave a session early. Hold the lock button for two seconds to enter it.
The research is consistent: toddlers learn from screens mainly when a grown-up plays along and talks. These settings put you in the loop.
Favorites go first on the menu, and find-it rounds lean on them. Change it any time.
Optional. Pick one and the session opens straight into it with the home button hidden. Nothing on screen leads anywhere else until the timer ends or you enter the PIN.
Add photos of the people and pets your child loves, with a name for each. They become a category the child can tap to hear "Grandma!" Photos stay on this phone only.
Type the name first, then add the photo.
English is always on. Add any of these and every word gets a tap-to-hear button in that language. Say the words back and forth with your child; that is how a second language actually sticks at this age.
The app speaks with the voices built into this phone. Tap "Hear a sample" and pick the one you like. Apple's premium voices sound the most natural and are a free download under Settings → Accessibility → Spoken Content → Voices.
Pulls the blue out of the whole app in the evening. Turning the brightness down and stopping an hour before bed help more than any tint.
"Evenings" is 6 pm to 7 am.
Nine areas of growth from one to five, with the big three on top. The games, cards and ideas in this app are ways of getting there, not the goal. Tap an area for what is realistic at your child's age and what to try this week.
No app, show or toy teaches a toddler the way a responsive grown-up does. This is what the research says about your role, and what to do with it. Tap a section to open it.
Conversation beats word count. In 4–6 year olds, the number of back-and-forth exchanges with an adult predicted language scores and language-area brain activity far better than the number of words heard. The prompts are written as questions, not narration.
Second languages need a person. Infants learned foreign speech sounds from a live tutor and learned nothing from the identical material on video. The language buttons here are for you to say together, not a substitute for you.
One goal per activity, no side-shows. Learning scientists' checklist for a genuinely educational app: the child's mind is active, nothing distracts from the goal, the content connects to real life, and it involves another person. So there are no mini-games, the rewards are quiet, and every category has a "find it at home" bridge.
Borrowed from the best, minus the hooks. Spaced review (the one piece of real learning science in Duolingo: words you miss come back sooner, words you know come back later) runs quietly on every word here, and find-it rounds adapt their difficulty to the child, as Khan Academy Kids does. What is deliberately left out: streaks, hearts, leagues, tickets, prize chests, notifications, and anything else designed to pull a child back to the screen. A toddler app's job is to be put down.
Short and bounded. The WHO recommends no sedentary screen time for 1-year-olds and no more than an hour a day at 2–4, with at least three hours of movement. The American Academy of Pediatrics' 2026 guidance asks what is watched, with whom, and what it crowds out, rather than setting a clock; its long-standing advice for the youngest children (little beyond video chat before 18 months, and only together with you after that) still stands as the safest default. The daily meter and the Move category are there because of that.
Illustrations: OpenMoji, CC BY-SA 4.0. Sources: Hirsh-Pasek et al., Putting Education in "Educational" Apps · Troseth, Children's learning from digital media · MIT, Romeo et al. 2018 · Ferjan Ramírez & Kuhl, bilingual learning · WHO guidelines under 5 · Harvard, Serve and Return · Cooney Center, touch design for preschoolers · Harvard, 5 steps for brain-building serve and return · UW I-LABS parentese coaching trial (PNAS 2020) · Logan et al. 2019, the million word gap · McDaniel & Radesky, technoference · CDC milestones
Exact moves, exact words, and a picture of what it looks like. Pick one and run it for a week before adding the next.
The CDC's milestone checklist for the nearest age. Most children reach these by this age; it is a conversation starter for your pediatrician, not a test. Checks stay on this phone.
Arts, crafts and play matched to your child's stage, for after the session ends. Tap one for materials and steps.
A web app can't disable the home button on its own. Your phone can.
iPhone: Settings → Accessibility → Guided Access → turn on and set a passcode. Then open this page, triple-click the side button, and tap Start. Triple-click again and enter your passcode to leave.
Android: Settings → Security → App pinning (sometimes "Pin windows") → turn on. Open this page, tap the Recents button, tap the browser's icon at the top of its card, and choose Pin. Hold Back and Home together to unpin.
Words are spoken with the voice built into your phone, so nothing is downloaded or sent anywhere. On iPhone, extra languages sound best if you add them under Settings → Accessibility → Spoken Content → Voices. If a language has no voice installed, the word is still shown so you can say it together.
Great learning today. Time to hand the phone back to your grown-up.
Enter your 4-digit PIN