Relato
In development
DD-RLT-003iPhone
ForFamilies who want to keep their stories in the voices of the people who tell them
An app that asks one question a week to preserve your family's stories in the voices of the people who lived them.
One question a week. Fifty-two stories a year, in their voice.
Your family's stories live with people who will not always be here. And nobody sits down on a Sunday to record forty years of memories. So it never happens, and one day it no longer can.
I have my grandmother in a voice note by accident, telling the story of the house. It is worth more to me than any photo I have.
You hand them the phone and they talk. Relato keeps their voice as they told it; the transcript is there only to accompany it.
Fifty-two questions a year. Not a race against anything. Just a habit small enough to keep, quietly turning into something the family gets to hold on to. Skip a week and it simply waits: no backlog, no counter, nothing telling the storyteller they are behind.
How it works
Usually, two people
The person who buys it and the person who tells the stories are rarely the same person. Sit down together with one phone, or set it up so the questions arrive on the storyteller's phone.
One question a week. That's all it asks
One screen, large type, one question. They never see a list — no “3 questions waiting,” no counter, no backlog. Skip a week and the question simply waits; nothing keeps score. Finish one and a quiet, easy-to-ignore “another?” appears. Their appetite sets the pace; you choose the questions.
Tap to talk. Never hold
Tap once, a gentle three-two-one, then talk. Tap again when they're done. Nothing in the app requires holding a button down — long presses are hostile to tired or shaky hands, so there are none. Long pauses are fine: the app waits much longer than most before cutting in, and before it ever stops on its own it says so on screen: “I'm still here. Take your time.”
Nothing they say gets lost
Audio is saved to the phone continuously as they speak. A dead battery, an incoming call or a crash cannot erase words already spoken — if the app closes mid-sentence, the recording is still there and still plays. Finishing keeps the story; deleting one takes a deliberate second step. Never the other way around.
A story can have more than one telling
“Tell more” adds to the story they just told. “Tell it again” records a new telling and quietly keeps the old one — the first, imperfect attempt is often the one worth having ten years later, so nothing is overwritten or silently thrown away. There is also a second, quieter button for the memory that shows up at seven in the morning with no question attached. It waits there until they want it.
Transcripts help. The voice is the point
Transcription happens on the phone itself — the recording never leaves the device to be processed. The transcript is editable and clearly labeled as best-effort, because that's what it is: a story never gets held up because transcription struggled with an accent. And nothing is rewritten. No AI smooths out their grammar or summarizes over them. The words stay theirs.
Yours to take with you, whenever you want
Export the whole archive at any time. What you get is a plain folder: audio in a format that plays almost anywhere, transcripts as plain text, a printable yearbook, and a single page that plays every story offline in any browser — on a Windows PC, an Android phone, whatever you have. Complete every time. Free even if you never paid. No watermarks, no degraded files. Paying unlocks more recording; it never affects your ability to take your own stories out.
DWG. DD-RLT-004
- Designed for
- A 75-year-old opening it for the first time: one screen, one action, large type, nothing to hold down
- Kept as
- Audio in their own voice, with an editable best-effort transcript beside it
- Yours
- Full export, always free, in open formats, even if you never paid
- Refuses
- Streaks, “you missed a week” messages, badges, analytics, or anything public