Your family and your devices

One browser is one family, until you link them

Your family id is made up in your browser the first time you visit. That means the browser is the family: open the board on your laptop and it has no idea it’s you, it thinks you’re a brand-new family.

If you only ever use one phone, you never need to think about this. If you use two devices, link them (below) or your taps end up split across two strangers.

What other families see about you

By default: nothing. You’re a count, not a name, and that’s a perfectly good way to use the whole board forever.

On the You page you can choose to show a name (“Maya”, “the Patels”), a photo, and your kids’ ages. Ages only, never kids’ names, and the photo is hidden whenever the name is. The point of showing any of it is entirely social: it’s how another parent works out whether their twelve-year-old will know anyone.

Even what you do choose to show is only visible to KLC Core members. Everyone else sees an unnamed family whatever you set.

Linking a second device: the email link

On the You page, give an email and we send a link. Open that link on the other device and both now count as one family: what you tap on the phone shows up on the laptop.

The link is single-use and doesn’t last long, so use the newest one. There’s still no password; the email is the whole mechanism.

Passkeys, for phones that do that

If your device offers fingerprint or face sign-in, you can add a passkey on the You page: no email needed first. After that, getting back in on that device is one tap and a thumb, no link and nothing to remember.

No passkey button? Your browser doesn’t support them, and nothing is lost: the email link does the same job everywhere.

Signing out, and lost phones

Once you’ve signed in, the You page grows a Sign out button (this device goes back to the open view) and a Sign out everywhere button, which ends every session on every device at once. That second one is the answer to a lost or stolen phone: the missing device can no longer act as your family.

There’s also sign out and forget this device, which wipes everything this browser knows (name, family id, email) so the next person to pick it up starts as nobody. The shared board is untouched.

If a sign-in would combine two families

Open a sign-in link on a device that already has its own history, and the board won’t silently squash the two together. It stops, says exactly what would happen, and asks. Families with a membership or payments on file additionally can’t be taken over by someone who merely knows an id: those changes need a signed-in session to go through.