A fair first question about A Moment With: what does it actually do? Here’s how A Moment With works today, in plain English, including a few things it deliberately doesn’t do. One example runs the whole way through: Mum’s 70th, with a cake, a speech that runs long and an uncle whose caravan story gets better every year.
The short version: it’s an app to record family stories together. It’s a private, collaborative place for the voices, stories and moments worth keeping, on iPhone, Android and the web, and a plan bought on one works on all three. It’s not for likes. It’s for keeps.
How A Moment With works: start with a story
Everything lives in a story: Mum’s 70th, the Broome trip, Nan’s recipes. Start one with New story, give it a name and pick a category, and most categories suggest chapters to begin with (untick the suggestion if you’d rather start blank). Choose Milestone and you get The lead-up, The day itself, What changed and Looking back. Rename, reorder or delete them, or use Add chapter (the + on the phone) to make your own. “Speeches (abridged)” is a perfectly good chapter title.
Chapters hold moments. A moment is one thing worth keeping: a photo, a video, a voice note or something written. On the phone, the add screen has four tiles: Camera, Library, Voice Note and Written Note. Library picks up to 20 photos and videos at once and makes each one its own moment, which helps the morning after, when your camera roll holds sixty shots of the same candles. On the web it’s Add a moment, and you can record a voice note in the browser too.
Not sure where something belongs yet? Leave the destination empty and it saves to Drafts (private by default) for you to file later.
Bringing people in
A family story app works best when more than one person adds to the story (more on that in why family stories are better when everyone gets a say). There are three ways in.
- Invite people. As the story’s owner, you invite someone as an Editor (can add chapters and moments) or a Viewer (can look, not change). They need an A Moment With account (the free plan is fine), and if they’re not on it yet they get an email. On the phone, it’s the Add tile in the story’s people row. For Mum’s 70th, make your sister an Editor so her photos land in the same place as yours.
- Share QR. Each story has a QR code and a join link. Whoever scans it asks to join, and you approve or decline each request, choosing Editor or Viewer as you go. Join codes don’t expire, so share it with the people you mean to rather than posting it somewhere public.
- People. These are your connections, and they’re mutual: one of you invites, the other accepts. Being connected is what lets someone see the stories you share with People (more below).
Asking people who aren’t on the app
Some of the best stories belong to people who will never download an app: Mum’s school friend, the cousin who only answers texts. That’s what Request a Moment is for (the Request tile on the phone). Pick a story you own, write a question, choose how people can answer and share the link. They answer by voice, video, photo or in writing, in their phone’s browser, with no app and no account. You see each answer first and choose Add to story or Decline. Added answers are credited with the name the person typed, or “A friend” if they left it blank. For a party, an event link comes with a QR code.
The free plan includes 5 requests in total; Premium and Legacy+ let you ask as often as you like. The full walkthrough is in Request a Moment: how to ask anyone for a memory.
Who sees what
Each story has one sharing setting:
- Private: only you and the people you add to the story.
- People: your connections, plus anyone you’ve added.
- Public (Premium and Legacy+): anyone signed in to A Moment With who has the link. Public stories also show up in search inside the app.
New stories start on People. The phone lets you pick a different setting as you create one, and you can change it any time after. Each moment also keeps its own setting, so a Private moment in a shared story stays between whoever added it and the story’s owner. Mum’s 70th can go to People while the photo of Dad asleep in his chair by 3 pm stays Private. That’s the point of a private family photo sharing app: nothing goes Public unless you set it that way, and who can see what is checked on our servers, not just hidden in the app. More in who can see your stories.
Dates worth keeping
Upcoming is a private list of the dates that matter to you: birthdays, anniversaries, memorials. Tap Add a date, choose a category, say who it’s about and whether it repeats every year. Nobody else sees your dates.
A birthday can start a request. Open Mum’s birthday, tap Request a Moment, and the question is already written: “Would you record a birthday greeting for Mum?” It’s one link that takes up to 20 answers, sent to the family rather than to Mum. If you allow notifications, the iPhone app reminds you at 9 am, three days before and on the day; the Android app and the web don’t send reminders. More ideas in asking the whole family for birthday greetings.
Watching it back
Play story plays a story’s moments one after another, photos, clips, voice notes and written moments, on the phone or the web. Easy to pass a laptop around the table after lunch.
On Legacy+, Video Producer on the web turns a story’s own photos and clips into a home movie or a vertical reel. You choose the format, the length and the music; it trims the clips and cuts them to the beat. It doesn’t generate anything: no made-up footage, images or voices, and every photo and clip in the film comes from your story.
Taking it with you
On Premium and Legacy+ you can download your originals, and request a full archive of the stories you own: ZIP files of every photo, video, voice note and caption, with an email when it’s ready (it’s kept for 7 days). On any plan, the web app’s Settings page offers a data file of your stories and chapters, without the media.
What it doesn’t do
- It doesn’t write your story. No AI writes your captions or turns a recording into a tidy narrative, and there’s no transcription. The words in a story are the ones people said or typed.
- It isn’t social media. There’s no public feed, no followers, no ads and no algorithm deciding what you see.
- It doesn’t print. Printed books and calendars aren’t something you can order today.
- It isn’t a backup for your camera roll. It’s for the moments you choose to keep, with the story around them.
Getting started
The free plan covers up to 5 stories, you plus 5 people per story, 5 requests, Private and People sharing, and 0.5 GB of storage. Premium, from A$9.99 a month, adds Request a Moment as often as you like, unlimited stories and people, Public sharing, downloading your originals and 5 GB. Legacy+ adds Video Producer and 25 GB. Details are in Free, Premium or Legacy+.
Start with one story. Mum’s 70th is as good as any. The caravan story will get told again at Christmas either way, so you may as well have it on record.
Prefer the app? Get A Moment With on the App Store or Google Play.
