How to use the app

Magic links instead of passwords

1. Open the app and enter your email address.
2. Tap Send Magic Link. Within a few seconds an email arrives (check spam the first time).
3. Tap the link in that email on your phone — you're in. There's no password to remember.

Setting up your profile

The first time you sign in, you'll set up your profile:

• Your name — how you appear on your stories.
• A photo (optional) — or pick a color, and your initials become your avatar.
• Your birthday (optional, month and day only) — the newsletter lists upcoming family birthdays in each issue.

You can change any of this later: tap your photo at the top of the home screen, then Edit Profile.

An invite link

You'll get a link that looks like join.thenewsletterapp.com/… by text, email, or however your family shares things. Tap it:

• If you have the app, it opens right to the join screen.
• If you don't, a page shows you the newsletter's name and the right app store for your phone. Install the free app, sign in with your email, then come back to the invite and tap the link again — it opens the app straight to joining. The page also shows your invite code as a backup.

An invite email

Or you'll get an email saying who invited you and to which newsletter, with a green Join button. Tap it and follow along. An emailed invitation is personal — sign in with the address it was sent to, or it won't be accepted. If you'd rather use a different address, just ask whoever invited you to send a new one.

Create it

Tap Create a Newsletter on the home screen, then choose:

• A name — "The Baron Bulletin", "Smith Family News", anything you like.
• How often it goes out — weekly, every other week, or monthly.
• Which day it arrives — a weekday (for weekly/biweekly) or a day of the month (for monthly). Issues are delivered at 9 AM in your time zone.

You'll see exactly when the first issue will arrive and when stories are due before you confirm.

Invite the family

From your newsletter, open Newsletter Settings. You can:

• Invite by text message — don't have their email? Type their phone number (or leave it blank and pick them from your contacts) and tap Send a text message. Your phone's own Messages app opens with a friendly note and the invite link already written, so the text comes from you. Read it over, change anything you like, and send.
• Share the invite link — send it by WhatsApp, email, or anything else on your phone. This link works for anyone you give it to, which is what makes it easy to pass around the family.
• Invite by email — type an address and the app sends a friendly invitation for you. We show you the address and ask you to confirm before anything is sent, because a typo would send your family's newsletter to a stranger.

An emailed invitation is personal: it only works for the address you sent it to, and nobody else can use it even if it gets forwarded.

Pausing or deleting a newsletter

Both live at the bottom of Newsletter Settings, and only the owner can use them.

• Pause stops new issues going out. Everything is kept — all the stories, photos and past issues stay exactly where they are, and members can still read the archive. Start it again whenever you like.
• Delete permanently removes the newsletter and everything in it, for everybody — every issue, story and photo, and the web pages for issues already delivered. You'll be asked to type the newsletter's name to confirm, because this cannot be undone.

Issues that have already been emailed stay in people's inboxes either way. Like a letter you've posted, those can't be taken back.

If you'd rather hand the newsletter to someone else than delete it, use Transfer Ownership instead.

When we can't reach someone

If a member's email address stops working — it was mistyped, or the mailbox was closed — the mail comes back to us undelivered. When that happens we stop sending to that address, so we're not repeatedly mailing somewhere nothing arrives.

You'll see a note next to that person in Manage Members saying we can't reach them. If the address was mistyped or the mailbox is fixed, invite them again at the corrected address. If they unsubscribed, that was their choice, so we won’t email them again — not even an invitation. You can still send them the invite link yourself by text or message.

Cancelling an invitation

Sent one to the wrong address? Open Manage Members and look under Pending invitations — that's everyone who's been emailed but hasn't joined yet. Tap Cancel and their invitation stops working immediately.

Your shared invite link is not affected, and you can invite the same person again at a corrected address.

Adding a story

Open your newsletter and tap + Add Your Story. A story has:

• A title — the headline.
• Your story — as much or as little as you want to write. There's no separate summary to fill in: the newsletter shows your opening lines as the preview, and readers tap to read the rest.
• Photos (optional) — up to 3 per story, each with an optional caption. No photos? No problem — the delivered issue gives your story a fun little placeholder picture instead. Big photos are fine — the app shrinks them for you before they are uploaded.

You can add more than one story to the same issue — the button becomes "+ Add Another Story".

Changing your mind

Until the issue goes out, tap View / edit your stories on the newsletter screen to reread, edit, add or remove photos, or withdraw a story entirely. Tap any photo there to see it full-screen. Once the issue is delivered, stories are locked in.

Deadlines and reminders

Stories are due 3 days before each delivery day, so the issue has time to come together. If you haven't written yet, the app sends you a gentle reminder a few days before the deadline and a "last call" the day before — by email and in the app. The reminder email's Add your story button opens the app straight to the story form. If you've already submitted, you won't be nagged.

The deadline is a nudge, not a locked door: a late story still makes it in right up until the issue actually goes out. Just don't expect a reminder after the deadline has passed.

The issue arrives on its own

On the scheduled morning, the app gathers every story, lays out the issue, and emails it to the whole family. Each member also gets an in-app notification. Nobody has to press anything.

Two ways to read

• The email — a clean story list: each story shows one little photo (or a fun emoji if it has none), who wrote it, and its opening lines.
• The web edition — tap any story (or "View full issue online") to read full stories and browse every photo, full-screen. It works in any browser, no app needed — perfect for relatives who just read along.

Little extras

• 🎂 Upcoming birthdays — each issue lists family birthdays in the next 30 days.
• 📅 Next issue date — every issue tells you when the next one arrives, so you know how long you have to add a story.
• Past issues — every issue stays in the app, laid out just like the web edition: a story list under the green masthead. Tap a story to read it, and tap any photo to see it full-screen — swipe left and right to flip through the rest, captions included. The newsletter screen lists the most recent few, with a Show older issues button underneath for the rest.
• Comments — at the bottom of every story in a delivered issue there’s a place to leave a comment. Anyone in the newsletter can join in, and the story’s author (plus anyone else who commented) gets a notification — and tapping that notification takes you straight to the story with the new comment highlighted. Comments stay inside the app, just for the family — they never appear in the emailed newsletter or on the web edition. You can remove your own comment with the small × beside it; admins can remove any comment.
• If nobody submitted a story, the app never sends an empty newsletter — instead everyone gets a short email saying nothing was shared this time, with the date of the next issue so you can catch that one.

Manage Members

In Newsletter Settings, admins can see everyone, change roles (Admin / Contributor / Reader), and remove members. The owner is marked with a 👑 badge.

Manage Stories

Admins can remove an accidental or duplicate story from the upcoming issue before it goes out. To keep things fair, the list shows only who submitted and when — not the story's contents. There's no editing of anyone's words: the newsletter belongs to everyone who writes in it.

Flagged stories

If someone reports a story, the newsletter's admins see a small ⚑ Flagged for review banner on that story and on its issue while the report is looked at. Only admins see it — other members notice nothing — and it disappears on its own once the report is resolved. Who reported, and why, is never shown to anyone in the family.

Newsletter Settings (owner)

• Rename the newsletter or change the schedule — members are notified automatically.
• Change the send day or time zone — changes apply from the next issue.
• Transfer ownership to another member (they must have joined already). You stay on as an admin.

Private by design

• Newsletters are invite-only. Your stories and photos are visible to your family and no one else.
• Photos are automatically stripped of hidden location data before they're stored, so a picture can never quietly reveal where it was taken.
• Birthdays never include the year — just the day to celebrate.

Deleting your account

Tap your photo at the top of the Home screen, then Edit Profile — the Danger Zone there has a Delete Account button. It permanently removes your account, your stories, and your photos. If you own a newsletter that still has other members, you'll be asked to transfer ownership first so the family's newsletter lives on without you.

We also tidy up accounts nobody is using. If someone asks for a sign-in link and never opens it, that unconfirmed account goes after 30 days. If you sign in but never join a newsletter and never write anything, that empty account goes after 12 months — and we email you first, so signing in is all it takes to keep it. Once you're in a newsletter, or you've written anything at all, your account is never removed on a timer. Your stories stay part of the family's archive until you delete them yourself.

Reporting something that shouldn't be here

If a story or photo shouldn't have been shared, tap Report under the story in the app, or on the web edition tap Report this story at the bottom of any opened story (there's also a report link at the bottom of the issue page). Both open a full report page that shows what you're reporting and lets you tick what's wrong — no email app needed. You can also email hello@thenewsletterapp.com. A real person reviews every report promptly, and content that violates the rules is taken down — even from an issue that already went out.

Your statistics

Tap your photo at the top of the Home screen, then Your Statistics for a little fun with numbers: stories shared, photos added, comments made, total words written, issues that included your story, and newsletters you run. Below your own numbers there's a friendly "How you stack up" list showing how everyone in your newsletter compares — everyone in that newsletter sees the same list, so bragging rights are official.

Your plan

Tap your photo at the top of the Home screen, then Your Plan. It shows whether you're on the Free plan or Premium, and what each one includes.

A plan belongs to your account, not to one newsletter. If you subscribe, every newsletter you run gets the premium features and so does everyone in them — nobody else in the family is ever asked to pay, and there's nothing for them to do. If you're a member of someone else's newsletter, whether it has Premium is up to whoever runs it. You can subscribe before you've started a newsletter of your own — the app will remind you that Premium only kicks in once you do.

Older issues are never deleted. If a subscription ends they're simply hidden in the app, and every one of them comes straight back if you subscribe again.

Premium works the same on an iPhone, an iPad or an Android phone. It's bought through the App Store or Google Play, whichever your phone uses, so you'll never be asked for card details inside the app itself. You can cancel any time in your store's own subscription settings, and you keep Premium until the period you've already paid for runs out.

Found a bug? Have an idea?

Tap your photo at the top of the Home screen, then Send Feedback. Choose “Something's wrong” or “I have an idea”, and tell us in your own words. Your app version is attached automatically so we can track problems down faster. We read every message.

What version am I on?

The app's version number is shown in small print at the bottom of the Home screen (and on the Edit Profile screen). If you send feedback from the app it's included automatically. Curious what each version added? See What's new.

The app also updates itself in the background. When that happens you'll see a small “Updating…” note at the top of the Home screen, and then an “Update ready” banner — tap it to restart the app with the newest version, or just close and reopen the app whenever you like.

And if a copy of the app ever gets very far behind — say, on a phone that hasn't been used in a long while — it may ask you to install the latest version from the app store before continuing. Everything will be right where you left it afterwards.

The fine print, in plain English

The full details of how your data is handled live in our Privacy Policy, and the rules of the road are in the Terms of Use. Both are written to be actually readable.