User guide

KidSift turns school and activity email into a daily plan, not another inbox. Use this page when you first set up, or when a screen looks new after an update.

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Get started

1. Sign up with the email you actually read (Standard or Pro; 14-day trial), then open the link we send to that address to create your account.
2. Open the welcome email and sign in with your email and the one-time login token. KidSift asks you to Choose a password; after that you sign in with your email and that password. Forgot it later? Tap Email me a login token on the sign-in page.
3. In Setup, connect Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, or iCloud (read-only), add each child, and run Scan Inbox. Each child you have added shows on a card with Edit — or Finish, if their grade or school is still missing. If KidSift spots a school from your mail, confirm with Use this; with more than one child, pick who it belongs to first.
4. If your device is on a different clock than your account, Setup offers Use this time zone. Confirm it so reminders arrive at the right hour.
5. Open Home. That’s the app.

Daily summaries go to the addresses you list in Setup. You can add a spouse with a comma.

Home

Home is tonight and this week — not your full mailbox.

• If a red banner says KidSift can't read your inbox, the provider expired our permission. Reconnect re-links it in one tap.
• Add from flyer — photo, PDF, paste, or speak a note. Photos and thin PDFs can be read with AI when connected. Confirm before anything hits the calendar.
• Glance pills — due tomorrow, reminders.
• Pack tonight — what goes in the bags, said once: a shared line for what everyone needs, then only what is different for a particular child. Wear and pack are separate lines.
• Add these dates — drafts from mail or flyers, grouped by the day they fall on. One tap on Add or Skip, or Add all for a whole day at once; Undo is there for a few seconds if you meant the other one.
• This Week — grouped as Do, Bring, and Coming, with the child’s name on each row. A busy week collapses to one line per child so nothing is left off. Tap Done on a row to close it without leaving Home.
• Calendar tab — a mini month; See All opens the full calendar.
• Kids — one card per child, into their schoolwork.
• When a date changes, the row says where it moved from, on Home, Schoolwork and the calendar.

On a phone, the plan is first. The menu button opens the same list you see on a desktop, in the same order. Theme is in the menu on a phone and in the header on a desktop.

Calendar

Calendar is a month grid on a desktop and an agenda everywhere. On a phone the agenda is the calendar — a month grid needs more width than a phone has.

• Filter by child when you have more than one.
• On a phone the agenda comes first; the month arrows move it a month at a time.
• Expand a day, then add or skip drafts.
• Paste a Google or Outlook iCal URL under Show on calendar to overlay sports or school calendars. They update on their own about every 15 minutes; Refresh in the header checks straight away.
• Upload an `.ics` for a child (team schedule, district calendar).
• Everything you added yourself — uploads and confirmed drafts — shows in purple under Dates you added. One checkbox turns the whole layer off; remove a single file in the list beside the upload button.

Drafts are labeled until you confirm. Confirmed events belong to your KidSift calendar.

Schoolwork

Schoolwork is the loop closer: forms, bring, wear, homework, projects, class notes.

• Filter Open / Done / Dismissed.
• Tap the title to expand. Mark done when it’s finished, or Dismiss if it was never yours.
• Assign an open item to a parent if you share the family. Tap Assigned to me to see only what was handed to you; the chip appears once you have invited a second parent.

Files

Files keeps the newsletters, forms and menus school emails you. Anything that needs you — a form to sign, a list to bring — is at the top; the rest is grouped by the week it arrived, and you can filter to one child.

• Most schools link to a file instead of attaching it. KidSift opens that link and keeps the file itself — a newsletter, a supply list, a fee sheet, a photo, a calendar — including files shared from Google Drive or Docs. For the schools and clubs you set up it follows any link; for a note from anywhere else that lands on Schoolwork, only a Google Drive or Docs file, which Files marks as not from a sender you set up.
• When the newsletter is a web page rather than a file, the page is kept too, named after the page's own title, or the subject of the email if the page gives no useful one. It opens like any other file. Anything on it that could run is stripped out first, and so is its styling, so KidSift shows it in plain type that reads on a phone.
• KidSift keeps a file when it needs something from you, or when it came from a school or club you already told us about. Signature logos and trackers are dropped. Each file shows who sent it, so you can tell school from a stranger.
• Tap a file name to open it. PDFs, photos, newsletter pages and plain notes open straight away; Word, Excel and calendar files download, because a browser cannot show them. Your back button comes back to KidSift.
• The form for a schoolwork item also shows up on that item, so you can open it from Schoolwork without coming here.
• Remove takes a file off this page — for every child it was kept for, and it asks once. KidSift won’t keep that file again.
• Files are kept for the school year and cleared out after it turns over.

Reminders

Reminders is the queue: night-before phone notification, email if needed, SMS on Pro.

• Lock-screen notifications need KidSift on your Home Screen (required on iPhone).
• Each row shows the event’s own date. Sends tonight marks the ones going out tonight.
• Preview shows exactly what will arrive. Skip drops one you don’t need — it asks once. A date you added stays on the calendar; a date KidSift only read from mail leaves with its reminder.
• On the calendar an activity gets one row, on the day it happens — a reminder with the same name as a date you added shares that row. Tap it to see which night KidSift will remind you ("Reminder Sun night") and to preview or skip the reminder.
• Texts need Pro, and texting has to be on for your family. Under Invite someone to get texts, enter their email; their phone gets texts once they agree on the page we send them. Withdraw stops someone's texts — it asks once, and they need a new invite to get texts again. Someone who replied STOP gets texts again only by texting START from that phone. Only a full parent can invite or withdraw people.
• Texts go the night before, one per reminder. Also text the morning of, under SMS recipients, adds a second text on the day of each event, at the time the line under it shows. It saves as you tap it; turned on once that morning's texts have gone, it starts the next morning, as the line under it says. If your family's texts come only on the morning of, it reads Text the morning of: turning it off stops your family's texts. It shows only when your family can text, and only a full parent can change it.
• SMS recipients lists each phone that agreed to get your family's texts, by its last four digits. Can't get texts means texts can't reach that number, often because it is a landline. Tap Invite again on their row in the invite list: it fills in the same email and name, so you only tap Send invite. Ask them to agree with a mobile number; once they do, the old number leaves both lists. Until then the old number's row has no buttons, and Withdraw on their Invited row withdraws both. A new invite clears the old number only when it goes to the same email.
• Sent in an SMS column means KidSift is done with that text: it went to the numbers that can get texts, skipping any marked Can't get texts, or nobody could get it (texts off, the morning text switched off, or the month's texts used up). Off in SMS (morning) means the morning text is switched off.

Kitchen wall

Kitchen wall is the family glance: packing and what’s coming, without signing into email. Park a tablet on the counter. For a babysitter, create a Caregiver share link in Settings — it expires on its own.

Settings

Settings is family admin, not the daily plan.

• Student profiles, teachers, activities (better matching).
• Suggested from inbox — confirm school/teacher guesses from a scan.
• Invite another parent.
• Capture flyers address.
• Caregiver share.
• School-year memory search.
• Custody weeks, if you split time.
• Time zone and daily summary — the clock everything runs on.
• Billing (full parent only) — trial days left, Start subscription while you are on a trial, Manage billing once a card is on file.

Limited parents can run the plan but cannot change billing or remove people.

If something looks missing

• Confirm the child’s school and teacher in Settings so matching can work.
• Check Add these dates before assuming KidSift never saw it.
• The overnight scan does not re-read the whole school year every morning. Use a flyer, an `.ics`, or a calendar overlay for older mail that still has a future date.
• Still stuck? FAQ or hello@kidsift.ai.