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Once a year, on the anniversary of the day you planted that tree. Nothing happens in between, and that is deliberate. The app shows you how long is left.

Last year stays shut until you have answered this year, so that what you wrote then cannot be edited by who you are now. Answer this year's a set of questions and everything opens at once.

No. A blank is kept as a deliberate blank rather than a gap. "I had nothing to say about this in 2026" is itself a true thing about 2026.

Not in a tree. The foundations underneath, which are what you love, what you cannot stand, what you believe and what steadies you, can be added to whenever you like.

Open the tree and tap Answer this together. Show them the code on your screen; their phone camera reads it and offers to open Understory. You will both see the same six letters, you check they match, and that is it.

You only ever do this once per person. There is no code to scan next year.

A code on a screen could be photographed by someone else. What nobody can do is make both phones show the same six letters unless the two phones really did reach each other. If they differ, stop, and start again somewhere more private.

Yes, at any point. Connect three years in and all three years go across at once, not just the newest. You can also connect before anything is sealed, and the first year will reach them the moment you seal it.

Whichever one is in someone's hand. There is no main phone and no owner. One of you might answer year three and the other year five.

Nothing. The moment a year is sealed it is on its way to everyone else on that tree. They do not scan anything, tap anything or accept anything. It is simply in their trunk the next time they open the app.

Next time their app opens, which if they are sitting next to you is usually about a minute. If their phone is off for a year, it is still waiting when they come back.

A connected tree asks before a sitting starts. If somebody is not there you can still answer: their phone is told the sitting happened without them, so nobody starts a second one for the same year, and the year still reaches them.

No, and there is nowhere to. Understory has no names outside a companion tree, which is about a named animal. You know who your partner is; the app does not need to be told, and it never asks. A connected tree simply says how many other phones hold it.

No. There is no crash reporting and no analytics of any kind, so nothing reaches us on its own. If the app hits a problem it notes it on your phone, and you will find it under Your data with a button to copy it. Whether to send it is entirely up to you.

If you were apart and you both sat down, there will be two sittings for that year. The app shows you both and asks what the year should keep. It will not choose between them on its own, because both are somebody's writing. Whatever you pick, the other one stays with the year and nothing is deleted.

Yes. Before a tree is connected there is still a one-off handover: a link or code carrying a single sealed year, collected once and then destroyed.

Yes. The couple tree, the household and a companion can all be answered together and connected. Only the self-reflection tree cannot.

Put it away. At the foot of its trunk. It stops there: it leaves your four trees so you can start a new one, it stops counting, and it stops asking you anything once a year.

Nothing is deleted. Every year stays exactly as you wrote it and you can read it whenever you want. You will find it under Earlier on the tree that replaces it.

No. No reminder, no tile, no years arriving. Nothing from a tree you have put away reaches you unless you go looking for it. That is the point of putting it away.

They keep it, whole. It is as much theirs as it was yours and it is not ours to take back. Their phone simply stops sending years to yours.

No. A tree you have put away no longer counts as one of your trees, so if you were on the free tree you can start a new one and it stays free.

Yes, as long as you have not started a new one in its place. And you are never asked why you put it away. There is no box for a reason and there will not be one.

No. One of each runs at a time. Put one away and the next one starts fresh, at ring one, with its own clock.

It never will. It is the one tree with nobody else in the room, which is what makes it safe to answer honestly.

No. Every connected phone holds the complete tree, not a view of one. The relay that carries a year between phones is a courier and never a copy of record.

One tree, forever, with no limit on how many years it grows. If someone shares a tree with you, that is your free one.

All four trees and the foundations. One payment, yours for life, no subscription. Nothing you have already written is ever behind it. Your free tree keeps growing either way.

Tap Already bought on the purchase screen. A purchase is tied to your Apple ID, so it follows you to a new phone, but the new phone has to be told to look. Make sure you are signed in with the same Apple ID you bought it with.

Your data → Export everything. You get two files, whether or not you have paid. A PDF to read, print and keep, with every question above every answer, year by year. And a .understory file, which is the one that puts the record back into the app.

The PDF is deliberately not importable, and it says so on its own first page. Keep both.

Do not amend the .understory file if you plan on importing it again. It has to go back in exactly the format it left, or the record it restores will not be accurate. The file says so at the top, in the first thing you see when you open it. Reading it is fine; editing it, reformatting it, or saving it out of another program is not.

Understory can tell if a file has been changed since it was exported and will say so before it puts anything back, but it will still let you go ahead, because a changed record is better than none.

The record goes with it. There is no copy on a server to restore from, because there is no server. iOS will warn you that deleting an app deletes its data, and for Understory that is the whole thing.

Three things save you: a phone backup, which brings Understory across on its own; an export you have kept; and any tree you have connected to somebody else, because their phone holds it whole as well.

If you only want the icon gone, press and hold it and choose Remove from Home Screen rather than Delete App. The app stays installed and the record is untouched; you reach it from the App Library or by searching. Offload App, in iPhone Storage settings, also keeps your data.

Understory cannot add anything to that dialogue. iOS does not let an app say a word about its own deletion, which is why the warning is inside the app instead, on the Your data screen.

Yes. Your data → Bring a record back in, and choose the .understory file. It shows you what is in the file before anything is written.

It merges and never replaces, so an old export onto a phone that has moved on cannot cost you a single year, and bringing the same file in twice changes nothing.

No, and that is on purpose. You reconnect with one code, once. A file cannot carry a phone’s identity without two phones ending up answering to the same one, and then they would race for the same delivery.

Restore it from an iPhone backup and Understory comes with it: every tree, every ring, and your connections, which keep working without reconnecting.

If you set the new phone up as new, downloading Understory again gives you an empty app. Bring in an export, or reconnect to somebody who shares a tree with you and it comes back from their phone. Your purchase follows your Apple ID either way. Tap Already bought.

No. It is on your phone, and there is no account and no server holding it. See the privacy policy.