User guide
How to use Dovelyne
Everything in the family organiser, in the order you will meet it. Setting the household up for the first time? Start at the top.
Getting started
Dovelyne runs in the browser. There is nothing to download from an app store.
- Go to app.dovelyne.com.
- Choose Create a household and enter your name, email address, a password, a name for the household, and your invitation code.
- Open the email we send and confirm your address. Your household is created the first time you sign in after confirming, so this step is not optional.
- Sign in. You are the household owner.
Invitation codes. Dovelyne is in private beta, so a code is needed to create a household. Each code is single use and expires. If yours is refused, ask for a new one.
Add it to your home screen
On a phone, open the browser menu and choose Add to home screen (or Install). Dovelyne then opens full screen like any other app, and the shell still loads when you are briefly offline. Your data needs a connection.
Adding your family
Go to Family. Add one row per person, including the children and anyone else who needs a look in, such as a grandparent.
- Tap Add a family member, give the person a name, a colour and a role. The role sets a sensible starting point; you can change the details afterwards.
- A member exists without a login. That is fine for a young child you simply want on the calendar.
Giving someone their own sign-in
- Open the member and choose Give this member a login.
- Adults sign in with their email address. Children sign in with a username and password that you create for them, so a child needs no email account.
- Tell the child their username and password. They can change the username themselves later under My account.
Only the owner can create another co-parent login. This stops a second parent account quietly adding more parent accounts.
Profile photos
A parent can add a small photo to each member. Pictures are shrunk in your browser before they are uploaded, and the location and camera details are stripped out on the way.
Who can see what
Open Family, choose a person, and use the switches. Each one turns a whole part of the app on or off for that person.
- Presets give you a starting point per role; adjust from there.
- A new adult or child starts without access to the family information card until you grant it.
- Switching something off does more than hide the button. The rules are enforced by the database, so a person without access to jobs cannot reach them another way.
Grandparents are deliberately limited: they see what you share and nothing more.
Calendar
Open Calendar. Switch between Month, Week and Day, and use Today to come back.
Adding an event
- Pick the day, then Add an event.
- Give it a title, a date and, if it matters, a time.
- Choose who it is for: everyone, parents only, chosen people, or only me.
- Set it to repeat weekly or monthly, with an end date if it stops.
- Invite people who need to answer. They can reply going, can't make it, or mark it done.
If the new event clashes with something already on that day, Dovelyne says so before saving and you can save anyway. Tap any event to edit it. Deleting a repeating event removes the whole series, after a confirmation that says so.
Not yet possible: deleting one occurrence of a repeating event while keeping the rest. Cancel the series and add the remaining dates, or keep the event and note the change in its description.
Jobs and approval
Open Jobs. A job can simply be a thing to do, or a piece of work a child must have checked.
Creating a job
- Tap Add a job and give it a title.
- Choose who it is for, a due date and time, a priority and a category if you want them.
- Set it to repeat if it comes round regularly. Finishing it creates the next one.
- Under Approval, decide whether a parent has to check the work, and the most Stars it can earn.
How approval works
- The child marks the job done. On a job worth Stars this becomes submitted and no Stars move yet.
- The job appears under Waiting for approval on the parent's home screen and in Jobs.
- The parent awards anything from nothing up to the job's limit, asks for more work, or declines it.
- Each job can only be awarded once, and every step is kept in the job's history.
Jobs without an approval setting behave the ordinary way: tick it, it's done.
Stars and rewards
Stars are points inside Dovelyne. They are not money, and nothing is bought, booked or paid automatically.
Try it: approve a job
A working example that runs only in this page. Nothing is sent anywhere.
Setting up the reward shop
- Open Rewards. If you are starting from nothing, use the starter ideas and edit them.
- Add a reward with a name, an icon, what it costs in Stars and, if useful, conditions, who it is for, a limit per week or month, or a number available.
- You can pause the whole shop while you rethink it.
Keeping it sensible
- Set a weekly Star cap on a child if you want a ceiling on a big week.
- Parents can adjust a balance by hand, with a reason, and the adjustment is recorded.
- The history shows every Star earned and spent. Balances never go below zero.
Shopping and prices
Open Shopping. Anyone with access can add to the list and it updates for the rest of the family.
- Add an item with a quantity. Search or rename items as the list grows.
- Tap an item to record what it cost, at which store and in what pack size.
- Mark something bought and, if it has a price, the amount is added to the family budget. Un-buying removes exactly that amount again.
- Removing an item from the list leaves your budget and price history alone.
Meals and recipes
Open Meal plan for the week, or Recipes for the book.
Planning a week
- Tap a slot and choose a meal you have cooked before, a recipe, or type one in.
- Copy last week brings the previous week across; you review what it will replace before anything changes.
- Mark meals planned, cooked or skipped as the week goes.
- Choose add this week's ingredients to send them to the shopping list. You see the list first, and matching quantities are combined.
Recipes
- Save a recipe with servings, times, ingredients, steps, a photo and a link to where it came from.
- Change the servings and the quantities scale with it.
- Use Plan it to drop a recipe into the week, or add its ingredients to shopping directly.
- Paste a recipe or a list in from somewhere else and tidy it up before saving. Word and PDF files are not read; copy the text across instead.
Budget and votes
Family budget
- Create spending categories and, if you want one, a monthly limit for each.
- Shopping marked as bought arrives here automatically; you can also add an expense by hand.
- Where it went breaks the month down by category. If you have not set a limit, none is shown.
Family votes
Open Votes for the arguments that need settling. Ask a question, give the options, choose who can see it and who can vote, then close it when you have an answer.
AI assistance
Dovelyne uses AI in three places, and each one shows you a draft before anything is saved.
- Recipes → Create with AI. Describe a meal; the normal recipe form is filled in for you to edit.
- Meal plan → Plan the week. You tick the days you want to keep and change anything before it saves.
- The sparkle beside Quick add. Turns a sentence into the right kind of entry, with the date worked out from your wording.
Suggested calendar event
The household shares ten AI requests a month during the beta. The number left is shown under More → AI suggestions. A request that fails does not count.
AI never writes to your family's calendar, jobs or lists on its own. Something only saves when a person confirms it.
Chat, photos and notices
- Family chat is for everyone with chat access. The parents channel is separate and children cannot read it.
- Photos keeps a small set of family moments in private storage. Pictures are shrunk in your browser, stripped of location and camera details, and only ever shown through a private link.
- Notices tell you when a job is given to you, an event you are in moves or is cancelled, a vote opens, or there are unread messages.
Worth knowing: notices appear inside the app when you open it. Dovelyne does not send phone push notifications yet, so do not rely on it to interrupt you.
Privacy and your data
- Your household's information is kept apart from every other household by the database itself, not merely hidden in the app.
- Data is stored in Australia.
- Photos sit in private storage and are reached through short-lived links. Deleting a photo removes the file straight away.
- Children sign in with a username, so a child needs no email address.
- There are no advertisements inside the app, and your family's information is not sold.
- Only the text you send to an AI feature leaves the app, and only when you use one of the three AI tools.
The full site privacy policy covers the formalities.
Troubleshooting
My invitation code is refused
Codes are single use and expire. If yours has been used or has run out, ask for another.
I signed up but cannot sign in
Confirm your email address first. The household is created on the first sign-in after confirming.
I forgot my password
Use Forgot your password? on the sign-in screen. A child who signs in with a username should ask a parent, who can set a new password.
A family member cannot find a screen
Check their switches under Family. A part of the app that is switched off is hidden for that person.
The app looks out of date
Dovelyne updates itself when a new version is published and offers to reload. If something looks wrong, pull down to refresh, or close and reopen it.
Something went wrong and I want to report it
Use More → Report a problem. What you write goes privately to the Dovelyne team.
Questions
What does it cost?
Nothing during the private beta. There is no payment set up in the app at all. If paid plans arrive later, we will say so clearly before anything changes.
Do my children need email addresses?
No. A parent creates a username and password for each child. Only adults sign in with an email address.
Can a child give themselves Stars?
No. On a job worth Stars, a child marking it done only submits it. Stars move when a parent approves, each job can be awarded once, and the rules are enforced by the database rather than the app screen.
Can grandparents see everything?
Only what you share. Grandparent access is limited by default and you control every switch.
Is there an iPhone or Android app?
Not in an app store. Dovelyne runs in the browser and installs to your home screen, where it behaves like an installed app.
Does it work offline?
The app itself opens offline, but your family's information needs a connection. Changes should be made while you are online.
Can I use it for two households?
An account belongs to one household. Separate households need separate accounts, and they can never see each other's information.
Still stuck? Get in touch, or use More → Report a problem inside the app.