Reading in ChoreUnlock now looks and feels like a real book. Chapters open with a proper heading, the text is set in a classic book typeface, and your child turns pages by swiping, just like an e-reader. Text size is adjustable, and the app remembers each child's setting. The original illustrations are back in the books. Over a thousand pieces of art from the original printings now appear right where they did on the page — Beatrix Potter's watercolors in The Tale of Peter Rabbit, the color plates in The Velveteen Rabbit, the classic drawings in Winnie-the-Pooh, Tom Sawyer, Treasure Island, the Oz books and more. Some books now wear their original covers on the shelf, too. Kids can highlight. Press and hold any sentence to mark it with a yellow highlighter, and the marks are saved for every re-read. You can see your child's highlighted lines from the Library — a small window into what stuck with them. Finishing a chapter now means understanding it. After reading a passage out loud for Mak, your child answers four quick questions about the chapter. Three right passes. Miss it, and they're sent back to the book — and the retry comes with brand-new questions, so the only way through is actually knowing the story. The score shows on your approval card. Mak also listens for the whole passage now, start to finish. And when one chapter isn't enough: once the day's reading is approved, your child can keep reading bonus chapters for extra XP. You set how many per day and what each one is worth, right on the book.

Every book in the Family Library can be a mission. Pick one of 118 free classics — The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Sherlock Holmes, The Box-Car Children, the Oz books — assign a chapter, and it appears on your child's device as tonight's mission. They read it right in the app and prove it by reading a passage out loud. Mak checks the reading, the XP lands, and screen time is earned by a book, not a feed. The lock now proves itself. ChoreUnlock checks that the lock is actually holding on every device. If apps that should be locked ever aren't, you get an alert on your phone and the Kids' devices card shows exactly what to do. A new day starts fresh everywhere. Yesterday's finished chores can no longer carry into the morning and unlock the day for free. Settings are easier to edit. Number fields open a proper keypad, and you set the nightly re-lock by tapping an hour instead of typing one. And the Kids' devices card double-checks whether a device is on a kid Apple Account, and corrects itself if it had it wrong.

Reading is the headline of this update — and it's now an assignment. Pick a real book from the Family Library and make it tonight's mission. The chapter appears on your child's device, they read it right in the app, then prove it by reading a passage out loud. Mak listens and checks the reading, the XP lands, and screen time is earned — by a book, not a feed. The library just tripled: 118 complete classics, free forever. The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, The House at Pooh Corner, The Box-Car Children, Sherlock Holmes, five more Oz books, Treasure Island, and dozens more. Browse shelves by age, search any title, and every book shows a one-line note and a "minutes a night" estimate so you can pick the right one in seconds. Lock the whole device. You can now lock entire app groups — even "All Apps." A one-time safety step makes ChoreUnlock itself un-lockable, so the missions and the book are always within reach, and new apps your child installs later are locked automatically. Day off and vacation. Pause the routine for a day or a whole trip: no missions, no penalty, the streak survives. Mak can run it all. Tell him to assign a book, remove or change a mission, offer a bonus, grant extra minutes, set an allowance, or give a day off — he drafts the plan, you confirm, it happens. His voice answers faster too. A brand-new setup walks you through adding your kids, building missions by talking to Mak, previewing today from both sides, and turning on the Auto-Lock. Also: a mission your child submitted but you hadn't reviewed by midnight no longer counts as missed, and the Guide is easier to scan.

ChoreUnlock 2.0 turns reading into screen time. A real library, built in. Your dashboard now has a Family Library: fifty complete books your kids can read inside the app. Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland, Treasure Island, Winnie-the-Pooh, Black Beauty, Little Women, Aesop's fables and the Grimm tales for the little ones — real books, not excerpts, and free forever. Reading becomes a mission. Pick a book, pick a child, pick a schedule: every day, school nights, weekends, or one chapter a week on the day you choose. The mission then walks the whole book by itself. Each time your child opens it, the app serves the next chapter — you never manage chapters, you just watch the bookmark move. They prove they read it. Out loud. At the end of a chapter the app highlights a short passage and your child reads it aloud. Mak listens and checks the reading against the page. Pass, and the XP lands and the screen time is earned. No skimming, no "yes I read it." This is the honest version of reading time. A Faith shelf for your family. Choose your tradition in the Library and the right texts appear: the Psalms and Genesis from the Septuagint with the Gospels in the original Greek, the King James Bible, the Torah with Hebrew alongside, the Qur'an with the Arabic, or the Bhagavad Gita. One Psalm every Sunday is a mission your child can carry for life. Families who want no faith shelf can turn it off. Everything else you already use — missions, XP, the app lock, bonus time from your phone — works exactly the same. Reading is simply the newest way to earn.

Your dashboard now shows every kid's device. Each device your kids use appears on your dashboard with its protection status: whether ChoreUnlock can still manage its apps, when it last checked in, and which child used it last. Devices signed in with a kid Apple Account show as fully protected, because iOS itself keeps the app and its permission from being removed. Devices on a regular Apple ID get honest guidance on how to make them tamper-proof. An alert when protection is turned off. If screen-time protection is ever switched off on a kid's device, your phone gets a notification right away and the device is flagged on your dashboard. ChoreUnlock also pauses missions, XP, and rewards on that device, and your child sees a clear screen asking them to hand the device to a parent. One tap from you turns everything back on. A guided setup that takes about two minutes. Setting up the app lock used to take some figuring out. Now it's a step-by-step walkthrough: it makes sure you're holding the right device, asks iOS for permission, tells you how protected this particular device can be, helps you pick the apps to lock, and turns the lock on. Each step is one screen with one decision. Give bonus screen time from your own phone. Reward a good day from wherever you are. The extra minutes arrive on your child's device the next time ChoreUnlock opens there, and if a screen-time session is already running, it gets longer on the spot. A cleaner app. Matching icons on every screen, an organized stats table for each child on your dashboard, a tidier tab bar on the kids' side, and many small fixes.

Mak got a serious upgrade, and your house got new rules. - Talk to Mak naturally: he now waits for you to finish your thought, and he can EDIT existing missions by voice ("make bed-making twenty XP") instead of creating duplicates. - Smoother voice conversations from start to finish. - The nightly re-lock now runs on your schedule: midnight, 6 AM, 9 PM - any hour, per child. - Optional missed-mission penalty: skipped missions cost their XP that night, never below zero, with fair-warning reminders before the deadline. - A cleaner, faster parent dashboard with a brand-new icon set. - Screen Time setup is now more reliable across restarts, with clearer help if iOS blocks access. - Many fixes, including photo checks for new families and mission-list layout.

ChoreUnlock 1.2 — Meet Mak, your voice assistant. Tap the glowing light and just talk: Mak answers out loud in a real voice, plans the missions — XP, schedules, photo checklists — and creates them the moment you say yes. Plus a guided welcome for new families, School & PTA referral codes, smoother voice audio with gentle chimes, and bug fixes.

Chore Unlock 1.1.0 — Expensive Apps, smarter AI checks & Real Rewards • Expensive Apps — Give pricier apps (like social media) their own XP rate. Everyday apps stay affordable; the expensive ones cost more and have no free minutes. Each child gets two screen-time wallets and chooses which to spend. • Photo-proof checklists — Tell the AI exactly what "done" looks like for each mission (e.g. "Water bottles full, no droppings, fresh bedding"). Every item must be visible in the photo to pass. • Per-mission AI control — Set the AI stricter or gentler for individual missions, or turn it off so proofs come straight to you. • Sharper photo checking — Upgraded AI with better judgment on pet care, kitchens, and messy-vs-clean calls. • Real Rewards — Turn finished chores into real allowance. Chore Unlock tracks each child's weekly earnings in a receipt-style ledger, and you send the money your way (like Apple Cash) with one tap. Also in this update: • Voice-proof recordings no longer stop partway through playback • Clearer, friendlier Screen Time setup messages • Fewer confirmation popups when choosing apps to lock • Small fixes and polish

Bug fixes and improvements: • Fixed: on iPads signed in with a child's Apple Account, the "Allow ChoreUnlock to manage Screen Time" button did nothing. Setup now works — iOS will ask the parent to approve with their own Apple ID. • You can now lock a whole app group (like Social or Games) — including when iOS auto-selects the group because you picked every app in it. A quick confirmation replaces the old error. • Clearer error messages during Screen Time setup if something goes wrong. • The parent dashboard now shows when your spouse has joined your family, and invite codes stop working once they have. • Fixed a placeholder family name appearing on the sign-up screen.