• Bug: grown-ups had to solve a maths problem to open their own settings. In their own profile. On their own phone. Fix: grown-up profiles never see a maths challenge now. Kids switching into a grown-up profile still get asked once, so the bee stays honest. • Bug: finish a Color by Number picture and it looked like a cover version of the painting, not the painting. Fix: every area you fill now reveals the original colours and shading, so the finished picture matches the art exactly. We checked every page, pixel by pixel. • Bug: draw a face with the eyes near the edge, tap Fill, and only a little patch got painted. Fix: Fill now paints the whole shape, however close the eyes sit. • Bug: moving a picture around needed two fingers, which is one finger too many when you're holding a cuppa. Fix: drag with one finger to move, tap to fill, pinch to zoom. • Bug: the colouring shelf showed finished pictures, which spoiled the ending. Fix: thumbnails now show the outlines waiting for you. • New: a fresh icon. The bee was already in the name; now it's on your home screen too. Draw something, fill it in, and watch it dance.

More detail in Colour by Number: 27 detailed pictures now retain more petals, feather highlights, leaves and other small colour regions. Your saved colouring progress carries over to the refined pages.

Our colouring pages had gaps. Not the cute kind. • Bug: finish a Color by Number picture and the bird's beak, the eyes and the sunflower turned into pale holes, like the page forgot its own details. Fix: every page now has paint under every line, and eyes and beaks stay crisp when the outlines fade. We checked all 146 pages, one by one. • Bug: our colour picker was colour-blind to greens, blues and blacks (a parrot got brown eyes). Fix: we taught it colours, so finished pictures now look like the real painting. • Bug: in Drawing, the Fill bucket painted the whole page no matter where you tapped. Fix: it now fills only inside the shape you drew, even if your square is a bit wobbly. • New: four finished songs in Music to listen to and remix, made only from the sounds in the app. Go finish a picture. It'll look the way it should this time.

We launched a brand-new colouring book, then forgot to let anyone open it. Our finest work. • Bug: tapping a picture in Colouring did absolutely nothing, in Color In and Color by Number. 146 lovely pages, zero of them openable. • Fix: every page opens again the moment you tap it. This time we checked on a real iPad, not just in our imagination. Sorry about that. Go colour something!

Sparks Studio learned to colour. Then the grown-ups asked for a turn, and we couldn't think of a good reason to say no. • Colouring is here: 146 pages, from big friendly pictures to mandalas. We ran out of crayons twice. • Color In: colour by hand, stay inside the lines and earn up to three neatness stars. Magic edges keeps wobbly strokes inside the shape they started in. Where was this when we were six? • Color by Number: simple pages for kids, and intricate, relaxing pages and mandalas for grown-ups who need ten quiet minutes. • Pinch to zoom up to 8x for the tiny bits. Squinting is now optional. • Grown-up profiles: add one in Parent Settings (or tap "Me" when you first set up) and the studio is all yours. • A grown-up's Home now leads with colouring, because let's be honest, that's why you're here. • The parent maths check now fits on iPad. The keypad's bottom row used to be cut off, which made any answer with a zero a real test of character. • Grown-up profiles no longer ask for a "Child's name". Flattering, we know, but no.

Big spring clean. Sparky found a few of our mistakes and was not impressed. • Music now plays on real iPhones and iPads. Turns out a music maker should make music. Who knew. • Leaving the drawing screen saves your drawing. Before, tapping Back could throw it away. Sorry, Picasso. • The shape tool draws the shape you drag, not a tiny blob under your finger. • Undo brings the background colour back too, and tapped dots (hello, eyes!) finally show up. • Two fingers pan and zoom anywhere on the canvas. • Sleeping characters stay asleep instead of bouncing up every two seconds, and shapes and stickers dance along too. • "Read to me" reads stories and storybooks aloud. • Songs loop, tempo changes while playing, and a playhead shows where you are. Tapping a block no longer deletes it by surprise. • The gallery shows real pictures of your creations instead of a wall of identical paint palettes. • "Who's creating?" lets brothers and sisters switch profiles without a grown-up. • Grown-ups can give "+15 minutes today" when time's up. • Long storybook pages no longer get chopped off in the PDF, and sharing twice works. • A fresh look: Sparky without the white box, six colourful avatars and easier-to-read buttons.

Refreshed App Store screenshots and clearer feature descriptions.

Refreshed App Store screenshots and clearer feature descriptions.

• Our ending button occasionally called “The End” before the ending arrived. Cancelled stories now stay open for another try. • Autosave stopped pretending it had saved strokes drawn while it was busy. Those edits remain ready for the next save. • Deleted storybooks no longer haunt the gallery after their story is removed.

• No shiny new features this time. This is a housekeeping release — brooms, screwdrivers, the works. • Everything under the hood got a once-over so future updates land smoothly. • If you notice absolutely nothing different, that's a ten out of ten from us.

• Big news: Sparks Studio is now a one-time unlock. Buy it once and every creative tool is yours forever — no subscription, no nagging. • Plus a little polish so everything runs a touch smoother.

We squashed a shy little bug that only showed up when nobody was looking. Also gave the app a quiet performance tune-up so everything feels a touch smoother. Thanks for creating with us!

• The Animate rig had been looking at every drawing upside-down since day one. It now sees your masterpiece the right way up. • The skeleton button is no longer an unmarked white mystery — it is a proper little figure you can actually find (and it lights up when it is on).

• Your kid's masterpiece no longer vanishes if the app blinks. We caught it. Everyone's fine. • Drawing while zoomed in now puts the line under the finger, not in the next postcode. • Songs quietly save themselves — the Back button is no longer a song shredder. • Stories always get their ending now, even when the storyteller-in-chief has an off day.

What's new in 1.2.3 • Fixed a crash that could strike right when a child's drawing was being turned into an animation. On some devices the pose detector occasionally returned nothing and the app reached for details that weren't there. It now shrugs and carries on instead of falling over. • The "ask a grown-up" check used the pop-up number keyboard, which on a sideways iPhone could sit right on top of the Submit button — leaving parents stuck outside their own settings. Replaced it with an on-screen keypad, so the question and the buttons share the screen. • Weekly creation limits and the daily time limit are now honoured even while a child is already inside a tool. They always get to finish and save what they're working on first — then it's a friendly "all done for now."

A little spit and polish for our tiny artists. • Fixed a drawing gremlin: perfectly straight-line doodles now render and animate properly instead of quietly vanishing into the void. • Tightened up the premium creative experience under the hood. • Assorted small fixes so the fun stays smooth. Keep making things.

What's new in 1.2.1 • Search-listing tidy: the keyword field had "drawing apps", "drawing app", AND "draw" — Apple's indexer stems all three to the same word, so two of those were wasted. Recovered the bytes for the actual long-tail kids-creative terms (coloring book, doodle, sketch, bedtime story maker, kids music) and added "no ads, offline" — which is what parents actually filter on for kids' apps. No change inside the app.

Sparks Studio learned a new trick: kids' drawings actually move now. • Tap "Animate" on any drawing — pick walk, jump, dance, wave, sleep, or 5 other actions. Stick figures actually walk. Bears actually dance. We're as surprised as you are. • Storybooks act themselves out. The AI reads each page and the kid's character does whatever the page says — runs, sits, falls, points. Or override per page in Storybook Studio if you've got strong opinions about a wave. • Drew two characters on one page? Both animate together. We tried three. Still works. Don't tell our test plan. • New "Real Sounds" pack in the music composer — claps, cookie tins, door slams, dropping coins, and a whale. Because no kid composition is complete until you slam a door on the beat. Behind the scenes: • Switched the writing brain to Apple Intelligence — the app is 2.9 GB lighter, story prompts arrive faster, and the kid's words still never leave the device. • Action selections actually save now. Last week the action picker reset every time the storybook reopened. We have apologised to Maya, whose bear we kept reverting from "dance" to "stand." • The stick figure's head used to stay still while its legs walked. We fixed the rig math. The head is reattached. Everything still runs on the device — no internet, no accounts, no waiting room.

What's new in 1.1.2 • A small "rate the app" prompt now appears after you've saved a few good compositions. We waited until you've actually made something you're proud of before asking — feels more honest that way. Won't pester.

Sparky took a deep breath. Drawing tools sharper, stories a touch longer, songs a touch sillier. Everything still runs on the device — no internet, no accounts, no waiting room.

Sparky learned three new jokes, the paintbrush stopped eating itself, and bedtime stories rhyme a little better now. Tantrums during cleanup not yet fixed.

Sparky learned three new jokes, the paintbrush stopped eating itself, and bedtime stories rhyme a little better now. Tantrums during cleanup not yet fixed.

Bug fixing

Bug fixing

Bug fixing.