Worked out on your device

• More of your day is made sense of right on your device now. The detail stays with you, the delight still arrives.

• Your precise location becomes the name of a broad area, and only the name travels. The mountains still look like the mountains.

• Your calendar becomes a sense of how full the day is. Event titles stay behind, the gentle nod to a big day still comes.

• The line of gratitude beneath your character is written on your device, about your day and no one else's.

Wherever you go

• Your character notices the city you're in, and now the places you travel to. A weekend in the mountains looks like the mountains.

• Arriving somewhere new brings a fresh moment soon after, not hours later.

A quiet note, if you'd like one

• Turn on notifications and a small note of gratitude arrives when your character refreshes. No sound, no interruption.

• It stays off unless you invite it. Your character never demands attention.

Simpler choices

• One plan now. SMOL × includes everything, and SMOL + stays exactly as it is for those who have it.

• Redeem an offer code right from the plans screen. A character, a style, or time with SMOL ×, gifted with a code.

• Plan descriptions lead with what your character does, not where the data comes from.

Smoother moments

• A new How it works screen explains what shapes your character.

• Settings reads in a clearer order, with Help gathering the guide and the full changelog.

• No connection? Your character waits for it to return instead of fading to grey.

• The note that welcomes you after an update always shows the latest highlight.

• Managing your subscription opens cleanly, and only appears when you have one.

Under the hood

• SMOL now needs iOS 26 or later.

• The widget makes its own moments, so new images arrive even when the app stays closed.

• A stuck widget notices and recovers on its own.

• Your plan and purchases load faster.

• Dependency and security patches applied.

Make them yours, with SMOL ×

• Chibi can match you. Choose their look, gender, and age in settings.

• Cat and Dog come in breeds now, from Orange Tabby to Scottish Fold, Samoyed to Pomeranian.

• Every look is included with the character you own. Nothing extra to buy.

In your rhythm, with SMOL +

• A new signal arrives. Your character picks up the general pace of your day from Screen Time - a slow morning reads calm, a busy afternoon hums along.

• It only ever sees the pace. What you were doing stays on your device.

Smoother moments

• Choosing a character is nicer now. Swipe through them all in one place and buy a new one right there.

• Day and night follow the real sun where you are. Golden hour glows when it really is golden hour.

• Your character sees the bright side of your day, reflecting what you did rather than what you didn't.

• Anything you buy is yours the instant the purchase succeeds. Signing in can wait until you are ready.

• One calm loading indicator everywhere, from choosing a plan to restoring purchases.

• A short note welcomes you after an update, showing what is new.

• Permission states in settings show a clear icon for each state, not just a colour.

• Settings speaks clearly with VoiceOver. Each option tells you what it is and what happens when you choose it.

Under the hood

• Sharper sunrise and sunset calculations.

• Quieter diagnostics with fewer background reports.

• Signing in and purchases are hardened against replayed and stale sessions.

• The smol.cool homepage loads faster on phones.

• Dependency and security patches applied.

Characters

• Chibi is small, expressive, and always dressed for the occasion.

• Egg is round, soft, and gloriously unhurried.

• Plant is a tiny green sprout in a terracotta pot, full of quiet optimism.

• Cat is impossibly fluffy with a deceptively tiny face, radiating comfort.

• Dog is a cloud-shaped bundle of joy, best-friend energy dialled all the way up.

• Stone is perfectly round, perfectly calm - stillness as a personality.

Styles

• Isometric city places your character in a tiny open world of streets and rooftops.

• Watercolour washes every surface in soft pigment and warm atmospheric light.

• Pixel art renders your character in nostalgic, lovingly detailed blocks.

• Tilt-shift makes your character's world look like a miniature model scene, photographed from above.

• Miniature explorer drops your tiny character into sweeping landscapes that stretch far beyond the frame.

• Hand-drawn gives everything the warmth and grain of a sketchbook page.

What shapes your character

• Time of day, season, weather, and where you are, free, always, with no setup needed.

• SMOL + adds your activity through the day from Motion & Fitness and major holidays as they happen.

• SMOL × adds your steps, workouts, and sleep quality from Apple Health, what you're listening to from Now Playing, what's next in your calendar, plus every holiday where you are.

Subscriptions

• SMOL + refreshes your character twice a day.

• SMOL × refreshes three times a day with the full signal set.

• SMOL × 12 is the same as SMOL ×, but paid yearly.

Under the hood

• Dependency and security patches applied.

Steadier arrivals

• If your character cannot update right away, it waits a little longer with each attempt, giving the moment more room to arrive.

• Your character comes back sooner when you return to the app after a brief absence.

Under the hood

• Background refresh failures now surface in error tracking when something silently goes wrong.

A steadier web

• If you reach a page that does not exist, the site brings you back gently.

• When something goes wrong, the response you see is clearer and kinder.

Under the hood

• Error tracking now traces issues to their exact origin.

• Monitoring tidied across the web.

A warmer wait

• The message below your character now reads more gently while the next moment is being made for you.

Under the hood

• Error tracking connected across the app, backend, and web.

• ESLint and related tools updated.

While your character refreshes

• The screen softens to grey with a gentle frost. Something is happening, and it shows without demanding attention.

• Tapping during a refresh does nothing - no accidental interruptions.

A quieter wait

• The message below your character stays in place as the moment changes, rather than rebuilding itself each time.

• Each moment - loading, counting down, or showing an error - has its own clear, calm look.

Under the hood

• Breathing animation resets when retrying from an error.

• Sendable conformance added for Swift 6 concurrency.

A faster arrival

After your character refreshes, the widget picks it up within seconds - rather than waiting for its next scheduled check. If an image goes missing, the widget can recover it on its own, without the main app open.

• Widget updates appear within ~30 seconds of generation.

• The widget fetches a missing image in the background and reschedules itself.

Only refreshing when it counts

Background refresh now checks whether your character has a home on your screen before doing any work. If the widget is not there, nothing runs.

• Background tasks skip gracefully when no widget is installed.

A simpler stage

The main app screen has been tidied. The character area is calmer, with less visual noise around it.

Under the hood

• 7-day cooldown introduced for dependency updates to reduce supply chain risk.

Waiting without counting

The countdown banner no longer shows an exact number. It offers phrases that acknowledge the wait without making it feel like a timer - because the point was never the number.

• Imprecise time expressions replace the precise countdown.

• Quotes, phrases, and mantras rotate hourly on a decorrelated schedule.

A more reliable character

A timing issue that sometimes prevented your character from appearing in the widget after a background refresh has been fixed.

• Widget image loads consistently after a background refresh.

• The consent screen is more accurate about what happens before your character is created.

Under the hood

• Global and per-route rate limiting added to all API endpoints.

• Concurrent requests for the same character are now deduplicated at the edge.

• Dependency patches applied.

Your character knows where it lives

Widget detection now works properly. The app notices when your character has a home on your home screen - via a heartbeat the widget sends on each refresh, and a deep link tap that confirms it. No more guessing. The prompt to add the widget appears when it should, and disappears when it is no longer needed.

A clearer welcome

The consent screen has been redesigned. The SMOL logo now appears consistently, the layout breathes better, and the privacy explanation is more direct. The screen does what it should: build trust before anything else happens.

Waiting copy that rotates

The countdown banner now cycles through quotes, countdowns, and mantras on an hourly schedule - each decorrelated so they never land on the same combination. The wait feels less like a timer and more like a small moment.

Homepage reflects the launch

The landing page now leads with an App Store download link. The newsletter signup has moved to its own section. The badge and layout have been tidied up.

Under the hood

• Clear icon style on the widget now renders correctly on devices using Apple's Clear home screen

• Responsible disclosure policy added

• Content security policy hardened

• Dependency patches applied

Personalised character

Your character lives in the app and on your home screen. It notices your world - the weather, the time of day, the season - and reflects it back as something worth celebrating.

• One personal image each day. Your character refreshes once every 24 hours. A cosy morning looks different from a rainy afternoon, and your character changes with it.

• Egg character and vinyl style. The default identity for the launch version.

• Home screen and lock screen widgets. Keep your character close with a small or large widget. It sits quietly on your device, showing you what's happening right now.

• Interactive progress. The countdown ring is a fidget spinner. Spin, flick, and watch it coast. It hides the next refresh time until you tap, keeping the focus on the presence rather than the schedule.

• Share the moment. Each image is made for you. You can share your character's current state with a single tap.

No set-up required

Your character is created without asking for a thing. Location, weather, time of day, and season are auto-detected from the network - no permissions to grant, nothing to configure.

• Refresh times vary naturally across the day. No fixed schedule, so your character feels alive rather than mechanical.

Platform and presence

• App Store launch. Available on iPhone, iPad, and Mac (via Designed for iPad).

• Account deletion. Your data can be deleted directly from settings at any time.