Getting started

Go to familychaos.com/register and enter a family name and your display name. FamilyChaos will create your family and generate a personal invite link for you.

Follow the invite link to set your email address and password. Once that's done you'll land on the dashboard — your family is ready to use.

Every new family starts with a free 30-day trial. No credit card is required to get started.

Open Settings → Members and choose Invite member. Select whether the new member is an Adult or a Child. Add an adult's email to send the invite, or leave it blank and share the invite link yourself.

Adults have full access to all features and can manage family settings and invite other members.

Children can view and interact with shared content but cannot access settings or billing. Adding a child member requires entering their date of birth; a parental consent email is sent before the invite link is activated.

Invite links expire after 72 hours. If a link expires before it is claimed, open Settings → Members, tap ⋯ on the invite, and choose Resend invite.

The dashboard is your family's home base. It shows today's calendar events, today's planned meals, and the current weather for your configured location — including temperature, Feels Like (wind chill or heat index), humidity, wind, UV index, Air Quality Index, a short what to wear suggestion (for example, a warm coat, an umbrella, or sunscreen), and a 3-day forecast.

Active weather alerts for your area appear as banners above the weather card — one banner per weather event, with the most serious shown first. Tap a banner to read the full alert. Tap ✕ to dismiss it on that device; a dismissed alert comes back marked ↑ Upgraded if it is later escalated (for example, from a watch to a warning).

Below today's events and meals, your pinned lists appear as cards showing progress and the first few items. Check items off right on the card, or use its quick-add field to add something new. Every new family starts with a Groceries list, pinned for the member who created the family.

The dashboard also hosts a Quick access grid — a set of shortcuts to the features your family uses most. Adults and children each see a tile grid tailored to their role. New-member onboarding tips appear on the dashboard until dismissed; the dismissal is saved per member so it won't reappear on other devices.

Adults can open the dashboard in full-screen ambient mode — a wall-mounted or TV display view that keeps the most important information visible at all times. Tap the weather tile on the display to open a detail panel with an hourly forecast, the next 3 days, wind, humidity, UV, air quality, and sunrise and sunset times; it closes by itself after a minute without interaction. The display also reloads itself automatically when a new version of FamilyChaos is released.

On desktop, the sidebar on the left gives you quick access to every section of the app. Sections are listed alphabetically after the Dashboard — Bills, Calendar, Chores, Contacts, Inventory & Maintenance, Lists, Meal Planner, Notes, Recipe Book, To Do, and Vault.

On mobile, navigate to any section of the app using the Quick access tiles on the dashboard. Tap the FamilyChaos logo in the top bar to return to the dashboard from anywhere in the app.

Every page uses the same layout. The page's main action (such as adding a bill or a list) is the + at the right of the title on phones, and other actions are in the ⋯ menu. Adding, editing, and viewing details open in a panel — a sheet from the bottom on phones, a panel on the right on larger screens — with Save, Cancel, and Delete always at the bottom. If you close a panel with unsaved changes, FamilyChaos asks before discarding them.

Calendar, Bills, Chores, Contacts, Inventory & Maintenance, the Lists page, Notes, Recipe Book, To Do, and Vault share one filter bar. Each page offers the search, filters, and sort that fit it — for example, Notes searches the text of your notes, and Inventory & Maintenance finds an asset by its model or serial number.

On phones, filters sit behind the funnel button in the page header, which shows how many filters are on. Changes apply as you tap, and active filters appear as chips under the title — tap a chip's × to remove it. Search and the page's view (such as All / Private / Shared) stay on the page.

Your sort, filters, and view are remembered on each device, so they're still there after a reload. Search is never remembered. When nothing matches, tap Clear filters to start again.

Anything marked Private — an event, list, note, bill, recipe, or To Do list — can only be seen and changed by the member who created it. This applies to everyone, adults and children alike. A private bill is also visible to members who have a share of it.

Adults can edit and delete every public event and note. Children can create events and edit the ones they made.

Visit the app and sign in with your email and password. FamilyChaos works in any modern browser and can be installed as a PWA on Android and iOS — tap Add to Home Screen from your browser's share menu.