FAQ

You can sign in with your Google account or with Apple ID. Both work the same — pick whichever you prefer.

If you use Apple ID, you can choose "Hide My Email" so the app never sees your real email address. Everything still works normally.

The free version lets you record tales, listen to them, and receive tales from other LiuApp users.

Liu Premium unlocks:

• Sharing your tales with other adults
• Sending tales to your child's device
• Controlling what plays on your child's device from your phone
• Sleep timer
• Adjustable playback speed

Premium is a monthly or yearly subscription through the App Store. One subscription covers all your own devices and your paired children's devices. A second adult in the family can manage the children too, but their own sleep timer and adult-to-adult sharing need their own subscription.

On your phone, open Family settings and tap the + next to Paired Devices. Enter the child's details, and a short pairing code appears.

On the child's device, install LiuApp and tap Set up as Child's Device, then enter the code. That's it — the child's device is now part of your family.

You don't need to create an account for the child. After pairing, you can send tales to them and start or pause playback from your own phone.

A Liu family can include up to 2 adults and 4 children.

• Adults — you, plus one more grown-up (for example, a partner) — 2 in total.
• Children — up to 4 child profiles, each on its own paired device.

Adding children and pairing their devices is free. Premium features — sending tales to a child's device, controlling playback, and sharing with other adults — apply on top of that.

Yes. When you're nearby — on the same Wi-Fi network or within Bluetooth range — you can start, pause, or skip tales on the child's device, and set a sleep timer, all from your own phone.

You need to be physically close (typically the same room or floor) for this to work. Remote control over the internet isn't supported — this is intentional, so your family's playback stays private and never travels through a remote server.

Yes — set a duration and the tale keeps playing until it's up. In the last 15 seconds the sound fades out gently instead of stopping abruptly.

Not asleep yet? Shake the phone during that fade-out and the sleep timer resets back to its full original duration — the volume returns and the story keeps playing, as if you'd just set the timer again. Shake as many times as you need.

The sleep timer is part of Liu Premium.

Tap the profile icon (top of the home screen) and open Remote Control. Your device finds any nearby child device that has its Remote (Online) switch turned on, and lets you play, pause, skip, set a sleep timer, and adjust the volume on it.

You need to be close by — on the same Wi-Fi network or within Bluetooth range. If the device doesn't appear, check that it's on and its Remote switch is enabled. Remote control never goes over the internet, so your family's playback stays private.

Open the tale's menu and tap Share. One sheet lets you send it to either place:

• Your child's device — under Family, pick a nearby child device from the list. It needs to be nearby, on, and connected to Wi-Fi with its Online switch on.
• Another adult — under Other people, enter their email or pick a contact. They receive it in their own Liu.

Sharing is a Premium feature. What you're allowed to send depends on where the tale came from (see below).

Open a tale you recorded, tap Share, and enter the recipient's email. They'll get the tale in their own LiuApp.

Sharing rules depend on where the tale came from:

• Tales you recorded yourself — share with other adults and send to your child's device.
• Tales you received from another adult — you can send them to your child's device, but you can't forward them to other adults.
• Audio you imported from files — kept just for your own listening; can't be shared with anyone.

This keeps the original storyteller's voice authentic while still letting you pass along family recordings to your child.

For safety, tales that arrive on a child's device don't play on their own. They show a 🔒 "Adult approval required" badge until a grown-up checks them.

Tap play and an adult can listen to the audio first, confirm who sent it, then approve — with a quick multiplication check to make sure it really is an adult. After that, the tale plays for your child and won't ask again on that device.

Importing: you can bring in audio from your files, but imported audio is kept just for your own listening — it can't be shared with other adults or sent to a child's device. This keeps every shared tale an authentic personal recording.

Exporting: you can save any tale you recorded to the Files app in one of two formats:

• Liu File (.liutale) — keeps your authorship, so it can be brought back into Liu as your own recording.
• WAV audio (.wav) — a universal format that plays on any device or player.

Not for the basics: you can still record tales, play them on your phone, and send them to your child's device — all of that works locally without iCloud.

You'll want iCloud turned on for:

• Keeping your tales safe — recordings are saved in your iCloud, so if you sign out, switch phones, or reinstall the app, they come back automatically. Without iCloud, your tales live only on the device you recorded them on, and disappear if you sign out.
• Sharing with other adults by email — both you and the recipient need to be signed into iCloud.

We recommend leaving iCloud on, but it's never required.

Usually it's a short network hiccup. Open the app again with a working connection — it will retry automatically.

If the message says iCloud is full, free up space in your iCloud (Settings → your name → iCloud → Manage Account Storage). The app will pick up where it left off the next time something successfully uploads.

Open Family → Invite member and enter their email. The next time they sign in to LiuApp with that email, they'll join your family automatically — no tap-to-accept step needed.

Once they're in, they can also control the child's device and manage the family settings. Each adult keeps their own tales — joining the family doesn't merge libraries.

No. Adults in the same family share access to the child's device — you can both send tales to your child and control playback — but you don't see each other's personal tale libraries. Your recordings stay yours.

If you want your partner to have one of your tales, share it with them the same way you would with any other adult.

Yes. The child's device doesn't have its own account, isn't searchable, and can only receive tales from adults you've added to your family.

LiuApp shows no ads and uses no third-party analytics or advertising trackers, and we never sell or share your data. See our Privacy Policy for details.

If you had iCloud turned on, sign into LiuApp on the new phone with the same account and your tales will appear automatically.

If you didn't use iCloud, the tales stay on the old phone. You can share each one to your new device.

Yes. Tap the profile icon (the person icon at the top of the home screen) to open the menu, tap Appearance, then pick Auto, Light, or Dark.

Auto follows your device's system setting, so Liu switches between light and dark along with the rest of your phone.

Deleting a tale doesn't remove it right away — it moves to the trash, where it stays for 30 days. Open the trash to restore a tale with a tap, or delete it permanently if you're sure.

After 30 days, tales left in the trash are deleted automatically and can't be recovered.

To clear your iCloud copies: tap the profile icon (top of the home screen), open Manage My Account, and tap Clean. This permanently removes all Liu data stored in your iCloud account, so you can start with a clean state. Recordings still on this device are kept — only the cloud copies are deleted, and this can't be undone.

To free space on the device itself: delete tales you no longer need from a tale's menu. They move to the trash for 30 days first — empty the trash (delete permanently) to reclaim the space right away.

Tap the profile icon (top of the home screen), open Manage My Account, and tap Delete Account. This permanently deletes your Liu account and all server-side data — your profile, family, contacts, and any pending shares. This cannot be undone.

Two optional switches let you also remove your recordings:

• Also delete iCloud data — removes recordings synced to your iCloud.
• Also delete local recordings — removes tales and app data stored on this device.

Liu has an optional diagnostic tool that helps us investigate a problem you're seeing. It is off by default and records nothing until you deliberately turn it on and give your consent.

1. Turn it on. Do one of these, then confirm in the consent dialog that appears:

• On the sign-in screen, tap the butterfly 8 times (handy for sign-in or fresh-install problems); or
• Inside the app, tap the profile icon at the top of the Home screen, open Manage My Account, and tap its title 8 times. (On a paired child device, the Manage My Account label is on the Parent Verified screen.)

2. Reproduce the problem so it gets recorded. Everything stays locally on your device — nothing is sent yet.

3. Send the logs. A small Send Logs button now appears at the bottom of the profile menu on the Home screen (on a child device, on the Parent Verified screen). Tap it to send the logs to us. Diagnostic logging then turns itself off automatically.

These logs help us reproduce the issue. They may include your email, tale titles and IDs, and device information, and are used only to look into what you reported. They never contain your password, authentication tokens, the audio content of your recordings, or other confidential and personal information.

We'd love to hear from you. Reach us through the Contacts page.