Get started
Planet4.Me is a shared household app. Everyone in the household sees the same lists, to-dos and notes on their own phone, and anything anyone adds appears for everyone. This page takes you from nothing to a household with two people in it, in about five minutes.
Sign in
Open planet4.me and sign in with Google. It is the only way in, on purpose: there is no password to invent, no email to verify and no account to recover. Signing in creates a household of your own, so you can start using the app before anyone else joins.
Put it on your phone
Planet4.Me is a web app you install from the browser rather than an app store, and installed it opens full screen like any other app.
- iPhone or iPad. Open planet4.me in Safari, tap Share, then Add to Home Screen.
- Android. Open planet4.me in Chrome, open the browser menu, then Install app (or Add to Home screen).
- A computer. It works in any browser as it is. Chrome and Edge also offer an install button in the address bar.
Nothing changes about the data: installed or not, it is the same account and the same household.
Bring the household in
- Open More, then Settings.
- Tap Start a shared workspace and give it a name — "The Smiths", "Flat 4", whatever the household calls itself.
- The Members page opens with an invite link. Send it however you like.
- Anyone who opens the link and signs in with Google joins. There is nothing else to set up.
The link is good for a week. From Members you can replace it with a fresh one or withdraw it, and whoever started the workspace can remove a member. Everyone else can leave from the same page. See Households and workspaces for how more than one workspace works.
Find your way around
There are five tabs along the bottom, left to right:
| Tab | What lives there |
|---|---|
| Notes | Pages the household keeps — the boiler's model number, what the vet said, the plan for the kitchen. The app opens here. |
| Calendar | Every note and to-do that names a day, on that day. |
| Tasks | To-dos, in groups. |
| Lists | The Grocery and Household shopping lists, and the regulars that come back on their own. |
| More | People, Tags, Questions and Settings. |
Each tab has its own page in this guide: Lists, To-dos, Notes, Calendar, and People, tags and questions.
It works without signal
Grocery shops have terrible signal, and the one moment the app has to work is the moment you are standing in one. So whatever anyone writes is saved on their phone at once and syncs when there is signal again. Two small chips in the corner tell you where things stand:
- offline · 3 waiting — the phone has no connection; three changes are saved here and will go when it does. Tap it to see that said in full.
- can't sync — the phone is online, but the app's data cannot be reached. That is nearly always a content blocker or a filtering network, not the app; your data is on screen and correct, and nothing you write is lost.
Tell the app who you are
Names in the app are just names until you claim yours. Once somebody has written @yourname somewhere, open More → People, open your own entry and tap This is me. From then on the "Mine" filter on All to-dos, on the calendar and on Questions shows only what names you, and the assistant knows who is typing. Details in People, tags and questions.