Beacon BabyAbout
An app the size of the problem.
Beacon Baby is one iPhone app made by two parents. There is no company behind it in the sense that word usually implies — no investors, no growth team, no roadmap shaped by a metric.
It started the way these things do. A baby, a bottle, a phone, and an app that wanted twelve taps and a two-handed grip at four in the morning. Somewhere around the third night of that, one of us wrote a sentence in a notes app that became the entire design brief:
One hand, 3am, baby in the other arm, lights off.
Everything followed from it. Buttons became enormous and stacked in one column, so a thumb learns one place. Confirmation became a haptic buzz, because you don't have a hand free to dismiss a dialog. Undo became one tap wide and lived on the undo strip, because voice misfires and thumbs slip and neither should cost you an edit screen. The screen went dark at seven in the evening, and the colors softened with it, because a bright block under a soft dim still glares.
The privacy position came from the same place, and it is less noble than it sounds. We were not making a statement. We simply did not want a company we had never met holding a timestamped record of exactly when our house was awake in the middle of the night — which is what a baby tracker with an analytics SDK can end up holding, when you look at what it collects.
So at first there was no server at all. There is one now, because one log across everyone's phones is what a night split between two parents, or a day handed to a grandparent, most needs. But sharing is off until you switch it on, and on an install that never does, nothing about you or your baby is on it. We say so on the privacy page, before anyone has to find out for themselves, which is the only version of that promise worth making.
What we said no to
Six decisions, and what each one cost.
A list of features is not informative about a product. A list of things it refuses, and the price of refusing them, usually is.
No backend, for as long as we could manage it
It cost us live sync at first, and we held out because a server is a breach surface and a monthly bill that eventually tempts you into monetizing a log. When sharing finally shipped it shipped off by default, isolated per household at the database level, and photos still never leave the phone.
No analytics
Which means we genuinely do not know which features you use. We will have to ask you instead, and we would rather do that than watch.
One third-party library, and only for sharing
Every line in the app is ours or Apple's, except Supabase's Swift client, which sharing needs to reach its server and which sends nothing until you sign in. No SDKs, no analytics, no crash reporter. The supply chain is one library long.
No thresholds, no verdicts
We could have shipped red badges and “low” warnings, and it would probably have driven engagement. It would also have frightened people at 3am about numbers we are not qualified to interpret.
iPhone and Apple Watch, portrait only
No iPad, no Android, no web. The only other screen is a small Apple Watch app. A landscape layout is one more thing to get wrong at 3am, and a second platform is a second app half as good.
Grammar before the model
The on-device language model runs second, not first. It makes the unusual sentence possible and would have made the common one slower.
Proof, not promises
Eight things you can check yourself
One hand, 3am, lights off
That sentence is the app's written design brief. If something takes two hands or a second glance, it is treated as a bug.
You will not have to aim
Bottle, Diaper and Nap are full-width cards in one column, each at least 68pt tall, so your thumb learns one place and never has to hunt.
Nothing asks you to tap OK
Confirmation is a short haptic buzz. No dialog appears while you are holding a baby, because you don't have a hand free to dismiss one.
Anything can be taken back
The undo strip that confirms a log is also how you undo it, in one tap — because voice misfires and thumbs slip and neither should cost you an edit screen.
Off by default, and off is genuinely off
No account, no email address, no analytics SDK. Sharing exists for families who want everyone on one log, and until you switch it on nothing about you or your baby leaves your phone — which is what the app's own Account and sync screen says: “Off. Nothing leaves this device.”
It contacts nothing when it opens
With sharing off — the default — opening the app makes no network request at all, because a launch-time ping would emit a timestamped record of exactly when your household is awake at 3am. Turn sharing on and it syncs with your household's server whenever it is open; that is what sharing is.
It will never frighten you at 3am
No thresholds, no alert states, nothing labeled “low” or “concerning” — enforced in the codebase rather than left to taste. Where a published range appears — a faint band behind your baby's growth line, one line of context in the visit report — it carries no percentile and no verdict. Beacon Baby is a log, not a monitor.
The usual sentence is instant
Common phrasings are matched by an on-device grammar before any model runs, because at 3am the sentence you say every night has to be immediate and certain.
Get in touch
There is no support team. There is an email address.
Feature requests, bug reports, and disagreements about any of the above all go to the same place, and they are read by the person who wrote the code.
Writing about Beacon Baby? The press kit has everything, including the assets.
Set it up before you need it.
Two minutes now is two minutes you don't spend at 3am.
Free to log, forever. No account needed to log. iPhone, iOS 26 or later.
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