Using Cher Ami

Your family shares photos in a private space in the app called a family circle. At the end of each month those photos are printed as a glossy magazine and mailed to the people you choose — usually grandparents.

The people who receive the magazine need nothing at all: no app, no account, no Wi-Fi. It simply arrives in their mailbox.

Download the app, sign up with your email, and when you're asked about your family circle choose to join one and enter the code you were given. You'll land straight in your family's photo feed.

Joining costs nothing. Only the person who adds a recipient pays for that magazine.

Download the app and sign up. When you're asked, choose to start a family circle, give it a name your family will recognise — something like “The Harper Family” — and add a cover photo.

After that you can invite the rest of the family, add photos, and add the person who'll receive the magazine.

Open your feed and tap the round + button in the bottom-right corner. Choose a photo, pick the shape you'd like it printed in, crop it, and add a caption if you want one.

Up to 20 photos per magazine, shared across everyone in the family circle. The app shows how full this month's magazine is at the top of the feed.

Each magazine covers one calendar month. It closes at the end of that month, then it's printed and mailed during the following month.

Anything added after a magazine closes goes into the next one, so nothing is ever lost — it just travels in the next issue. See Billing & delivery for arrival times.

Recipients are the people who get the printed magazine in the mail. You add their name and address in the app, and that's all that's needed — they don't need the app or an account.

You can add more than one. Each recipient gets their own copy, and each copy is its own monthly subscription.

Yes. You can add photos in the app and also receive the printed magazine each month — just add yourself as a recipient.

They can share photos in the app from anywhere in the world. We only deliver printed magazines within the USA at the moment, so recipients need a US mailing address.

Yes. Open the menu in the top-left, tap My Family Circle, and edit the name or cover photo from there. Everyone in the circle sees the change.

Yes — tap the ⋮ button in the top-right of your photo and choose delete. If the magazine it belongs to hasn't been printed yet, the photo is removed from it.

Once a magazine has been printed and mailed we can't change that copy, but deleting still removes the photo from the app.

Open the menu, tap My Family Circle, then Invite Family & Friends. You can send an invitation by text or email, or copy the invite code and share it however you like. There's no limit on how many people can join.

Invite codes work for anyone who has them, so this usually means a code was shared more widely than intended. Open My Family Circle, tap Invite Family & Friends, and choose Generate new code — the old code stops working immediately, so nobody else can join with it.

You can also block someone from their profile, which hides their photos from you and yours from them. Contact us if you need a hand and we'll sort it out with you.

Our servers rest when nobody has used the app for a while, so the first load after a quiet spell can take a few seconds. Give it a moment, or close and reopen the app.

Your photos are safe either way — nothing is deleted by a slow load. If it still won't load after a few minutes, let us know.

No. Sharing photos is free for everyone in the family circle. Only the person who adds a recipient pays for that recipient's magazine.