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Yes. Your household runs the HomeCubbie server on a computer at home, and every phone joins it — iPhones and Android phones alike. Each phone keeps its own copy of the house and works offline; changes travel through the server when the phone is on your home Wi-Fi.

Everything is encrypted on the phone before it travels, under a key the server never has. HomeCubbie runs no server and is never told yours exists.

A computer that stays on at home — a Mac mini, a spare laptop, a NAS — with Node 22.18 or later, or Docker. The server needs nothing else installed and never contacts anyone.

Start in the app: Settings › Sharing has a setup guide that gives you the command to run, connects this phone to the server, and tests the connection.

From a phone that is already in, make an invite in Settings › Sharing and type it into the new phone. An invite works once, for ten minutes. There is no password.

Nobody from HomeCubbie will ever ask you for an invite or a recovery code. Anyone who does is not us.

Each phone works anywhere from its own copy. In this version the server answers only your home network, so changes are exchanged when a phone is back on your Wi-Fi. A document another phone added comes down the first time you open it at home, or straight away if the phone is set to download everything.

Yes, if your household runs the server: it also serves HomeCubbie to a web browser, and a browser joins with an invite like a phone does. On a computer other than the server's own, the browser needs HTTPS, which the setup guide explains.

If your household shares: join from the new phone with an invite, then remove the old phone in Settings › Sharing.

If it's just one phone: save a backup from Settings on the old phone, get the file to the new one however you like, install HomeCubbie there, and restore from it. The backup holds everything you have entered, files included.

If your household shares, the house is still on the other phones and the server. Remove the lost phone from another one, and the household's key changes in the same step. If no phone in the household is left, a recovery code made in advance lets a new phone in.

If it's just one phone, restore the backup you saved off it. Without one, the records are gone: HomeCubbie's weekly backup lives on the phone itself — unless, on Android, you picked a backup folder for it — and there is no copy on any server of ours, because there is none. Save a copy somewhere else now and then.

HomeCubbie keeps one Property per install — one house, all of it, on every phone that shares it.

On purpose. Automatic operating-system backups would copy alarm codes, policy numbers and account numbers into a cloud account, without anyone deciding to. HomeCubbie opts out on both platforms, and makes its own backup instead.

Out of the box, HomeCubbie writes a backup once a week and keeps the latest ones on the phone. On Android you can pick a folder once, in Settings › Backup, and every automatic backup is copied there as well. Settings can also save a copy anywhere you choose, and restore from any backup file.

A plain .zip: a short manifest, one text file per kind of record with one record on each line, and your documents beside them. Any computer can open it. It is not encrypted, so keep it somewhere you would be comfortable keeping your alarm codes.

Reminders need notification permission from the operating system. Turn it on in your device's Settings under HomeCubbie, and scheduled Tasks will start reminding you again.

On iOS, the app's storage uses the strongest file protection the system offers, so it is unreadable whenever the device is locked. You can also lock the app itself behind Face ID, a fingerprint or your passcode — and while it's locked, the app switcher hides what's on screen (on iPhone, and on Android 13 or later). In a shared house, everything is encrypted on the phone before it travels to your server.

No. Bills, serial plates and documents are read on the phone. No third-party service sees them.