Kid Pickup 1.4.1 comes to the App Store on Saturday, October 3. It's a free update for everyone on iPhone, and if your phone updates apps by itself you won't need to do anything.

There's a lot in it. Most of it is about the same question the app has always been about, "who's actually doing this one?", made quicker to ask and harder to miss. Here's all of it.

Add a pickup by typing it

Tap +, choose Type it, and write the pickup the way you'd text it: "Swim pickup for Leo Thursday at 4:30, ask Grandma." Or tap the microphone on your keyboard and say it. Kid Pickup fills in the form for you.

Nothing is saved until you've looked it over and tapped Create, so if it got something wrong, you fix it in the form like always. And if you'd rather fill the form in yourself, that's still there.

Typing a pickup works on every plan, the free trial included, for parents and guardians. To read your sentence, the app sends it to Anthropic's Claude AI, along with your children's first names and the names of your saved places and family members, so "Leo", "the pool" and "Grandma" mean something. No surnames, phone numbers, email addresses or children's notes go with it. The privacy policy has the details.

More than 100 activities, each with a symbol

When you say what a pickup is for, you can now pick from a list of more than 100 activities: soccer, hockey, swimming, piano lessons, Scouts, the dentist, a birthday party and plenty more. Each has its own symbol, and it shows on the pickup's card and in the notifications about it, so "⚽ Soccer" is easy to spot in a busy week.

You can still type your own. "U10 soccer practice" gets the soccer ball too.

Drop-off to one person, pick-up to another

Mom takes them in at 8:15, Grandpa gets them at 3:15. When you add a drop-off and pick-up together, choose A different person for each. It's saved as two pickups, one per person, so each of them gets their own reminder.

Asked by name? You'll know, and you can say no

When a parent asks someone for a pickup by name, that person now gets a notification of their own: "You've been assigned: accept or decline." They can tap I'll do it right on the notification, or open the pickup and tap Accept or Decline.

Anyone who can't do a pickup can now say so straight from the notification with Can't make it. The family hears that it still needs someone, the pickup stays open, and the usual heads-ups keep going until somebody takes it.

Anyone you've sent a pickup link to, who uses it instead of the app, gets a Can't make it button there too.

Yes to every Tuesday, in one tap

Taking on a repeating pickup? You can now say yes to that one day, or to every day it repeats. Any days someone else already has stay theirs. If a repeat has no end date, the new days it adds later start open, so the family can see them.

Easier to see what's covered

  • Pickups nobody has taken yet stand out in amber, on the dashboard, in Events and on the pickup itself.
  • Notifications say where a pickup stands: "Open: nobody has it yet", or "Claimed by Ash".
  • Whoever has a pickup shows on its card, with their avatar, and the pickup screen now leads with who has it.
  • The red dot means something you haven't seen yet, and it clears when you look. It's yours alone, so someone else reading a notification doesn't clear it for you.

When plans change

  • Call off one day. Rain, a sick day or a canceled practice: a parent or guardian can call off one day of a repeating pickup, with a short reason, and the rest of the series stays as it was. Everyone who can see that pickup is told. If plans change back, put it back on.
  • A clash warning before you save. If a child already has something starting within an hour that day, you're asked first: change this one, or create it anyway.
  • Work conflicts for the week ahead. If you've added your work hours, a banner at the top of Events lists any pickup in the next seven days that nobody has yet and that lands in a parent's shift, with one tap to ask the family.

Family chat

  • The family chat now sits first, under your family's name and an avatar a parent can choose.
  • Each person's messages are in their own color.
  • Hold a message to react to it.
  • There are dozens more avatars to choose from, for kids and grown-ups.

And the rest

  • Someone you invite signs up straight into your family. They open the invite, make their account, and they're in. No more setting up an empty family of their own first.
  • Dark mode is back, in Settings, under Appearance. Pick System, Light or Dark.

Getting it

Update Kid Pickup from the App Store on Saturday, October 3. It needs iPhone, and Android is still on the way. Your plan, your family and your pickups carry straight over.

If something in 1.4.1 doesn't work the way this post says, tell us. It comes straight to the person who built it.