Frequently asked questions

Cheddar is designed for kids ages 3 and up — pre-readers especially. The whole app uses giant, color-coded buttons and no text to read, so little ones can take photos, hear them described, and record stories entirely on their own.

Cheddar is completely free. There are no ads, no in-app purchases, and no subscriptions or upsells of any kind.

Yes. Cheddar is a walled garden: there's no way to reach the internet, no ads to tap, and nothing to buy. It has no accounts and collects no personal information, and every setting, share, or delete sits behind a grown-up “math gate” that little hands can't solve. Photos stay on your device by default. You can read the specifics on our privacy page.

No. The app contains no advertising, no analytics, and no third-party tracking SDKs, and there are no accounts — no sign-up, no login, no profiles. We don't build a profile of your child or measure their behavior. Full details are on our privacy page.

Long-press the big yellow shutter and simply say “cheese!” Cheddar listens for the word — using your phone's built-in speech recognition — and takes the photo with a friendly spoken countdown. It's hands-free, so it's perfect for wobbly hands and group photos.

Tell Me is an optional feature where the app looks at a photo and describes it out loud in a silly character voice — Santa, Robot, Wizard, Pirate and more. The description and the voice are created right on your phone — the photo is never uploaded anywhere. It's completely optional and switched on or off by a grown-up.

Tell Me can narrate in ten characters — Cheddar, Santa, Robot, Wizard, Vampire, Pirate, Superhero, Royal, Alien, and Poet — or “Surprise Me” to pick one at random. A grown-up chooses the voice in settings.

Stories let a child record their own voice telling the tale of a photo, up to 20 seconds long. It plays back in a cosy “storytime mode” with a slow cinematic zoom — like a tiny movie in their own words. Story recordings stay on the device.

Explorer is a playful scavenger hunt: Cheddar gives your child a mission — “find three comfy chairs!” — cheers them on, and checks each find. It runs entirely on the phone: nothing is uploaded. The recognition only knows everyday objects (chairs, toys, animals), colours, and whether someone is smiling — it never identifies who anyone is, and nothing it notices is stored or sent anywhere. It's a screen that points kids outward at the real world instead of down at a feed.

Thirteen activities live on an Activities shelf, one tap from the camera, and all of them are built from your child's own photos: Explorer, Where's Cheddar, Jigsaw, I Spy, Spot the Difference, What's Missing, Peekaboo, Match Up, Odd One Out, Guess What, Rainbow, Collection and Photo Booth. Every one is spoken aloud, so a three-year-old can play without reading — and there are no timers, scores or ways to lose. Any photo can also be decorated with stickers, frames and filters; the decorations are a layer on top, and the original photo is never changed.

Photos live inside Cheddar, in the app's own private storage on your phone — not in your camera roll or any cloud photo library. So fifty photos of the dog don't end up in your camera roll. When there's a keeper, a grown-up can save it to the camera roll from the photo's tools (behind the math gate), or save everything at once from Settings. Nothing leaves the device unless a grown-up explicitly shares it through the phone's share sheet. Everything else — including Tell Me descriptions — happens on the phone.

Sharing is always started by a grown-up, from behind the math gate, through your phone's normal share sheet. You can share a photo, or turn a Tell Me or a Story into a little video — photo, gentle zoom, and the narration — to send to family.

No. Cheddar works completely offline — it ships with no internet permission at all, so it never connects to anything. Every feature (the camera, Tell Me descriptions, the character voices, and Explorer) runs entirely on your device.

All grown-up settings live behind a simple math gate that kids can't solve. From there you can set photo limits per hour, session-break timers, a selfie lock, a gallery lock, delete protection, how long an Explorer adventure runs, which character voice Cheddar uses, and whether Tell Me is on at all. It's also where you save your child's photos to the camera roll.

Yes. You can cap photos per hour (5, 10, 15, or 20 — it resets each hour) and set a session-break timer that gently suggests a break after a set number of minutes. There are deliberately no streaks or notifications nudging kids to keep going.

Yes. A Selfie Lock (behind the math gate) turns off the front camera so Cheddar only uses the back camera. You can also switch on a Gallery Lock to hide saved photos for a pure camera-only mode.

Two things, and nothing else: (1) listening for the word “cheese” during the Say Cheese countdown, handled by your device's built-in speech recognition; and (2) recording Story narrations, which are saved only on the device.

Cheddar is on Android now, and an iOS version for iPhone and iPad is coming soon. Want to know when it lands? Drop us a line on the contact page.

You (or your child) can delete any photo — and its story and description — right inside the app, behind the math gate. Because photos live inside Cheddar, uninstalling the app (or clearing its storage) deletes them too, along with every story and setting — so save the keepers to your camera roll first. Settings reminds you of this right next to the Save All button. Photos you've already saved to the camera roll stay on your phone like any other photo.

Email us any time at support@cheddarcam.com or from the contact page. We're a very small team (one parent!), so replies may take a day or two.