🖼️ switching from skylight
The big idea is completely right: your family's week, chores and meals belong on the wall, not buried in six separate phones. What I'd skip is paying for a screen you already own. Our beanie wall does the same job on any tablet in the house, and your family's data stays in your hands.
4 views, laid out the way you want (or need). and your old ipad is thrilled to have a job again.
side by side
We both do the same job. beanies does it on a screen you already own, and without ever being able to read your family's week.
| feature | 🖼️ skylight | 🫘 beanies |
|---|---|---|
| hardware to buy | $299.99 for the 15in, $599.99 for the 27in wall model | none, use a tablet you already own |
| subscription | $79/yr for meal planning, chore rewards and more | free while beanies is in beta |
| wall-mounted family calendar | ✓ their screen | ✓ your screen, any size |
| on everyone's phones too | ✓ | ✓ |
| meal planning & chore rewards | on the paid plan | ✓ included |
| pop-ups on the family screen | new-feature announcements, no way to opt out | nothing today, and an opt-out if that ever changes |
| family finances & budgets | not offered | ✓ and never on the wall |
| works with the wifi down | needs their cloud | ✓ local-first |
| where your data lives | their cloud | your own storage |
| can the company read it? | yes | no. can't. encrypted. |
Skylight prices are list prices from skylight's own store, checked 9 September 2026. Retailers often run higher.
the sticky notes
Not my opinion, and not invented either. These are the points that recur in published Skylight reviews, linked so you can read them yourself.
Calendar Plus gates meal planning, chore rewards, the photo screensaver and Magic Import. With beanies, chores, meals, lists, travel and the whole wall are simply in it.
A bigger Skylight fixes this, at $599.99 for the 27in. Or mount the 13in iPad you already have. The wall is built so a fifteen-minute event is still legible at 10 feet / 3 meters.
Pick the tablet whose battery and cable suit the spot you actually want. It keeps running unplugged when you need the socket back.
One owner in that thread counted one a day for a week, and noted they are "almost all for the plus subscription". beanies has one paid thing and it's the ai helper (the plan's here), and there's nothing to announce at you about it inside the app. If that ever changes it'll be quiet, and there will be a switch in settings to turn it off, because being asked is the whole point of that thread.
The old iPad in the drawer already works. A wall mount, if you want one, is the whole shopping list.
the beanie wall
Not just a calendar. Everything that actually goes on in your house, on a screen the whole family sees and can touch all day.
The whole week at a glance. No more "wait, when's football?"
Big ticks and gold stars. Turns out kids quite like winning.
Shared lists live on the wall. Kids only ever see their bit.
The next trip, with flights and dates. Answers breakfast's favorite question.
What's for dinner, up on the wall. Nobody has to ask.
Dims to a big clock at bedtime. Or stays on. Your call.
Anyone can tick a chore. Nobody can delete your week.
Finances can't reach the wall. There's no setting to get that wrong.
the part where i'm honest
A purpose-built device isn't automatically the better device. The iPad in your drawer was a flagship once. It very likely has a sharper screen, a faster chip and a better touch response than a $299.99 calendar appliance, and you already paid for it. Giving it a second life on the wall isn't a compromise, it's a promotion.
What you do give up is the setup. Skylight arrives ready: no auto-lock to disable, no Guided Access to configure, no notifications to silence. That's ten minutes of fiddling on your side, once, and the setup helper walks you through all of it. After that the tablet does one job, and isn't interrupting you to announce a feature.
Skylight gets credit for the idea. They got families to look up from six phones and at one shared wall. We build on that, store your data privately and securely, and let you point it at a screen you already own.
have your cake, and eat it too
the same three cards as the homepage security section, because the answer doesn't change.
Most apps encrypt your data on their servers, with their keys, which is a security feature. beanies encrypts it before it leaves your device, with your key, which is a privacy feature. I can't read it, sell it, or lose it, because I never had it.
Everything lives in a single encrypted .beanpod file on your Google Drive or device. Lose your PIN and your Recovery Kit? I can't help you. That's kinda the whole point.
Even if someone wanted to poke around our dark corner of the internet, there's nothing there but code and app config. Good luck finding anything to leak.
getting started
A few quick questions, about two minutes: where your family lives, your currency, and who's in it. No account on my servers and no password to forget.
Pick a PIN, save your Recovery Kit, and add your beans. Bring your calendar across while you're there, or just start fresh.
Mount the tablet, open beanies, turn on wall mode. The setup helper handles auto-lock, Guided Access and orientation.
fair questions
No. Nothing at all beyond beanies itself, and beanies is free while we're in beta. If you want the tablet to look tidy on the wall you could pick up a simple wall mount, but that's optional and it's the whole shopping list. Any tablet with a browser works: iPad, Android, Fire, the one with the cracked corner.
Wall mode holds the screen awake while it's on, and the setup helper walks you through the two device settings that matter: auto-lock set to never, and Guided Access so a small person can't wander into YouTube.
Not really. The wall is locked by default: anyone can tick their chores, nobody can delete anything. Editing needs a grown-up's PIN, and it relocks itself afterwards.
No. Finances are structurally excluded from the wall, whoever happens to be signed in. There's no setting to get that wrong.
The wall keeps showing your week. Everything is stored on the device, so it renders offline and catches up when the connection comes back. It never goes blank.
Your data is always yours. It's an encrypted file sitting on your own storage. Whatever happens to me, it's still there, and it's still yours. Which is kind of the whole point.
the welcome mat is out
even the ones arriving from skylight.
start counting beans 🫘peace out, my beans.
greg
ps. stuck getting it on the wall? come yell at me (nicely) on the discord.