The beanie wall turns a spare tablet into the family's wall display: the week, everyone's jobs, and what is happening today, big enough to read from across the kitchen. It is the thing a fridge calendar does, except it keeps itself up to date. By the end of this guide you will have the wall running on a tablet that stays awake, stays on beanies, and stays where you hung it.
Setting it up takes about ten minutes, once. Most of that is two settings on the tablet itself, which is what the rest of this guide is about. You only ever do it on the tablet that lives on the wall.
Leaving the wall asks for your PIN, which is what stops a child tapping their way back into the full app. So you need a PIN on your own profile before you can start. If you do not have one yet, the Beanie Wall card in Settings will offer to set one up for you first.
Turn the wall on
On the tablet you want to use, open beanies and sign in as yourself
Go to Settings and find the Beanie Wall card
Tap Start the wall (if it says Set a PIN and start, it will walk you through the PIN first)
Pick a view from the switcher: The week, Each bean, Today or The chore board
That is the wall running. Everything below is about the tablet, not about beanies, and it is what turns "a browser tab that happens to be open" into something that survives a whole day on a wall.
Make the screen stay on
While the wall is showing, beanies asks the tablet to keep the screen awake by itself. Most modern browsers allow this. Some, particularly on older iPads, do not, and on those the tablet's own auto-lock setting is the only thing keeping the screen lit. Setting it either way costs nothing and means the wall does not go dark on you, so it is worth doing regardless of which tablet you have.
Keep an iPad or iPhone awake
Open Settings on the iPad
Tap Display & Brightness
Tap Auto-Lock
Choose Never
Keep an Android tablet awake
Open Settings on the tablet
Tap Display
Tap Screen timeout
Choose the longest option offered (many Android tablets stop at 30 minutes, which is exactly why the setting above matters)
Android manufacturers rename these screens freely. On a Samsung tablet the wording differs slightly from a Pixel, and some models tuck screen timeout under Display, others under Advanced. If a menu name here does not match yours, search the tablet's own Settings for "timeout" and you will land in the right place.
Stop small hands wandering off
The wall is designed to be safe to tap: locked, it lets anyone tick a job or change the day, and nothing else. What it cannot do on its own is stop someone leaving beanies altogether and opening YouTube instead. That is a job for the tablet, and both Apple and Android have a setting for exactly it.
Turn on Guided Access (Apple)
Open Settings, tap Accessibility, then tap Guided Access
Turn Guided Access on
Tap Passcode Settings, then Set Guided Access Passcode, and choose a code the children do not know
Open beanies and start the wall
Triple-click the Home button. On an iPad that has no Home button, triple-click the top button instead
If a shortcuts panel appears, tap Guided Access
Tap Start
To finish a Guided Access session later, triple-click that same button again and enter the passcode.
Turn on screen pinning (Android)
Open Settings and find the security section. On a Pixel this is Security & privacy then More security & privacy; on a Samsung it is Security and privacy then More security settings
Turn on App pinning (a Samsung tablet calls this Allow apps to be pinned)
Turn on the option to ask for your PIN, pattern or password before unpinning, which is the part that actually keeps a child in the app
Open beanies and start the wall
Open Recents, tap the beanies icon at the top of its card, then tap Pin
How you unpin depends on how you navigate the tablet. If you use gestures, which is the default on most modern Android tablets, swipe up from the bottom and hold. If you use the three-button bar, touch and hold Back and Home together, or Back and Recents on a Samsung. Then enter your code.
As with the screen timeout above, Android manufacturers name these screens differently, and they move between versions. If the path here does not match your tablet, search its own Settings for "pinning" and you will find it.
Which way up
Either way works. Hang the tablet sideways (landscape) or upright (portrait), and turn it whenever you like: the wall rearranges itself to fit. Sideways shows the whole week across the screen; upright fits fewer days across, and everything else is the same. This works in the beanies app on an iPad or an Android tablet, and in a browser tab on any tablet.
Any tablet will do, including the small 8-inch ones, and the wall makes itself a little more compact on those so it still reads from across the kitchen. A phone is genuinely too small, so beanies says so rather than showing you something unreadable.
The wall follows the tablet’s own rotation lock. If it will not turn, switch rotation lock off, or turn the tablet the way you plan to hang it first and then lock it there. One exception: if you added beanies to an Android tablet’s home screen from Chrome, rather than installing the app from Google Play, it stays upright. For sideways there, use the Android app or a browser tab.
Hanging it and keeping it charged
- Pick the spot first, then the mount. The wall earns its keep somewhere everyone passes, which is usually the kitchen. A cheap adhesive or magnetic tablet mount is all you need.
- Hang it within reach of a socket. A wall tablet is a plugged-in tablet; battery life stops being the constraint and cable length starts being one.
- Put it at adult eye level, not child eye level. The children can still reach it to tick things off, and it stays readable from across the room.
A tablet held at 100% all day, every day, will swell its battery over a year or two. Many Android tablets can cap the charge for exactly this reason (look for Battery protection or Protect battery, often around 85%). Most iPads have no equivalent hard cap, though Optimised Battery Charging helps. If you can, put it on a socket or smart plug you can switch off overnight.
What the wall shows, and what it never shows
- What is on today and this week, for everyone
- Everyone’s chores and the to-dos due today, ready to tick
- Your beanie lists, including the shared ones like the grocery list
- An upcoming trip, with its flights, hotels and transport in the order they happen
- The meal plan, once that feature is switched on for your family
No financial information is ever shown on the wall. No accounts, no balances, no transactions, no goals, no net worth. This is not a setting you have to remember to turn off, and it does not depend on who is signed in: none of the wall's screens will render any of it. A tablet on the kitchen wall is the last place your family's money should be readable from.
Weather on the wall
Once your family has set a home town, the wall shows a weather card with the conditions right now, today’s high and low, and the next three days. On a shorter wall it shrinks to a single line so everything else still fits. The night screen shows the three days too, in the same soft colours as the clock.
To choose how much weather this tablet shows, open the wall’s settings and look for Size on This Wall: Large (now, plus the next 3 days, the default), Small (just right now) or Off. It is a setting for this tablet only, so a phone or another wall can differ. Setting the home town itself is covered in Show the weather on the beanie wall and in the Nook.
Getting back out
Tap the padlock in the corner of the wall. Unlock editing lets any grown-up in the family add, rename or remove things with their PIN, and hands the wall back to the children automatically after a couple of quiet minutes, or immediately with Lock the wall again. Start night mode now dims the screen to a large clock, which you can wake with a touch. Leave the beanie wall returns to the full app, and asks for your own PIN rather than any grown-up's, because it resumes your session with everything your account can reach.
Night mode also starts on its own. Between 9 PM and 7 AM, once nobody has touched the wall for 10 minutes, it dims to its night clock, and it wakes again at 7 AM. A touch wakes it any time. To change the hours or the wait, or to turn this off, go to Settings → Beanie Wall. These settings belong to each device, so a kitchen tablet and a hallway screen can keep different hours.
What next
The wall is only as useful as what is on it. If the week looks empty, add your family's activities on the Family Planner, and set up recurring chore lists in Beanie Lists so the chore board has something to tick. Both have their own guides in this help center.