Frequently asked questions

Penmora is a recording app for life stories. You speak, type, or answer prompts; Penmora helps turn that material into a private archive you can search and return to later.

It can also turn the archive into a printed book, if you want one - created from what was actually recorded and reviewed before it is printed.

The recordings stay yours. The words stay yours.

Read more on the About page.

You can record yourself answering prompts the app suggests, or speak freely about something you want to capture. Sessions can be short or long.

If you would rather not use the app on your own, someone can sit with you, read through the questions, and help guide the recording. Penmora can record both of you in the same session.

Afterwards, Penmora transcribes what was said, then helps you search across your recordings, group them by theme, and find stories you remember telling but cannot quite place.

You can record by speaking or by typing, whichever suits you best.

Yes. Many families use Penmora with a parent, partner, or other loved one rather than only for themselves.

The storyteller is the person whose story is being recorded. Someone else can help set things up, sit with them, or type on their behalf, but the recordings still belong to the storyteller.

Yes. Most people will record by speaking, but typed input is part of Penmora too.

That matters for people who cannot speak comfortably, prefer writing, or want someone else to help capture material on their behalf. The same rule applies: what you type stays as you typed it.

The AI has a narrow job. It helps with transcription, suggests prompts, helps organise recordings by theme, and helps you find things you have already recorded.

It can also produce summaries when you ask for them. Anything it creates from your recordings is something you review before it is used.

It does not write your story for you, invent missing answers, or speak in your voice. Read more on the Principles page.

No. If you ask Penmora about something that was not covered in your recordings, it says so plainly. It does not guess what you might have said, fill in missing details, or turn fragments into facts.

This is part of our published commitments.

No, and it never will.

Penmora does not clone voices, generate AI-spoken versions of your recordings, or create simulated likenesses of you. When someone listens back in Penmora, they hear the storyteller's own voice from the original recording - not a version created or recreated by AI.

No. Your recordings are not used to train Penmora's models, are not used to train another company's models, and are not made available to anyone for that purpose.

Privacy is the default, not a setting you have to find.

Your recordings are stored in the UK, not moved to overseas data centres as part of normal storage. They are encrypted while they are being uploaded and while they are stored.

Penmora is being built to Cyber Essentials Plus standards, with ISO 27001 as a near-term certification target. We will not claim certifications before they are in place.

By default, only you.

Penmora staff cannot browse recordings as a normal part of their work. Access to customer content is limited to narrow operational circumstances, such as responding to a support request, and any such access must be logged.

You can choose to share recordings with specific people, but nothing is shared by default. Your recordings do not appear on a public profile, public feed, search engine, or any shared family page unless you have explicitly chosen to make something available to someone.

You can export your recordings at any time, including the audio and transcripts.

If you stop using Penmora, you choose what happens next: keep the archive, export it, or delete it. When you delete content, it enters a 90-day recovery window in case the deletion was a mistake. After that window closes, deletion is final. Any legal exceptions are explained in our Privacy Policy.

Yes, if you have set that up.

Penmora is being designed so you can choose who may access your recordings after your death. Without that choice being made, family access is not automatic. This is one of the most important parts of the product, and we will explain exactly how it works before Penmora opens to families.

Penmora is being built by a small team in the UK, working privately while we get the product right.

We are still testing and making sure the product behaves as it should before inviting more families in. One of the people involved has a close family member who is the first person testing it.

Read more on the About page.

Penmora is in private testing through 2026.

We expect to open first to founding families, then more widely after that. If you would like to be among the first people invited, join the waiting list.