Questions families ask

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 - the book is arranged from what you actually said, with you, and you are offered the full text to read before anything 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.

No. If you can answer a phone call, you can use Penmora. One question at a time, one button to press, and no way to break anything. Many storytellers record with a son or daughter beside them at first, then carry on alone.

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 writes down what you said faithfully, tidying spoken hesitations like "um" without changing your words.

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 - never yours, and never the voice of anyone in your record.

Penmora does not clone voices or create simulated likenesses. When someone listens back, they hear the storyteller's own voice from the original recording.

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 UK and EU-based data centres. 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 ask us for a full copy of your recordings at any time, including the audio and the written versions.

If you stop using Penmora, you choose what happens next: keep the archive, ask us for a full copy, or delete it. When you delete content, there is a short cooling-off period of around 30 days, in case the deletion was a mistake. After that, deletion is final. Any legal exceptions are explained in our Privacy Policy.

Yes - everything, at no cost: the audio, the written versions, the lot. Ask us at any time and we will put a full copy together for you. Whatever plan you are on, your stories are yours to take.

The honest answer is that we are building this carefully and have not finished.

What we can say now: your stories remain yours, and nothing about our principles changes - no training, no imitation, no invention - whatever else does. When the arrangements for passing stories on are complete, we will describe them here fully rather than promise them early.

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 launches on the App Store in late 2026. Until then it is in private testing.

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.