Questions and answers.

Rondino is an app for families in Switzerland that organises the family day in one place: chores, homework, learning, reading, sport and creative activities. Children see on their device what is on today and tick things off themselves. Parents keep the overview and reward with stars. Families who learn at home also get a year plan and a learning report for the canton.

For two kinds of families equally: families with school children who want chores, homework and rewards in one place, and families who learn at home (private tuition or homeschooling). When setting up, you choose how you use Rondino; you can switch at any time without losing data.

The day app is for everyday life: Today, Tasks and Notes, on the phone too. The family console holds everything you do at a quieter moment: planning, reports, stars and settings. It opens with your parent PIN, so children on a shared device can’t get in.

Yes. In “School kids” mode, Rondino hides everything that is only needed for homeschooling (year plan, time budget, learning report). What remains is family life: chores and routines, homework and tests, leisure tasks, stars, pocket money and screen time, notepad.

It only matters for homeschooling, and there it is the foundation, not a straitjacket. You work in whatever way suits your family. In the background, Rondino assigns each learning task to a subject area of Lehrplan 21, the curriculum of the German-speaking cantons, so that analytics and the report add up.

For family life, everywhere. For homeschooling, the time budget, obligations and sources are stored for Aargau, Zurich and Bern; for the other cantons there is a basic model in which you set your own targets. Cantonal rules change about once a year; Rondino shows when they were last checked.

No. Rondino helps with planning and documentation. Notifications, permits and meetings with the school authority remain your responsibility.

You enter each chore once as a recurring task: what, for which children, on which weekdays and for how many stars. From then on it appears automatically in the children’s day. Whoever has done the chore ticks it off, and you confirm it with a tap.

No. Chores and personal care are routines and stay on the planned day. Learning and leisure tasks, on the other hand, children may move to another day themselves.

If you like, you pin such routines to the start or the end of the day. They stay in the same place every day, and the rest of the day can be arranged freely.

Yes. In addition to Learning, Reading, Creative, Sport, Chores and Personal care, you can create your own categories, up to 12 active ones, each with an icon and default stars.

Yes. The weekly plan fits on one landscape A4 sheet per child, with boxes to tick by hand. Handy for the fridge.

The children enter it themselves: what needs doing and by when. For a test, Rondino suggests up to three study sessions in the days before.

No. Children tick off their homework themselves. In the day app under “Today” you see what is open over the next 14 days. If homework is done before the due date, there is a star; you can change that.

No. Rondino is just for your family. There is no connection to the school and no access for teachers.

From your recurring tasks and bundles (e.g. chores, reading), the curricula with their remaining pages and the time budget for the other subjects. Rondino suggests the learning tasks, and you release them one by one or for the whole week. Only then do the children see them.

Yes. A spontaneous day off is entered in the year plan, and the target leaves it out. Open tasks of that day remain and can be moved.

Yes. Under “Carry-over” you add the learning time before you started with Rondino as a lump sum.

Yes. Each child has their own grade, year plan, curricula and time budget. Tasks can still be created for several children at once.

Yes. The learning report can be saved as a PDF and printed. You choose what goes into it.

Yes, the notepad. It is clearly separate from learning: no subjects, no stars. Entries are private or shared with the other parent, with a reminder if you like.

As soon as they can read short sentences, from about eight years old. The kids’ app shows one thing per line, has large tap targets and always just one task that is “Up next”.

No. Children can use their own device or share a family device. On a shared device, the child chooses their profile and enters their PIN.

Children report tasks with duration, photo or a short description, depending on what you ask for. Stars are only given once you confirm. With “Take another look”, you hand a task back to be reworked.

No, that matters to us. There are no grades, no leaderboards, no comparisons between siblings and no streaks that are lost when a day is missed. Persistence and care are praised, never speed. Only the parents see the target.

Only their own tasks, feedback, photos, stars and their own notepad. They do not see the analytics, the target or their siblings’ data.

No. Rondino only records when and for how long a child had Rondino itself open. No other apps, no location. Parents see this under “Usage”, can switch it off, and it is deleted after 90 days.

Tasks earn stars, which you set per task or category. Children exchange them in the shop for pocket money, screen time or your own extras. You set the exchange rate.

No. You can offer only extras, only some rewards, or simply let stars stand as recognition.

No. Rondino keeps the balance: how many minutes a child has exchanged, with daily and weekly limits that reset themselves. Rondino does not control the device itself; Apple and Google have screen time features for that.

A shared star jar for an activity you do together. Each child puts stars in; only the total is visible, not who gave how many.

Per child and semester: an overview by subject with learning time, target, curricula and topics, selected work with photos and the learning portfolio from the weekly reviews. You choose what goes in under “Customise report”.

The report follows the requirements of the canton of Aargau; the learning portfolio follows the fact sheet “Private Schulung – Lernportfolio” from Aargau’s education department (BKS). What exactly is sufficient is decided by your school authority.

From your canton’s minimum time (in Aargau under § 119 of the ordinance on compulsory schooling), distributed according to the weighting of the timetable and only across real learning weeks. Your own targets per child and subject are possible.

Rondino is a web app. It runs in the browser on phone, tablet and computer and can be added to the home screen on a phone. It then opens like a normal app, without the browser bar.

No, Rondino needs an internet connection. That way all the family’s devices are always up to date.

German, French, Italian and English. The language is chosen per device, so a child can work in French while the parents use German.

Yes, optional and per device: reminders from the notepad, a morning brief and hints about learning. With quiet hours and, if you like, without content on the lock screen. On iPhone from iOS 16.4, once Rondino has been added to the home screen.

There are three colour themes: “Morgen” (light), “Abend” (dark) and “Wald” (calm and low-stimulus). Without a choice, Rondino follows the device setting.

The test phase is free. We will announce prices before the official launch. Should Rondino cost something after that, we will announce it at least 30 days in advance, and there will only be costs if you expressly agree.

Soon. The gift subscription will be available from the official launch after the test phase: a year of Rondino for another family, with a code by email and a gift card to print. A gift never turns into a subscription by itself.

Rondino donates 5% of subscription revenue to a project that all families choose together, children included. We will start donating as soon as enough families have a subscription; all Rondino families can already vote. Every donation is listed publicly on the “Project of the quarter” page.

A closed test phase is currently running. Families receive an invitation code and use it to set up their family.

Yes. With “View demo” you start the demo as a parent or as a child. You get your own fictional Keller family with a few weeks of everyday life and can try everything. It is deleted after 24 hours. Please do not enter real names or photos there.

In the settings, a parent can delete the whole family. All data and photos are then deleted immediately, and backup copies are overwritten within 30 days. You can save the learning report as a PDF beforehand.

The database and photos are with Supabase in a data centre in Zurich. The backups are stored there too. The app itself, i.e. the part that generates the pages, runs at Vercel in Frankfurt: your data is processed there, but not stored.

Data is stored in Switzerland. However, Supabase and Vercel are companies headquartered in the USA, so access from the USA cannot be completely ruled out. This is covered by the providers’ data protection agreements (standard contractual clauses or the Swiss-U.S. Data Privacy Framework). Our privacy notice says the same.

Yes, twice over. At rest: the database, photos and backups are encrypted on disk with AES-256. In transit: every connection between your device, the app and the database uses HTTPS or TLS. Tasks and notes are not additionally encrypted one by one, because Rondino has to read them for analytics and the report.

Passwords and children’s PINs are never stored in plain text, only as a hash (scrypt with a random salt). The recovery codes for two-factor login are also stored only as hashes.

Because the parents’ area contains personal data about children. Parents log in with a password and a 6-digit code from an authenticator app (e.g. Google Authenticator, Microsoft Authenticator or a password manager). For emergencies there are 8 one-time codes. A trusted device can be remembered for 30 days.

A PIN only works on a device where a parent has logged in before. From an unknown device it is useless. After five failed attempts, Rondino locks the login for a while; the same applies to parents’ passwords.

Parents see their family’s data, except the other parent’s private notepad entries. Children only see their own tasks, photos and entries. Other families see nothing. The operator has technical access to the database and only looks at data when it is necessary to fix an error or when you ask.

Every query is bound to your own family. In addition, an automatic check runs on every change to the code: a second test family opens every page as a parent and as a child, and no name, task or photo of the first family may appear. If the check fails, the change is not accepted.

Photos are kept in private storage in Zurich that only the app can access. They are shown via protected links that expire after one hour. We recommend photographing exercise books, artwork and results, not faces.

No. Rondino shows no advertising and sets no tracking or analytics cookies. The data goes to no one except the technical service providers that run Rondino (Supabase and Vercel). Rondino does not pass your data to any AI service either.

Supabase backs up the database daily and keeps the backups for 7 days. In addition, a backup is created before every new release and kept for 30 days in private storage in Zurich. This backup is created by an automated workflow at GitHub; the file sits for a few minutes on a GitHub server, which is then deleted.

No. New versions first run in a separate test environment with its own database. It contains an anonymised copy: names, texts and photos are replaced. The automatic checks on every change work with an empty database and fictional test families.

You can request information at any time and have data corrected, deleted or handed over. Swiss data protection law (FADP) applies; complaints can be made to the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (FDPIC). Details are in the privacy notice.

Daniel and Sabrina Schmidheiny, a family from the canton of Aargau who teach their two children at home. Rondino was first built for their own family, where it is used every day.

Every change goes through its own proposal (pull request) into a test environment and must first pass a series of automatic checks: type checking, tests, complete translations in all languages, safe database changes, a layout check at four screen widths from phone to desktop, and the check that no family sees another family’s data.

Only when everything is fine in the test environment does a new version go into production. Before that, the database is backed up; afterwards, an automatic test checks that the app is running. If something goes wrong, the previous version can be restored within minutes. Test families receive a short summary of what is new with every release.

Next.js (React) for the app, PostgreSQL at Supabase for data and photos, hosting at Vercel, code and automatic checks at GitHub. Fonts and icons are included under free licences and are not loaded from third-party servers.

The operator console has its own login, separate from the families, with two-factor login and a log of all actions. Secret keys are stored encrypted at Vercel and GitHub, not in the code.