Setting up a wall tablet

If you have an old iPad sitting in a drawer, you can mount it on the kitchen wall and give your whole household a glance-and-go view of what is happening today. It is one of the most-loved features on the Pro and Family plans.

What you will see on the wall tablet

The household dashboard lives at /dashboard. On a Family plan you see a lock screen with an avatar circle for each household person. Tap your avatar (and your PIN, if one is set) to open your personal view. Tap Lock when you walk away.

Once you tap in, you land on your Home view with your checklists for today, a strip of upcoming maintenance, and your week ahead. Owners and admins also get an overview of every household member's counts and a shared calendar. After a stretch of no taps, the screen switches to an idle slideshow of your household photos. Tap anywhere to wake it.

Before you start

You need:

A Pro or Family subscription. The multi-person avatar sign-in, PINs, and approval workflow described below are part of the Family household setup.
A tablet running a recent version of iPadOS or Android, or a spare laptop.
Wi-Fi on the tablet.

The tablet does not have to be logged in to anyone's personal account, which is what makes it safe to mount in a shared spot.

Pairing a tablet

You manage everything from the owner or admin account, under the Family section of Settings.

1. Open the dashboard settings

On your phone or computer, go to Settings → Family. Scroll to the dashboard controls. There you will find Open dashboard, Pair a new device, your list of paired kiosk devices, and the idle slideshow photos.

The Settings page, whose Family section holds Open dashboard, the paired kiosk devices, and Pair a new device.

2. Set PINs (optional)

Each household person's PIN lives on their row in the Family roster. For anyone who should be required to enter a PIN at the lock screen, click Set PIN on their row and choose a 4-digit code. Kids often skip this; adults often use it so a child cannot tap into a parent's view.

3. Get the 6-digit code

Click Pair a new device. You will get a 6-digit pairing code.

4. Enter the code on the tablet

Open Life Maintenance on the tablet (Safari on iPad, Chrome on Android) and enter the 6-digit code to pair it. Once paired, the tablet shows the lock screen with everyone's avatars.

5. Add to Home Screen

On iPad, tap the Share icon, then Add to Home Screen. On Android, tap the browser menu, then Install app or Add to Home Screen. The dashboard now opens full screen like a real app. Mount the tablet, plug it in for power, and you are done.

The device's bookmark URL

Each paired device gets its own private URL (it looks like lifemaintenance.io/k/...) that relaunches the dashboard after a reboot. From the same Family settings, click Copy URL on a device to grab it.

Keep this URL private. Anyone with it can open your household dashboard. Treat it like a password, and do not share it in screenshots or group chats.

Approving a household member's checklist

When a member completes a recurring checklist that has approvers, it flips to Pending approval. The next time you tap into your view on the tablet, the checklist shows up with two buttons:

Approve. The button shows exactly how many points your tap will credit, so there are no surprises.
Mark incomplete. Sends the checklist back as not done. It confirms first, so a stray tap cannot undo a child's good work.

After you act on one, the view advances to the next checklist waiting on you, so you can clear a backlog in a few taps.

Seeing past days

Recurring checklists on the dashboard have a small date strip you can step back through to see earlier days. Past days are read-only for the items themselves, but you can still approve or mark incomplete a day you did not get to at the time.

Managing your kiosk devices

From Settings → Family, each paired device has three controls:

Copy URL. Copies the device's bookmark URL.
Rotate URL. Issues a fresh URL and invalidates the old one immediately. Use this if you think the URL leaked. Paste the new URL into the tablet's browser to re-pair.
Revoke. Removes the device. Its URL stops working right away.

Photos in the slideshow

The idle slideshow pulls from photos you upload. Under Idle slideshow photos in the same Family settings, click Add photos to upload, or delete ones you no longer want. We resize them on the way in so storage stays small.

If a browser is paired to the wrong household

This is most common if you tested the kiosk during setup, then signed in as your real account later. The tablet keeps the pairing it was given. When you open /dashboard while signed in to your real account, the lock screen tells you which household the device is paired to, and offers a Clear pairing option if it is not yours. Tap it to wipe the pairing and re-pair.

Tips for a great setup

Mount the tablet at standing eye level for kids and seated eye level for adults at the table.
Use a wall mount that doubles as a charger so the tablet never runs out.
Turn on Guided Access in iPad settings to keep kids from swiping out of the dashboard.
Disable auto-lock (or use the display's Always On option) so the screen stays awake.