Rather than wait for things to be reported one at a time, we reviewed the whole of OurFamilyGrid in one go. We split it into seven areas: account and dashboard, home and food, money, health and people, planning and chat, documents and security, and the phone layout. Each area was checked against the live site, and then we worked down the list. Here's what changed.
Things that are working again
- Live chat is back. Chat stopped connecting after the move to the new platform, because the live-messaging part was never brought across. It now runs inside OurFamilyGrid itself, so it connects instantly on phone and PC. It also takes who you are from your login, so nobody can post under someone else's name.
- Imported calendars sync every morning again. Google, Apple and Outlook calendars you've linked had stopped updating in June. They now refresh daily. We also fixed how they come in:
- One-day events show on one day, not two.
- Bank holidays land on the right day.
- Repeating events appear every time, not just once.
- Events you delete at the source disappear here too.
- Monzo syncing is running again. Bank syncing had paused because of a change in how far back Monzo lets us ask for transactions. Moving money between your own pots and accounts no longer counts as spending in your totals.
- Reward points are earned again. Finishing a task gives 10, 20 or 30 points depending on priority, and streaks and levels move again. Only the household owner can hand out extra points.
Buttons and reminders that silently failed
- Insurance: policies marked as auto-renewing no longer show as expired. They roll on to the next year, with a heads-up to check the new price. The renewal reminder setting now actually sends a reminder before the end date, and again a week out.
- Medical appointment reminders were being marked as sent before they went out, so they never arrived. Fixed.
- Gift Planner: the Planning, Bought, Wrapped and Given buttons work.
- Wishlist: editing an item now saves.
- Home Maintenance: repeating jobs come back with their next due date when you mark them done, instead of vanishing.
- Two-factor setup: re-opening setup could break an authenticator that was already working. It can't any more.
- Pantry: the page no longer crashes when an item has an expiry date.
- Garden: editing a plant no longer marks it as toxic to pets. Watering reminders no longer go off at midnight.
- Meal planner and shopping: recipe categories filter properly. Shopping quantities like "500 g" or "2 tins" now show.
- Family tree: editing a person no longer changes whether they're marked as living.
- Gallery and memories: photos and comments now follow their privacy settings properly.
Dates that were a day out
Several pages worked out "today" in a way that rolls back to yesterday between midnight and 1am during British Summer Time. We fixed it on the dashboard, tasks, work rota, calendar, maintenance and notifications:
- Tasks due today no longer show as overdue.
- Birthday countdowns are no longer a day out.
- The rota's "today" sits on the right day.
On your phone
We checked every main page at phone width, and they all fit now with no sideways scrolling. The "More" menu at the bottom was missing about a dozen pages, including Insurance, Maintenance, Subscriptions, Watchlist, Family Tree, Chat and the forum. It also had no way to log out. All of those are now there.
Security and privacy
The review also turned up some security weaknesses, and we fixed all of them. As before, we're not publishing how any of them worked. We found no sign that any of them were used against a real household. In plain terms:
- Personal paperwork (documents, insurance papers, receipts, travel files) can now only be opened by someone logged in to the household it belongs to.
- Logging in, two-factor codes, password resets and the TV display PIN are now limited against repeated guessing.
- Text from calendar invites, comments, notifications and other places is now always shown as plain text.
- Household settings only send members what the settings page shows. Only the household owner can change them.
- Changing your account password no longer locks you out of your password vault.
- The vault's "same password used twice" check now uses a safer format.
- Smart-home connections can only reach the parts of your account they're meant to.
What's next
A handful of smaller items are still on the list:
- Editing a repeating calendar event
- A couple of checks on polls and the work rota
- Watchlist countdowns that are a day out
- Some light-theme contrast tidy-ups
We'll keep working through them. As always, if something doesn't behave the way you'd expect, the Support page comes straight to us.