Put Pairstead on your phone
Two minutes, and nothing to pay.
Pairstead is a website, but it does not have to look like one. Installed, it gets its own icon on your home screen, opens in its own window with no address bar, and still opens when you have no signal. It is the same Pairstead either way — the same account, the same home, and whatever one of you writes still arriving on the other's phone.
On Android
Two ways in. The first is quicker and the phone trusts it without asking anything; the second is a real file, which you can send to somebody.
The quick way — from the browser
- Open getpairstead.com in Chrome.
- Tap the ⋮ menu, top right.
- Tap Install app, or Add to Home screen.
Chrome sometimes offers this by itself, as a strip along the bottom of the screen. That is the same thing.
The file
A real Android install file. Download it on the phone, or send it to somebody the way you would send a photo.
Already have it from before 19 September 2026? Download it again and install it over the old one — nothing you wrote is lost. The new one has the new name and the house icon, and shows its notifications as Pairstead rather than as a website.
- Tap the downloaded file.
- Android will say it does not install apps from this place, and offer a Settings button. Tap it and allow this once.
- Tap Install.
That warning is Android saying the app did not come from the Play Store, which is true. It is not saying anything about what is inside it. The warning goes away if Pairstead is ever put on the Play Store, and until then it is the price of a file you can hand to a person directly.
On iPhone and iPad
Apple allows no app to be installed from a file, from anybody, outside its own store — so there is nothing here to download. What Apple does allow is this, and it gets you the same icon and the same full screen.
- Open getpairstead.com in Safari.
- Tap the Share button — the square with the arrow coming out of it, at the bottom of the screen.
- Scroll down the list and tap Add to Home Screen.
- Tap Add, top right.
Both of those are drawings rather than photographs of a phone — your iPhone will look close to this, and the words on it will be the same.
It has to be Safari. Another browser on an iPhone will show you Pairstead perfectly well and will not offer that button.
What you get, and what you do not
Installed, either way, Pairstead opens from your home screen with its own icon and no browser around it, keeps you signed in so you are not typing a password every time, and opens to the last copy of your home when there is no signal — you can read it, and what you write goes up when the signal comes back.
It will not nag you. Installing Pairstead switches nothing on. If you want to, you can turn on Notifications on this phone under You → Account, and then the phone is told three things only: that your partner is thinking of you, that they thanked you, or that they are waiting for you in Repair or the sit-down — their name, never their words. Each can be switched off on its own. A chore due at eight is still a label and an ordering, not an alarm.
On an iPhone, notifications need Pairstead on the Home Screen (the steps above) — Apple does not let Safari show them for a site that is only open in a tab.
Pairstead sends two emails and no others. One is a password-reset link, when you ask for it. The other says your partner has written their half of a Repair or the Sunday sit-down and it is your turn — that they have written, never a word of what, because neither of you can see the other's half until you have both written and somebody has to say so. You can turn that one off in Pairstead under You → Account. There is nothing else: no reminders, no summaries, no marketing.
Nothing about installing changes what Pairstead keeps or who can see it. It is the same app, at the same address, signed into the same account — the privacy page is unchanged by any of this. The one thing installing adds is a copy of Pairstead's own files on your phone, so it can open without a connection; clearing the app's storage, or removing it, removes that too.