Houseplants · for couples and families who share houseplants
PotTap is a shared plant-watering widget for couples and families who look after the same houseplants. After you water a pot, you tap it on your home screen widget without opening the app, and that pot turns moist on everyone else's widget with your avatar stamped beside it. If someone taps a pot that was already watered that day, they see who did it and how long ago, and nothing is logged twice. Between waterings each pot slowly dries out on a timer you set, and when it is due the whole household gets a reminder.
Water the fern, then tap it on the widget. The soil on your own home screen darkens and picks up a shine straight away, and PotTap sends a quiet update to everyone else in the household, so their widgets show the same moist pot with your avatar stamped on it. Nobody opens the app and nobody sends a message.
PotTap counts one watering per pot per day. If Leo taps the Monstera forty minutes after Mina watered it, his tap is not added; he sees that Mina got there at 9:01, on the widget and in the app. Tapped by mistake? Anyone in the household can undo a watering, and the undo stays visible in the history.
Each pot has its own interval, anywhere from every day to every 30 days. As the days pass, its soil on the widget fades from dark to pale, and once the interval runs out everyone at home gets a reminder for that pot, at most once a day and never between 10 pm and 8 am. It is a timer you set, not a sensor in the soil.
Most homes with shared plants run on memory and messages. One person waters on Sunday, the other is fairly sure they did it on Saturday, and the snake plant gets a second soaking it did not need. Or each assumes the other one handled it, and the fern sits dry for a week. Calling across the hallway, a sticky note on the fridge and a line in the family chat all work until the day nobody reads them.
Plant apps tend to treat watering as a private schedule: one person, one phone, one list of tasks. That is fine when you live alone. When two or four people share the same pots, the useful answer is not "water every three days" but "Mina already did it at 9:01", and it needs to be somewhere everyone glances anyway. PotTap puts that answer on the home screen.
The widget is the product; the app is where you set things up and look back. A small widget holds one pot of your choice, and a medium widget shows three side by side. Each pot is drawn with its soil: dark and glossy right after a watering, lighter as the days go by. Under it sits the stamp of whoever watered last and when, or a plain "Due" once its interval has passed.
Tapping a pot on the widget records the watering on the spot, without opening the app. If the phone has no connection at that moment, the tap is kept and retried, and the widget says "Waiting to sync" instead of pretending the others already know.
Sharing runs through PotTap's own server, not through iCloud, which is why each person signs in with Apple or Google before joining a home. When you tap, the server records the watering and sends a silent update to every phone in the household, and each widget redraws itself with the moist pot and your stamp.
iOS decides when silent updates are delivered, so a widget can sometimes lag behind. Opening the app always pulls the latest board for everyone's pots. The drying itself never waits for the network: each widget carries its own timeline, so a pot keeps fading on schedule even on a phone that missed an update.
Skipping the invite is fine. A home of one gets the same widget, drying and reminders. Anyone can leave a home, the owner can remove members or delete the home, and you can delete your account from the app; your widget then goes back to the demo pot.
There is no plant identification, no species database, no care guide and no diagnosis. PotTap does not know whether your pothos likes to dry out between drinks, and it does not pretend to. You choose each interval from what you already know about the plant, and you can water any time; the interval only drives the drying picture and the reminder.
Alerts are kept quiet. A "watered" notification for every tap is off by default, because the moist pot on the widget is the message. Each person can turn those alerts on, and reminders can be switched off pot by pot.
PotTap is a shared record of who watered which pot and when. It does not measure soil moisture or give plant-care advice. How often a plant needs water depends on the plant, its pot, the light and the season, so check the soil and follow guidance for your plant.
No. There is no sensor and no reading from the pot. The moist-to-dry picture on the widget is a timer based on when the pot was last watered and the interval you chose for it.
Yes, to share a home. Each person signs in with Apple or Google, because the household, its pots and who watered them are kept on PotTap's server so every phone sees the same thing. The demo pot on the first screen works without signing in.
Your own widget changes straight away. The others change when their phone receives PotTap's silent update, which iOS delivers on its own timing, so it is not guaranteed to be instant. Opening the app always fetches the latest state.
The first tap counts. The second person sees who watered that pot and how many minutes ago, and no second watering is recorded. A day is counted in your home's time zone, so a tap after midnight starts a new day.
Yes. A home with one member still gets the widget, the drying picture and the reminders. You can invite someone later with a code or link.
No. The watered alert is off by default, since the widget already shows it. Each person can turn it on for themselves. Reminders for a pot that is due are separate and can be turned off per pot.
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