Skip to content

Kid Onboarding Tour

The first time a child opens their Child card, or picks their face on the Kiosk, TaskMate walks them round it. The card goes dark apart from one real part of it at a time, with a little bubble beside it saying what it's for: "Tap here when a job is done", "Points add up here".

It points at the real card, not a slideshow, and the card stays live underneath. A child can tap the very job the tour is pointing at.

The Steps

Step Points at Says
1 The card's header Hi name! This is your jobs page
2 The first job that can be ticked off now (not one waiting for its time of day, already done or locked) Tap here when a job is done. Some jobs wait for a grown-up to check them first.
3 The points readout (or a job's "+3" on the designed styles) Points add up here
4 A streak on the card (a per-chore 🔥 tag or streak freezes; the Kiosk's day-streak tile) Do jobs every day for a streak
5 The savings forecast or weekly goal (the Kiosk's next-reward tile) Save points for rewards

The words use your family's own points name, so a family that calls them "Coins" hears "Coins add up here".

A step with nothing to point at is left out. No streak on the card yet, rewards hidden, no jobs today — that step is skipped and the dots count only the steps that are left. A brand-new child usually sees the first three.

The bubble sits below the part it points at, or above it when there isn't room. On a very short card (one row of picture tiles), the card grows a little while the tour is open so the bubble doesn't cover what it's pointing at.

When a job is ticked off during the tour, the celebration comes first: the tour steps aside while the "AWESOME!" popup and confetti are showing, then comes back on the same step.

Skip ends the tour. Next moves on, and the last step says Done. On a keyboard, focus moves into the bubble: Enter is Next and Esc skips.

Picture-Only (Pre-Reader) Cards

A card with pre_reader: true gets a shorter tour for children who can't read yet: three steps (tap your job, you get points, save up for a treat), each with one big picture, a few words and a big OK! button. The points step shows your points icon rather than a star.

If a read-aloud speaker is set and Read each step aloud automatically is on, each step is spoken as it appears, with no tap needed.

The Kiosk has no picture mode, so it always uses the standard tour.

Reading It Aloud

When a read-aloud speaker is set in Settings, the bubble has a 🔊 button that reads the step out on that speaker. It goes through the same path as Read Aloud, and the words come from TaskMate's own translations in the card's language. A child can only choose which step is read, never the words, so a child account can't make the speaker say anything it likes.

With no speaker set, there's no 🔊 button.

Once Per Child

When a child finishes or skips the tour, TaskMate saves it against the child, so they don't see it again on their phone after doing it on the kitchen tablet. The browser also remembers it, so a shared kiosk won't replay it to the same child if the connection is down when they finish. That reminder is cleared as soon as Home Assistant has the answer, so Show again works on that tablet too.

A child can only mark their own tour (the same linked-account rule as ticking off their own chores). Resetting it is for grown-ups.

The tour doesn't start:

  • on a TaskMate parent's own account (a non-admin parent in Settings → Parents), so a grown-up looking at a child's card doesn't use up the child's tour;
  • in the admin panel's View as child preview;
  • for adult profiles;
  • on a card with show_tour: false.

If a grown-up does click through it on a shared screen, use Show again in Settings.

Children Who Already Use TaskMate

On the first start after upgrading, every child who has already done a chore or earned points is marked as not needing the tour. They show in Settings as Not needed (already using TaskMate), and Show again gives it to them if you want. Children who hadn't started yet, and every child added afterwards, get the tour.

Settings

In Settings → First-time tour:

Setting Default What it does
Show a first-time tour on the Child card and Kiosk (tour_enabled) on Turns the tour on or off for the whole family
Read each step aloud automatically (tour_auto_read) on Picture-only cards speak each step as it appears. Needs the speaker below
Read-aloud speaker (read_aloud_media_player) empty Where the 🔊 button talks. It's the same setting as the default speaker for taskmate.read_aloud

Below these, Per child lists each child with Finished date, Skipped at step N, Not needed or Not yet, and a Show again button that clears it. The child sees the tour the next time they open their card.

There's no "show it again after a big update" switch: the tour explains the same five things in every version, so replaying it after an update wouldn't teach anything new.

Card Option

Both the Child card and the Kiosk card take show_tour (default true). Set it to false to keep the tour off one card, for example a grown-up's own dashboard. It's also in each card's visual editor as Show the first-time tour.

type: custom:taskmate-child-card
entity: sensor.taskmate_overview
child_id: <child_id>
show_tour: false

For Automations and Developers

  • The overview sensor carries tour at the top level while the tour is on (speak: 1 when a speaker is set, auto: 1 when auto-read is on too), and each child entry carries tour_done (true once finished or skipped). Both are absent while the tour is off. See Sensor Reference.
  • WebSocket commands: taskmate/tour/mark (child_id, status: done / skipped, step) for the child, taskmate/tour/speak (child_id, step, language) for the child, and taskmate/tour/reset (child_id) for grown-ups.
  • The step wording lives in the card translations under notify.tour_*, which is also where the spoken version comes from.