Support

Find answers to common questions about Backwhen, or reach out to us directly below.

Getting Started

What is Backwhen?
Backwhen is a living documentary of the people closest to you — delivered in podcast form. You direct the story of your family and friends with the help of an AI producer that handles the behind-the-scenes work: crafting questions, guiding conversations, transcribing interviews, and distilling the best moments into highlights and summaries. Because everyone in the story can contribute their own perspective, what you get isn't a single narrative — it's a collaborative, 360-degree view of the story as it unfolds.
How does it work?
You set up a project — think of it as your documentary series — and add the people you want to feature. Backwhen's AI producer generates guides (interview outlines with tailored questions), and when you're ready to record, you hit go. The conversation is captured, transcribed, summarized, and organized automatically. Multiple people can record their own takes, and the AI producer weaves it all into a richer, multi-perspective picture over time. You direct the story; the AI handles production.
What do I need to get started?
Download the Backwhen app on your iPhone or iPad. Sign up with email, Google, or Apple ID, and the onboarding walks you through creating your first project, adding your first cast of people, and recording your first interview.
Is Backwhen available on Android or the web?
Backwhen is currently available for iPhone and iPad (iOS 17+). Shared interview links can be opened on the web at platform.backwhen.ai, but the full directing and recording experience lives in the iOS app.

Projects

What is a project?
A project is your documentary series. It's where you organize the people you're featuring, the interview guides your AI producer prepares, and every recorded conversation and summary. You might have one project for your family and another for a close group of friends.
Can I have more than one project?
Yes. Run as many documentary series as you like — one for family history, one for a friend group, one for a personal journey. Switch between them from the Profile tab.
What's the difference between "Life in Motion" and "On a Mission"?

These set the narrative tone for your series:

  • Life in Motion — An ongoing, open-ended documentary. Life unfolds and you capture it as it happens. Great for family narratives and long-running relationships.
  • On a Mission — A documentary with a defined arc. You're following a specific journey, goal, or adventure to its conclusion.
What is check-in frequency?
This is your production cadence. It determines how often the AI producer compiles a check-in brief — a periodic digest summarizing what's been recorded and what's coming up next. Choose weekly, fortnightly, or monthly depending on your pace.
Can I collaborate on a project with others?

Absolutely — and collaboration is core to how Backwhen works. You can invite others to your project as:

  • Editor — Can contribute interviews, add people, and shape the project alongside you.
  • Viewer — Can listen and browse the full archive but can't modify anything.

The more people who contribute, the richer your documentary becomes. When your sister records her memory of a family holiday and your dad records his, you don't get one version — you get a living, multi-voiced account of the same story.

People & Conversations

Who are "People" in Backwhen?
People are the cast of your documentary — the family members, friends, colleagues, and mentors whose stories you're capturing. Each person has a profile with their name, age, relationship to you, and optionally their contact info and preferred language.
How do I add someone?
You can add people during onboarding or anytime from the People tab. They don't need a Backwhen account — they only get involved when it's time to record together.
Can one person appear in multiple conversations?
Yes. Someone can be part of several conversations within your project, each exploring different topics or chapters of their story.
How does the 360-degree view come together?
Each person in your project brings their own perspective. When multiple people record interviews around the same events, relationships, or themes, Backwhen's AI producer synthesizes all of those viewpoints — surfacing where stories overlap, complement, or even contradict each other. The check-in briefs and search results draw from everyone's contributions, so you're never seeing just one side of the story.

Recording & Interviews

How do I record an interview?
Pick a guide (your interview outline), choose your recording mode, and press record. The AI producer delivers prompts during the conversation to keep things flowing. When you're done, the interview is automatically transcribed, summarized, and added to your series.
What recording modes are available?

Backwhen's Interview Studio offers three modes, depending on how much structure you want:

  • Autopilot — AI Interview Host. The AI producer runs the conversation for you — asking questions, following up, and guiding the flow from start to finish. Great for solo recordings or when you want a hands-off experience.
  • Copilot — Guided by Prompts. You lead the conversation, but the AI producer feeds you prompts along the way to keep things on track. You decide when to follow the guide and when to go off-script.
  • Flow — Freeform Session. No prompts, no structure — just hit record and talk. The conversation is still transcribed, summarized, and searchable when you're done, but you're fully in control of the direction.
What's the difference between in-person and remote interviews?

After choosing your recording mode, the Interview Studio asks where your guest is:

  • In-Person Interview — via App. You're in the same room. Record the conversation directly through the Backwhen app on your device.
  • Remote Interview — via Call. Your guest is somewhere else. They receive an email invite link, download the app, and join the audio session — no Backwhen account required. Phone-based interviewing is coming soon.
What happens after I finish recording?

The AI producer takes over post-production:

  1. Your interview is transcribed into a full text record.
  2. A summary and key notes are generated.
  3. The best quotes and moments are pulled out as highlights.
  4. Everything becomes searchable across your project.

A processing indicator shows progress, and the finished interview appears in your Scenes tab with its transcript, summary, and highlights.

How long can an interview be?
Interview length depends on your plan. Your available recording minutes are tracked in account settings. Free plan users have limited sessions and minutes; paid plans offer significantly more.
Can I delete an interview?
Yes. Deleting an interview removes the recording, transcript, and all associated content.

Guides

What are guides?
Guides are your interview outlines. The AI producer crafts sequences of questions and prompts designed to draw out meaningful stories on a given theme. During recording, these prompts are delivered progressively to shape the conversation — like having a skilled interviewer whispering in your ear.
Are there pre-built guides?
Yes. Backwhen provides universal template guides, and the AI producer also generates personalized guides tailored to specific people based on their profile and what's already been recorded. You can clone and customize any guide.
What are prompts?
Prompts are the individual questions within a guide — the building blocks of each interview. You can view, edit, and reorder them to direct the conversation exactly how you want.

Check-in Briefs

What are check-in briefs?
Check-in briefs are your producer's periodic status reports. Based on your chosen cadence (weekly, fortnightly, or monthly), the AI compiles a digest of what's been recorded across all contributors, the themes emerging across interviews, and a look ahead at what to cover next.
What's in a brief?
  • Agenda — What's coming up: themes and topics the AI producer recommends for upcoming interviews.
  • Summary — What's been covered: a narrative recap of recent recordings across all participants.
  • Stats — Total recording time, number of interviews, and contributing participants for the period.

Because briefs draw from every contributor's interviews, they reflect the full 360-degree view of your project — not just your own recordings.

Do I need to do anything to get briefs?
No. They're generated automatically and appear in the Scenes tab alongside your interviews.

Highlights & Collections

What are highlights?
Highlights are the best moments from your interviews — notable quotes, surprising revelations, and memorable reflections — automatically extracted by the AI producer. They make it easy to revisit the standout moments without replaying full recordings.
What are collections?
Collections let you curate interviews by theme, person, time period, or any grouping that tells a more focused story. Think of them as playlists within your documentary series.

Personal Portrait

What is a Personal Portrait?
A Personal Portrait is a living map of who someone is — built automatically from everything they've shared across your interviews. It visualizes how a person's story is growing across eight core life dimensions: Dreams, Roots, Play, Craft, People, Places, Trials, and Beliefs. Lessons surface across all dimensions as a cross-cutting thread. Tap any dimension to explore the thematic interview moments behind it — each one links directly to the relevant point in the recording. The more someone shares, the richer their portrait becomes.
How is a portrait created?
Portraits are generated automatically by the AI producer. As interviews are transcribed and summarized, the AI classifies what was shared into the nine life dimensions and builds up a profile over time. You don't need to tag or organize anything — just keep recording and the portrait fills itself in. The AI producer also notices which dimensions are underexplored and steers future conversation guides toward those gaps, so the portrait naturally rounds out over time.
Can I compare portraits across people?
Yes. The Compare feature lets you overlay portraits from different people in your project, so you can see where their stories overlap and where they diverge — who talks most about family, who focuses on career, where shared experiences show up differently across perspectives.
Which plans include Personal Portrait?
Personal Portrait is available on Rhythm and Studio plans.

Search

Can I search across my interviews?
Yes. Search your entire project using keywords or natural language — "stories about growing up," "advice about career changes," "that time Dad talked about the farm." Backwhen searches across titles, summaries, and full transcripts from every contributor to surface the most relevant moments.

Privacy & Data

Who can see my interviews?
Your project and all its content are private by default. Only people you explicitly invite as collaborators can access it, and you control their permission level.
Can I share a specific interview?
Yes. Interviews can be shared via a link. The recipient can listen without a Backwhen account.
Can I delete my data?
Yes — individual interviews, entire projects, or your full account. Deleting your account removes your data from Backwhen.
How is my data protected?
Backwhen uses encrypted connections, secure authentication (email, Google, and Apple sign-in), and role-based access controls. Your recordings and transcripts are stored securely in the cloud and only accessible to you and anyone you've explicitly invited.

Account & Subscription

Is Backwhen free to try?
Yes. The free plan lets you record a few interviews so you can experience the full workflow — recording, transcription, summaries, and highlights — before committing to a paid plan.
What plans are available?

Backwhen offers three plans:

Free — Try the full experience with a limited number of recording sessions and minutes. Great for getting a feel for how it all works.

Rhythm — For capturing and curating one group's shared story. Includes ongoing interviews that build on everything before, check-in briefs, Personal Portrait and story search, MCP integration, and up to 20 monthly interview sessions.

Studio — For running multiple documentary series across different groups. Everything in Rhythm, plus multiple projects with up to 40 monthly sessions, customizable AI producer and storyline focus, group narrative graph and milestones, and media remix with cross-project search.

Both paid plans are available with monthly or annual billing, and include a 7-day free trial.

What's the difference between Rhythm and Studio?
Rhythm is designed for one project — one family, one friend group, one story. Studio is for people who want to direct multiple documentary series at once, with deeper production tools like a customizable AI producer, narrative graphing, and the ability to search and remix across projects.
How do I manage my subscription?
View your plan, usage, and billing in the Profile tab under account settings. Subscriptions are handled through the Apple App Store.
Can I restore a previous purchase?
Yes. If you switch devices or reinstall, restore your purchase from the subscription settings in the app.

Notifications

What notifications does Backwhen send?
Push notifications keep you in the loop — for example, when a new check-in brief is ready or a collaborator accepts your invitation. You can control these in your device settings.
Can I turn off check-in notifications?
Yes, per project, in your project settings.

AI Tools & Integrations

What is the Backwhen AI tools integration?

AI tools are powerful, but they don't know your story. Backwhen's MCP integration lets you connect your project data to AI assistants like Claude — so the answers you get are sharper, more relevant, and grounded in the life you're actually living.

Once connected, your AI assistant can draw on your interviews, check-in briefs, and the people in your projects to give you context-aware answers — whether you're planning a conversation, reflecting on a theme, or just trying to remember what someone said.

What can my AI assistant access from Backwhen?

The connection is read-only — your AI assistant can look things up but can never modify your data. It can:

  • List your projects and see who's in them
  • Read your check-in briefs — the periodic digests of what's been recorded and what's ahead
  • Search across your interview transcripts using natural language
Which plans include the AI tools integration?
The AI tools integration is available on Rhythm and Studio plans (monthly or annual). Free plan users do not have access to this feature.
How do I connect Backwhen to an AI assistant?
Backwhen uses the Model Context Protocol (MCP), an open standard for connecting data to AI tools. In supported AI apps like Claude or ChatGPT, you add Backwhen as a data source and authenticate with your Apple ID. Once connected, the AI can pull in your project data as context whenever it's relevant to the conversation.
Is my data safe when connected to an AI tool?
Yes. The connection is read-only — no AI tool can change, delete, or create anything in your Backwhen account. Access is authenticated with your Apple ID, scoped to specific projects you enable, and every request is logged and rate-limited. You can disconnect at any time.

Glossary

What is the glossary?
The glossary lets you teach the transcription engine the specific names and terms that matter to your documentary — family names, nicknames, place names, cultural terms. Adding them improves transcript accuracy for all future interviews in that project.
How do I add terms?
Add, edit, or remove glossary terms from your project settings.

Troubleshooting

My interview seems stuck in processing. What should I do?
Processing typically finishes within a few minutes. If an interview appears stuck, try closing and reopening the app. The system automatically detects and retries stalled processing. If it persists, reach out to support.
I can't start a new recording. Why?
You may have reached the recording limit on the free plan. Check your usage in Profile > Account settings and upgrade if needed.
Transcripts aren't getting names right. How do I fix this?
Add frequently used names and terms to your project's glossary. This trains the transcription engine to correctly recognize and spell them in future interviews.
I invited a collaborator but they can't see my project.
Collaborators must accept the invitation before gaining access. Ask them to check for a pending invitation in their Backwhen app under their profile.

Still need help, or have feedback?

We aim to respond to support requests within 24 hours. Feedback is also always welcome.