What Tinker can do now.

Hello! A quick one about icons. Tinker has got better at the things you ask for most when you're drawing them.

Icons that follow what you show

Send a picture, point at an icon you already have, or name a track's icon, and ask for one like it: "the same fox, but asleep", "six more to match these", "this one, waving". Whatever you show stays in view the whole time it draws, so what comes back looks like what you meant.

Richer colours

Every icon now picks its own colours, with far more to choose from. Icons come out brighter and bolder, and a set still sits well together.

Making an icon move

Any icon you have can be set moving without changing it. Say "this icon exactly, just blinking" and every pixel stays where it is, with the motion added on top.

A tidier Icons tab

The Icons tab in the app now matches the rest of Tinker: your saved icons, the library, and the ways to make a new one, all in one place.

Questions or ideas? Write to us from Help in the app. We read every message.

Hello! This one is all about Tinker Credit: how often it comes back, where it went, and how to get more. Nothing here changes what you've already made.

Fresh credit every week

Family and Studio plans now get fresh Tinker Credit every Monday instead of once a month. It also adds up to more credit over a month as before.

To start things off, we've given every Family and Studio household a fresh start this week, so your meter reads 100% today.

Unused credit doesn't carry over to the next week, so there's no need to save it up. Use it on whatever you're making.

• Family: fresh Tinker Credit every Monday.
• Studio: three times Family's credit, every Monday. Made for big libraries, long audiobooks and whole shelves of icons.

On the free plan, Tinker Credit still comes once. A plan brings it back every week.

See the plans

See where your credit went

Settings › Usage now shows what your Tinker Credit was spent on, as shares: conversation, drawing icons, animated icons, writing down recordings and the rest.

Know when it comes back

Settings › Plan & Credit says when this week's credit runs to, so you know when the next week's arrives.

Credit from friends

Invite a friend from Settings › Friends. Once they've created an account and linked a Yoto account of their own, you both get Tinker Credit. It sits on top of your plan's, so your meter can read more than 100%.

Thank you to everyone who wrote in about credit, here and in Community. Questions or ideas about any of this? Write to us from Help in the app. We read every message.

Hello! There's a new tab in Tinker called LibriVox. It holds more than 22,000 audiobooks read aloud by LibriVox volunteers, and you can turn any of them into a Yoto card.

Children's books come first

Open LibriVox and you'll see a book of the day, then shelves of children's listening: bedtime favourites like The Wind in the Willows, Peter Pan and Winnie-the-Pooh, fairy tales and fables, animals and nature, adventures, short listens for a car ride, full-cast readings with a different voice for every character, and poems to read aloud.

There are also children's stories in German, French, Spanish, Dutch and Italian, a shelf for learning a language, and a few shelves for grown-ups after bedtime: classic novels, mysteries, history, poetry and science fiction.

Search, or browse them all

Search by title or author, or open All books and narrow it down by language, age, category and length. Every shelf has See all.

Listen first, then make it a card

Open a book to read what it's about and see every chapter and who reads it. Play lets you listen right there. Add to My Library opens a chat where Tinker Assistant makes it a Yoto card, with a cover, an icon for every chapter and the readers credited. A long book is split across more than one card so each fits Yoto's limits.

Where the books come from

LibriVox volunteers record books whose copyright has run out and give the recordings away. Every book links back to its LibriVox page and the original text.

Hello! Here is what's new in Tinker. Nothing here changes what you've already made: every story, card and icon is where you left it.

Friends

If your Tinker Credit runs out, share a shelf with a friend. When they create an account through your shelf's link, your credit is restored.

More than a hundred fixes

Since the new name we've fixed more than a hundred things, large and small, to make Tinker sturdier. The ones you're most likely to notice:

• Big audio files work. Long recordings and large files come in, get their words written down, and are cut into chapters without timing out part way.
• Splitting really long audio works. A card's long track, or a long recording, is cut into chapters in one go, with real progress shown as it happens. A split that stops can be picked up from where it got to.
• Saving to Yoto is steadier. A save that Yoto has already taken is no longer reported as a failure, a wobble on Yoto's side is retried once, unchanged audio is never sent again, and if a card changed on Yoto in the meantime you're offered to keep or replace it.
• Covers keep their shape. A portrait cover stays a portrait when it goes to Yoto.
• Chats remember what you gave them. A file dropped into a chat is still there for a follow-up ask, and Undo puts everything back exactly as it was, even after several changes in a row.
• Big libraries can be organised in one ask. Tinker Assistant can work through a whole library in a single conversation.

If something still isn't right, write to us from Help in the app. We read every message.

Ask Tinker Assistant, in your own words

Open Chats and say what you'd like done: "Split this recording into chapters", "Give every chapter an icon", "Rename the last track". Tinker Assistant makes the change and shows it to you to check. Anything can be taken back with Undo.

Icons that move

Tinker Icons can animate any icon. Describe the motion ("a fish wagging its tail"), watch it loop, and download it as a GIF. In a chat, ask for the icons on a card in your Yoto library to be animated and Tinker Assistant does the lot.

Suggestions on Home

Home now suggests what Tinker Assistant could do next for your library: split a long recording into chapters, tidy up track names, put loose stories on a shelf. Each suggestion is one press.

Sign in with Yoto

You can now sign in to Tinker with your Yoto account, as well as with an email code or Google.

Thirty days of saves

Every save of a Yoto card is kept for thirty days, so you can go back to how a card was last week.

Hide what you don't need

Any story or card can be hidden from Home, and brought back whenever you want it.

And this page

We'll post what's new here from now on, and a small note appears in the app when there's something new to see. Questions or ideas? We'd love to hear them, from Help in the app.