North Carolina · Tennessee
A little closer
to the woods.
Two independent iPhone fieldbooks for noticing more and keeping your own record.
First releases in preparation
Your personal fieldbook
Cove Field Guide
Explore ten regional guide entries and keep private observations with dates, notes, photos, and an optional location pin. Search your journal and return to the details you noticed.
For grown-ups & their crew
Cove Family Field Guide
Lead a shared nature walk with eight short observation activities, record a group outing, and earn four local field badges through saved activity records.
Adults guide the experience. Activities reward looking, listening, and care—never collecting or tasting. No child accounts, names, profiles, or leaderboards are required.
Get help
Email jacob@hoppingdistribution.com for app help, accessibility feedback, or a correction to the guide.
Include which app you use, your iPhone model, iOS version, app version, and a short description of the problem. You do not need to send journal records, precise locations, or children's details. Remove personal information from screenshots you choose to share.
Start with a good look
Both guides cover a focused selection of mushrooms, oaks, black walnut, hickory, and regional fruiting plants. Entries include observation features, habitats, approximate seasons, dangerous lookalikes, cautions, and research citations. This is a selective guide, not a complete list of hazards.
The realistic guide pictures are AI-generated illustrations made during development and bundled in the apps. They can be inaccurate. Each is labelled AI illustration · Not for identification. They are not photographs of verified specimens, and your own journal photos are never sent to an AI service.
Offline, by design
The bundled guide, illustrations, saved entries, and Family activities work without an internet connection. Opening a source website or sending email uses that external service. Selecting a photo stored only in iCloud may first require Apple's download service.
Your records stay with you
Each app stores its own journal on your iPhone. Location is optional and requested only when you tap Add current location. There is no background location tracking, app account, advertising, analytics, subscription, or in-app purchase. The two apps do not share or synchronize journals.
Keep your records safe
Journal data is excluded from device backups and cloud sync. There is no journal export or recovery service in this release. Removing an app, losing your iPhone, or erasing its data can permanently remove its records. Keep original photos separately if you need a lasting copy.
If saving fails, keep the entry open and try again. If a journal cannot be opened, unlock your iPhone, restart the app, and use Try opening journal again. Contact support if the problem continues; deleting and reinstalling the app can erase your journal.
Family activities and badges
Open Activities to choose an activity such as Color Scout or Quiet Minute. Tap Record an outing, enter a title, and mark the activities your group completed before saving. Only saved outings count toward badges. Repeating the same activity does not create extra progress toward a badge for different activities. Editing or deleting an outing updates progress.
For safety, privacy, and data controls in Cove Family, open Grown-up notes from Activities. In Cove, use the Field notes tab. Both include an offline privacy policy and Delete all journal data.
Observe with care
Neither app identifies specimens from photos or decides whether anything is safe to eat. Never eat a mushroom or plant based on an app, illustration, or journal comparison. Consult a qualified local expert and confirm current landowner or land-manager rules before considering any collecting. Adults should supervise every family outing and leave unfamiliar finds in place.
If poisoning is suspected in the United States, contact Poison Control at 1-800-222-1222. Call 911 if someone collapses, has a seizure, has trouble breathing, or cannot be awakened.