The Handbook

BeginThe two rooms, and the door between them

Think of it as one house with two rooms.

Archivia is the register — the careful room. Every photo, film and voice recording is kept there with its date, its story, and its own permanent number, the way a museum keeps its catalogue. When you want to know where something is and what it is, you go to Archivia.

Keeplace is the book room — the warm one. There you arrange those memories onto pages, write beside them, and print a real book to hold. When you want to make something, you go to Keeplace.

BeginYour account — one key for both rooms

1. Open archivia.site in your web browser (Safari, Chrome — any of them).
2. The first time, choose to create an account: your email address, a password you'll remember, and the invitation code ARCHIVIA-2026 (capital letters or small — both work).
3. From then on you simply sign in with that email and password — the same key opens both rooms, on your phone, your tablet and your computer.

ArchiviaAdding a photo, a film, or a voice

A photo

1. Tap the long dark bar at the bottom: ＋ Add to the archive
2. Choose photo, then Choose from camera roll and pick one from your device.
3. If you like, write a line about it — who's in it, what was happening. You can always add more later.
4. Tap Save to inbox. Done — it's in the house.

A film (video)

1. Tap ＋ Add to the archive and choose video.
2. Pick the film from your camera roll and tap Save to inbox.

A voice recording

1. Tap ＋ Add to the archive and choose voice.
2. Record right there, or choose a recording you already have.
3. Archivia can also write down the words for you (a transcript) — so the little sentence is kept even on paper.

ArchiviaEvery way in — and how long each takes

There is more than one door into the archive. They all end in the same place: the Inbox, waiting for you. Pick whichever suits the moment.

1 · From inside Archivia — the ＋ Add bar

The everyday door. Best when you're adding one thing and want to write a line about it while it's fresh. Also the only door for very large films.

2 · From your phone's share sheet — several at once

1. Open Photos and select as many photos or films as you like.
2. Tap the share button, then Archivia in the row of app icons.
3. A small card counts them through and says Sealed in the Archivia inbox ✓.

3 · From Google Photos

In the Add a film sheet, choose ⧉ From Google Photos, sign in once, and pick the film there. Useful when your memories live in Google rather than on the phone.

4 · From a computer — for the long films

A wedding, a birth, a school concert. Open Archivia in a browser on a computer, plug in the drive if the film lives there, and use ＋ Add. A steady computer connection handles a long upload far better than a phone.

ArchiviaHow long things take

Nothing is lost while you wait, and nothing needs watching. Rough guides on a normal home connection:

1. A photo — a second or two. It's usually there before you've put the phone down.
2. A short clip (up to about a minute) — a few seconds.
3. A longer clip (a few minutes) — under a minute, usually.
4. A long film (half an hour or more) — several minutes, sometimes much longer. Use a computer, and let it finish before closing the page.

How big is too big?

Sharing from the phone suits anything up to a few minutes. From a computer, a single film can be up to 5 GB — roughly an hour of phone video. Beyond that, or if your collection is enormous, the archive has an older and wiser answer:

ArchiviaThe Inbox — review and organise

New things wait in the Inbox until you've had a look at them. Reviewing is the pleasant part — a quiet minute with each memory.

1. Open the Inbox (it shows a count of what's waiting).
2. For each item, add or tidy the title, the date it happened, and a few words of description.
3. Tap Accession. Archivia gives the record its permanent number — something like A-2026-0104 — and files it in the register.

ArchiviaA record's page — titles, dates, people

Tap any record in the register to open its page. Everything on it can be changed at any time — tap a line to edit it.

1. Title and date — plain words are best: "Sienna's third birthday — the cake".
2. Description — the story. Who was there, what was said, why it matters.
3. People — tap to name who appears. Later you can find every record of a person in one tap.
4. Collections — see the next section.
5. For films: tap the poster to play. For voices: the player sits right on the page.

ArchiviaCollections — gathering records together

A collection is a labelled ribbon around a set of records: "Sienna's third birthday", "Louis — studio work 2026", "Nanna's letters". A record can wear several ribbons at once.

1. On any record's page, find the Collections line and tap ＋ Collection.
2. Type a name for a new collection, or tap an existing one to add the record to it.
3. To browse, tap a collection chip (marked ◆) under the search filters — you'll see everything it holds, oldest first.
4. Inside, ✕ takes a record out of the collection (the record itself is untouched). Disband removes the ribbon entirely — never the records. It asks twice before doing so.

ArchiviaFinding things, the Desk, and Export

Finding

Tap ✦ Find and type anything — a name, a word from a description, a year. The register narrows as you type.

The Desk

⚡ Desk is for catching up: it shows one un-reviewed record at a time, full screen, so you can title-date-describe a whole backlog in one sitting — like a librarian with a trolley of returns.

Export — your own copy of everything

1. Tap ⤓ Export in the header.
2. Archivia copies every original file onto your computer or hard drive, each named by its accession number. This is your once-a-season ritual — a full copy of the archive that lives with you.

KeeplaceOpening your book

1. Open archivia.site/keeplace, or step through the ❧ Keeplace door from Archivia.
2. While the book travels from the cloud you'll see a calm cream screen with a growing gold line and the words "Opening your book…". A full book can take a little while on a slow connection — this waiting screen is normal, and it tells you honestly if it's taking longer than it should.
3. Your book opens where you left it.

KeeplacePages — adding, arranging, changing their look

Moving between pages

Adding a page

1. Tap ＋ Add page.
2. Choose a kind of page. There are pages for stories, single photos, photo galleries (including three quiet "small landscape" arrangements with wide white margins), quotes, timelines, letters, birthdays, family trees, artist pages, and more. Each shows a little preview.

Changing a page's look

1. On the page, tap ⟳ Change layout.
2. Keep tapping to cycle through the arrangements — your photos and words travel with you between layouts.
3. If a new layout has fewer photo spaces or less room for words, nothing is lost: extra photos wait in the Moments tray, extra writing waits in the Text tray, and a message tells you exactly where everything went.

Arranging the book

Move ← and Move → shift a page one place. Remove takes a page out (it asks first). And the book can order itself by date — covers to the front, the Library to the back, dated pages in between, oldest first.

KeeplaceWriting — by hand or by voice

1. Tap any words on a page — a title, a caption, the body of a story — and simply type. Tap elsewhere when you're done; it saves itself.
2. For longer writing, tap the ⤢ button on the little toolbar that appears — the writing room opens, full screen, quiet, with big comfortable type. Tap Done to return.
3. Prefer to speak? Tap the microphone and talk — your words appear as you say them. The Memory assistant (under ⋯ More) can tidy dictation into flowing sentences.

KeeplacePhotos — from your device, your trays, or Google

1. Tap any empty photo space (they say "Add photo"), or a photo you'd like to replace.
2. A small menu asks where from:

Capturing a memory from anywhere

You don't need to find the Moments page first: tap ⋯ More → ＋ Add a memory from any page, and the capture sheet opens — a photo, a quote, a little moment, saved with its date to place later.

KeeplaceBringing things across from Archivia

The register can reach every part of the book — four doors, all under ⋯ More.

1. Photos from Archivia — a grid of your register photos. Chosen ones land in the Moments tray, each keeping its title and date, ready to place on any page from the photo menu.
2. Films & voices from Archivia — brings them into the Library, the book's printed catalogue of recordings (next section).
3. A film or voice, on its own page — a film becomes a full poster page (tap the poster and it plays from the vault); a voice becomes a journal page with its transcript as the words, the recording playable beneath them.
4. A film or voice, on this page — adds a small strip beneath the words and photos of the page you're on: poster, title, date, and register number. Films play when tapped; voices play in place. In print, the strip appears without the players — a neat catalogue note.

KeeplaceThe Library — your films & voices, catalogued

The Library pages sit at the back of the book: one elegant catalogue line per recording — title, date, a few words, and its register number. On screen, tap a film's poster and it plays straight from the vault; voices have a small player right in the entry.

KeeplaceTimelines, statements, and the reading mode

Timelines

A timeline page collects little dated moments. Tap ⤤ gather moments from the book and it fills itself from your pages. If the timeline's heading names a year — "MOMENTS · 2025" — the button becomes ⤤ gather 2025 from the book and collects only that year.

Statement pages

"Words, writ large" — one sentence, set enormous, with a small line above and a name below. For the things somebody said that deserve a whole page. The type sizes itself to the length of the words.

Reading mode

Tap Read and the book puts away all its editing tools — just the pages, as a visitor would see them. ⋯ More → Dates while reading chooses whether little date stamps show on photos while you read.

KeeplaceOne last read — a gentle spell-check

1. Whenever you print or save a PDF, Keeplace first offers ✦ One last read — a careful pass over your words for spelling and punctuation.
2. It shows its suggestions page by page; you tap Accept, Edit or Ignore for each. Nothing changes without your say-so, and anything accepted can be undone.
3. It is protective of your family's language: names, nicknames, a child's own words in quotes, and Australian spelling are left alone.
4. You can also run it any time from the top of Print & keep, or skip it entirely with Continue without changes.

KeeplacePrint & keep — paper, at last

Tap Print in the bottom bar (or ⋯ More → Print & keep). Two roads lead to paper:

1. Choose this page, the whole book, or ready pages (pages you've marked done).
2. In your printer's window choose single-sided — each page prints on its own sheet, with a wider left margin already built in for hole-punching.
3. Slip the pages into your binder, beside the original keepsakes. That's the whole point of everything.

KeeplaceSeveral books, backups, and the rescue copy

More than one book

The book switcher (bottom of the tools) lets you make a ＋ New book, Rename one, or move between them — Sienna's book, a family archive, a folio for Louis.

Deleting a book — the failsafe

1. Deleting asks you to type the book's name before the button will even light up.
2. Before anything is removed, a full rescue copy is kept on your device.
3. Changed your mind? ⋯ More → Restore a deleted book brings it back, pages and all.
4. Your last remaining book can never be deleted at all.

Backups

The ⬇ Backup button saves the whole book as a file on your device — a good monthly habit. The cloud also keeps its own quiet snapshots as you work.

SetupGoogle Photos — a one-time setting

To pick photos straight from a Google Photos account, Keeplace needs one long code called a client ID (it ends in .apps.googleusercontent.com). It's created once, free, at Google's website — ask your resident technical person, or the Companion guide walks through it.

1. Tap ⋯ More → Google Photos import.
2. Paste the client ID and tap Save.
3. That's it — set it once on any device and every device signed into your account learns it. "Google Photos" now appears in every photo menu.

HelpWhen something looks wrong

ReferenceSmall glossary

Begun, not perfect — that's the whole method.
Archivia · The Handbook · July 2026