FAQs
Quick answers to common questions about using Before I Forget.
Not at all. There's no preparation needed. Just pick a topic that interests you and start chatting. We'll ask simple questions — you talk, we listen. You can stop any time and come back whenever you like.
As long as you like. A single conversation might take 5 minutes or 30 minutes. You can stop at any point and your progress is saved. You can always come back and continue later.
No. You just type your answers in plain, everyday language. Our AI takes your words and turns them into a polished, readable story. You don't need to worry about grammar, spelling, or structure.
During a conversation, you can attach documents, audio recordings, and photos using the Attach button. The AI will read, transcribe, or interpret whatever you share and weave it into the conversation.
Two things to know about conversation uploads:
- 50MB total per conversation — across everything you attach, combined
- Up to 10 photos per conversation
For per-file limits and supported file types, see What file types can I upload?.
Yes. Your stories are encrypted in transit and at rest. They're stored on Australian servers, and our AI providers do not use your content for AI training under our commercial agreements with them. Only you can see your stories — not even our team can access them. For full details, visit our Privacy Policy.
Only you. Your stories are completely private. No one else — not even our team — can see your content unless you specifically share it.
Yes. All your data is encrypted in transit and at rest, and stored on secure servers in Sydney, Australia.
No. Under our commercial agreements with our AI providers, your stories and personal information are not used to train AI models.
Yes, at any time. You can delete individual stories or snippets from your My Stories section.
Yes. You can download any individual story from its detail page, or download all your stories at once from your dashboard. Stories export as PDF — suitable for keeping, printing, or sharing. If you're working on a Tribute, the Tribute section also offers additional export formats like PowerPoint for presentations.
We would give you advance notice and the opportunity to download all your content before any shutdown.
Our AI is trained to recognise real stories and life stories. If you share something that looks like it came from a book, movie, or TV show, the AI will politely let you know and ask for a genuine story instead. We take authenticity seriously — your stories should be yours.
Before I Forget relies on AI services that occasionally experience brief outages. If you see an error while saving or generating a story, try again in a minute. Your conversation text is preserved until you leave the page. If the problem continues beyond that, it's usually a temporary service issue on our end — come back a little later.
When you share material — through conversation, voice, or documents — we save it as a snippet. Once a snippet reaches a reasonable length, we polish it into a smooth, readable narrative written in your voice, using your words. If you later add to it or edit it, we'll re-polish it automatically. Your original inputs are always retained, so you can go back to them any time.
Yes. On any story, you can create a version — a rendition tailored for a specific audience, length, or tone. You can choose:
- First person ("I remember...") or third person ("Andrew remembers...")
- Length — from a brief summary to a detailed narrative, or sized for a 3 or 5-minute speech
- Audience — tailored for family, grandchildren, a funeral, a birthday celebration, or any other occasion
- Focus — emphasise particular aspects like funny stories, career achievements, or a specific time period
You can save as many versions as you want. Your original story always stays intact.
If you want to add more to a story you've already started, click "Continue This Story" and we'll pick up where you left off. This is great for adding details across multiple sessions.
Yes, in two ways:
- Accept an AI suggestion. In Editorial Review, the AI surfaces stories or snippets that share a theme and offers to combine them into a single cohesive story. One click accepts the suggestion.
- Combine manually. In your My Stories section, you can select two or more stories or snippets and combine them yourself. This is the way to do it when you want to build a broader narrative that pulls across different topics — something the AI's theme-based suggestions don't cover.
Either way, combined stories keep your original inputs intact.
- Documents: PDF, Word (.docx), text files (.txt), and images of handwritten text (.jpg, .png) — up to 50MB per file, and PDFs up to 200 pages
- Audio: MP3, M4A, WAV, and WEBM files — up to 25MB per file (we transcribe audio as soon as it arrives, and that's the size we can reliably process)
- Photos: JPG and PNG — up to 10MB per file
If you upload a recording directly from the Upload a Recording page, larger audio files may go through, but transcription works best under 25MB.
Yes, in most cases. Our AI can read both typed and handwritten text. Very faded or heavily cursive handwriting may be less accurate, but you can always review and correct the results.
A snippet is the raw material — everything you share through conversation, voice, photos, or documents. A story is what the AI creates when it polishes a snippet into a readable narrative. A version is a story tailored for a specific audience, length, or tone — for example, a first-person account for family, or a three-minute speech for an event. Your original story always stays intact. You can also combine multiple stories into a single longer piece with chapters.
Yes. In Editorial Review, the AI surfaces suggestions under "Where to focus next" — ideas drawn from your Building Blocks (the areas of your life you've told us matter to you) and from gaps or threads it sees in your existing stories. You can start any suggestion with one click, dismiss ones you're not interested in, or refresh the list to get a new set.
You can also nominate topics yourself — either in the app directly, or via Poke if you've connected it. Topics you nominate are saved as snippets until you're ready to build them out.
It's your personal editorial review. The AI reads everything you've submitted — stories, photos, documents, recordings — and gives you a concise review covering what themes are emerging, what connections it's found between your stories, and where to focus next. It also offers constructive guidance on how to enhance your content to meet your objectives. And it helps you plan your next stories with intelligent suggestions based on your actual content.
As often as you like, but it's most useful after you've captured a few stories. Each time you come back, the review updates to reflect your latest content. It's a great way to see how your stories are growing and what's worth exploring next.
Before I Forget is a platform that helps people preserve their life stories in a way that's easy, private, and beautiful. We believe every person's story is worth keeping, and we use AI to make the process as simple as having a conversation.
During our current testing phase, yes. We may introduce paid plans in the future, but we will always give you advance notice of any changes.
Yes. Before I Forget is built and operated in Australia, and all data is stored in Australia.
Need help? Use the in-app bug report option from your dashboard, and we'll review it as quickly as we can. Your feedback helps us improve.