WHAT’S NEW
Tella keeps growing.
New things we have built for your family, newest first. Every one of these is live right now, so if you have not opened Tella in a while, there is a lot waiting for you.
Who joins the next story?
When a story ends, Tella asks who should be in the next one, so a best friend or a grandparent can join the adventure.
At the end of a story, tap “Add someone” to put a friend, a cousin or a grandparent in your child’s stories. Tella then offers to send them their card in one tap. When their family finishes a first story, you both get a free story.
Trying Tella before making an account? You can add people right away. Sending asks you to sign in first, for free, so the story and everyone in it stay with you.
Eight skin tones to choose from
Your child’s skin tone can be matched more closely, so the hero on every page looks like them.
When you set up your child, or tap “Update Appearance” on the create page, there are now eight skin tones to pick from instead of five. Adding a photo still works too: Tella picks the closest tone from it for you.
A child you have already set up stays exactly as they are drawn now, unless you pick a new tone.
Add a friend and tell their family
Put a friend from school or down the street in your child’s stories, and let their family know with one tap.
When you add a friend your child’s age on the create page, Tella offers to send their family a card that says your child added them, with a link to make stories of their own. When their first story is done, you both get a free story.
Whoever you add is now picked for the next story straight away and shows first in the row. If three friends are already picked, the one picked longest ago sits that story out, and Tella tells you who.
More stories every month
Every plan now brings your child an extra story each month, and one story on its own costs less.
Starter now comes with 4 new stories a month and Plus with 8, at the same price per story or less. Families already on a plan get the extra story from their next month on, with nothing to do.
The top corner now shows how many stories you have left, like “4 left”, so it is never mistaken for how many you have made.
See all of Tella before you sign up
The people you tell us about, kid mode and Tella’s question are all there for your child’s free story, before you make an account.
Name a sister, a grandpa or the family cat when you set up and they appear on the create page right away, already picked for the first story and drawn so they look the same in every scene. Change how they look, say what they are like, or add someone new.
Kid mode works before you sign up too: hand over the device and your child makes their own story by tapping pictures. Leaving asks for your birth year, as it always does. When you make an account, everything comes with you.
A whole free story, and simpler pricing
Your child’s first story is now a full adventure, animated scene and all, and every story after it is simply one story.
Every story is now about 3 to 5 minutes long with an animated scene. When your child wants more, tap “Next adventure” at the end and the story carries on.
Pricing is simply in stories: new stories every month, or one story at a time. Every plan includes everything, every child as the hero included. If you run out, the story you asked for starts by itself as soon as you pay.
One question while your story is made
While you wait for a story, Tella may ask one quick thing that makes the next ones even more like your child.
It might be what Grandma is like, what always makes your child laugh, or what is coming up for them soon. Your answers shape their next stories. Skip it anytime, and if the story finishes while you are typing, it waits for you.
In kid mode, Tella asks your child how they are feeling and answers them out loud.
Your child can answer Tella out loud
In kid mode, your child can now tell Tella where to go and what should happen, no tapping needed.
Tella asks, then listens for a few seconds. Your child can name a favorite place or dream up a new one, say who comes along and what happens, and Tella sets it all up. A glow behind the Tella logo shows when she is listening, tapping always works too, and the microphone button brings her back after a quiet spell.
Turn it on the first time kid mode opens, or anytime in Settings. No recordings are kept.
Story ideas that fit the place
In kid mode, what happens next now depends on where your child chose to go.
Pick the car and your child might race a cow along the fence or spot animals in the clouds. Pick the castle and a royal cat goes hunting for a lost crown. Every place in their world gets its own ideas, with bedtime ones in the evening.
A bedtime idea, right when you need it
Say yes in the Tella app and get a short note before bed with where your child’s adventure could go next.
It is made from your child’s own world: their name, an animal friend from their last adventure, the one they keep going back to. One tap opens the next chapter, ready to go.
Two a week at most, never between 8:30pm and 8am, and never anything to buy. You can also hear when someone you shared an adventure with has watched it.
Tella asks once, after your child’s first adventure. Turn it on or off any time in Settings → Notifications, for each kind and on each device.
Pick what happens next, on the TV
Stories with choices now stop and ask on Roku, Apple TV, Fire TV and Google TV. Your child picks with the remote.
When the story reaches a choice, Tella asks what happens next and two pictures fill the screen. Press Left or Right on the remote to move between them, then OK to pick. The story carries on the way your child chose.
Nothing is picked until your child picks. If nobody answers, Tella asks again and then waits.
On Roku and Apple TV, update the Tella app to get it. Fire TV and Google TV have it already.
Send a friend the story they are in
Put your child’s real friends and family in a story, then send it to them. You both get a free story when their family joins.
Create now asks who your child’s real friends are. Add a best friend, a cousin or a grandparent under Who joins the story, and they can be in any story you make.
When a story has one of them in it, the end of the story offers to send it: “Send to Leo’s grown-up”. Tella shows you the picture and the link first, then you send it yourself from your own phone. We never ask for anyone’s number or email. You can also send from a friend’s Edit sheet, or from Settings, Invite friends.
Their family can read the whole story without signing up. If they join, their child starts already drawn, your child is picked to be in their first story, and when that story is done you each get a free story. Up to 10 families a year.
A grandparent or another grown-up who is in the story gets it too, with a way to give your child more stories.
Create opens on a story that is ready to go
Open Create and there is already an idea for your child. Keep it, change it, or write your own.
The create page now picks a starting point for the time of day and writes a one-line idea for your child, a few seconds after you arrive. If you like it, tap Create. If not, pick another starting point or theme, or change the words in the box to anything you want. You can type it or say it.
On a computer, the friends who can join sit under your child’s picture, with the ones you picked first. On a phone they have their own card, as before. Adding someone new is the small Add button beside “Who joins”.
Where the story starts, the art style and the length now rest as one row each at the bottom, so the page is shorter. Tap a row to open it. Length is also on the Create button: tap the stars.
In kid mode, your child’s picture is now the top of their world, and Create sits in the middle of the screen.
No more code to remember
Grown-up things now ask for your birth year, the one number you will never forget.
Tella used to ask you to pick a 4-digit code for grown-up things: buying, deleting or sharing a story, and switching back from your child’s profile. Now it asks for the account owner’s birth year. You enter it once, the first time it matters, and it is set.
Already had a code? You can forget it. The next time Tella needs a grown-up, it asks for your birth year, and that is the check from then on.
We keep only a scrambled version to check against, never the year itself.
Gift Tella: give a story starring them
Send a Tella gift card to a child you love, and be a character in their stories.
Grandparents, aunts, uncles and friends can now send a Tella gift card: $30, $50 or $100. Add a note, pick today or a special day, and we email it to the child’s parent. It never expires. Start at tella.kids/gift, or the Gift Tella link at the bottom of any page.
The person sending it can put themselves in the stories. They describe how they look, and Tella draws them as a character. They can also record a short hello for the family to play.
Got a gift? Open the email, sign up or sign in, and it is added to your account. The person who sent it is waiting on Create under Who joins the story, marked From your gift.
After your first story, you can share it with them in one tap.
Make the animal sidekick your own
Your child’s animal can now look and act just the way you describe.
The animal your child picked at the start used to keep its ready-made picture. Now you can change it like any other character. Open it on Create, or in Settings under Tella’s Memory, and describe how it looks: fluffy white fur, one blue eye, a red collar. Tella paints a new picture and uses it in every new story.
You can also say what it is like. Sleepy, loves snacks, always chasing leaves. The story has it act that way. This works for every animal in the cast now, not only people.
Not happy with the new picture? Undo brings the old one back. Stories you already made keep their pictures.
Tell Tella what the people in your stories are like
Describe how someone acts, and they act that way in the story.
Every person in your child’s cast has a new box: What are they like? Write it in your own words. Dad makes jokes and is always running late. A classmate is shy at first and loves to dance. The story has them behave that way.
You will find it when you tap Add character on Create, or Edit under anyone already in the cast.
There is one for you too: Settings, Grown-up profile, under Create your character.
Adding someone is simpler too: pick Person or Animal. An imaginary friend goes in as a person, or as an animal if that is what they are.
Kid mode: stories your child makes and steers
Switch to your child’s profile and Tella becomes theirs: a world of places from their stories, a story made in three taps, and choices along the way.
Tap the picture at the top right and switch to your child’s profile. Their home is now their own world: the places from their past stories, plus a few doors to somewhere new. They tap a place, who comes along and what kind of story it is, and Tella makes it. Tella talks them through every step out loud.
Every new story now stops and asks what happens next. Two pictures, one tap, and the story carries on the way they chose. The last choice decides how it ends. Stories left at a choice wait for them on their home with a question mark.
Stories have new storytellers. Each story is read by one of two narrators, and Tella keeps her own voice for the questions she asks.
Back on your profile, Create has a new section, Where does it start?, with your child’s places, and Settings shows what they made and chose. A weekly email with the same can be turned on under Notifications.
On a TV, Fire TV and Google TV let the child pick with the remote. Roku, Apple TV and Samsung play the story straight through, with Tella choosing.
A storyteller with more feeling
New stories are read aloud by a warmer, more natural voice.
The narrator now reads with more feeling, so the quiet parts sound quiet and the exciting parts sound exciting. The pace is a little livelier too.
Every new story gets the new reading. The stories already in your library keep the voice they were made with.
One less thing to pick
Tella now sets the mood of each story for you, to match what the story is about.
The mood buttons are gone from the Create page. A bedtime story comes out calm and cozy, a silly idea comes out silly, and a big adventure moves fast, without you having to choose.
The music still follows the mood, so every story gets a score that fits it. You will see the mood on the story’s cover.
A faster start
Setting up a child now takes about a minute, one quick question at a time.
New families answer a dozen quick questions and watch their child’s character get drawn along the way. Adding another child works the same way.
The three personality questions are gone. In their place is one open note: tell us what your child is like and what makes them special, and our storyteller reads it before every story. You can write or change it any time in Settings, under your child’s profile.
Profiles has a new look. Everyone sits in one row, and Switch moves between them. The first time you switch to a child, Tella asks for your birth year, so only you can switch back.
Want to be in the stories yourself? Open Settings, then Grown-up profile, and switch on Create your character.
Stories that follow your lead
Every story is now planned before it is written, so it stays about what you picked.
Pick a lesson, a feeling or a theme and the story is really about it. A making-friends story makes a friend, and the people you choose for the story each get a real part to play.
Before you tap Create, you will see a one-line preview of the story. Like it? Tap Create. Want something different? Tap Change it and make it your own.
Stories also travel through more real places, and read more smoothly aloud for the littlest listeners.
Back turns back a page
Your browser’s Back button now steps back through the story, one page at a time.
Missed something? Press Back (or swipe back on Android) and the story returns to the page before, all the way to the cover. It used to jump straight out of the story.
Tella on the big TV
Roku, Apple TV, Fire TV, Google TV and Chromecast. Story time on the biggest screen in the house.
Tella now has its own app on Roku, Apple TV, Fire TV and Google TV. Search for Tella on your TV, sign in once with a code from your phone, and every story your family has made is waiting there, read aloud, with the pictures full screen.
No TV app? You can cast a story from your phone, or open tella.kids/tv in your TV browser.
Your child can start a story from the couch on their own. Making a new story still happens on your phone or computer, so nothing gets bought or changed with a remote.
Fully customizable characters
Rename anyone, fix how they look, or add a character we have never met.
Every story keeps a cast: your child, their friends, their pets, and the characters a story invents along the way. Now you can open that cast and change it. If the dog came out a golden retriever and yours is a scruffy beagle, fix it once and every story after that remembers.
You can also add someone new yourself. Give them a name, say what they look like, and pick them for the next story. Up to three friends can come along on any one adventure.
Multiple children profiles in one account
Add a sibling, switch between them in a tap, and each one gets their own stories.
Brothers and sisters do not want the same story. Each child gets their own name, age, favorite color and appearance, and their own shelf of stories. Switching between them takes one tap on the profile picker.
Your stories are shared across everyone, so nothing is split up. Every plan lets every child be the hero, and adding one is always there when you need it.
Stories on a plane, in a car, anywhere
Save a story to a device and read it with no signal at all.
Tap save on any story and the whole thing lives on that device: the words, the pictures, the narration, all of it. On a flight, in the back of the car, at the cabin with one bar, it opens and reads exactly the way it does at home.
Up to ten stories at a time per device, and you choose which ten.
Pick how the story looks
Classic 3D, Comic Book or Bold Cartoon, chosen story by story.
The same adventure can be drawn three different ways, and your child still looks like your child in all of them. Choose the style when you make the story.
Classic 3D is there for everyone. Comic Book and Bold Cartoon come with a subscription.
Stories in Spanish
Switch your account to Spanish and new stories arrive in Spanish, read aloud too.
Choose Spanish in settings and every new story comes out in Spanish: the title, the words on the page, and the narration your child follows along with.
You can switch back whenever you like. Stories keep the language they were made in, so a mixed shelf is completely fine.
The Mirror
A child looks into it, and a few seconds later there is a drawing of them ready to star in a story.
We have been quietly building something for events, libraries and schools: a booth where your child sees themselves on screen, and a moment later they are a character. Scan the code, take them home, and they are the hero of the next story.
It is not open to everyone yet. Here is a look at it.
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