Mymiks
Mymiks
App user manual
This page is about the Mymiks app for Android and iPhone. The plush toy and the coin have their own printed booklet, included in the package.
The short version.
Install the app, scan the code that came with the plush using the QR button in the app, give your Mymik a name, and it hatches. After that it is a pet: it gets hungry, it can get sad, and it needs you to look after it a little and to be sociable with others too.
Everything it says is made by a language model running on your own phone.
Keep the coin. It is the key to that particular Mymik. You need it again if you change phones, or if you ever want to start over. Leave it in its box, somewhere safe at home.
The Mymik's language is chosen at hatching and decides what it speaks and understands. The app's own language — menus and buttons — is a separate setting, so a Norwegian-speaking Mymik can live in an English app, or the other way round.
The Mymik lives on a small island that follows the time of day. Tap the Mymik and it reacts.
A Mymik is always in a mood. A small weather effect sits just above or around the Mymik, and the light in the scene takes the colour of that mood.
There are nineteen different shades of mood in all. Each one has its own colour.
| What you see | Mood and colour |
|---|---|
| Sparks bouncing upwards | Energetic (orange), adventurous (teal), playful (cyan), sassy (magenta), optimistic (yellow) |
| A small raincloud drizzling | Melancholic (blue), grumpy (red) |
| Drifting stardust that glitters | Reflective (indigo), nostalgic (brown), pensive (orange) |
| Calm rings spreading outwards | Zen (green), confident (lime) |
| Small flickering glints | Mischievous (purple), anxious (amber), shy (light blue), curious (deep purple) |
| Nothing overhead | Serious (grey), lazy (blue-grey), neutral (grey) |
The mood changes on its own as the days and the phases of the day go by, every time the sky changes. The mood colours how the Mymik chooses to talk to the child, and different personalities express it differently.
A raincloud is not something to be fixed. A melancholic or grumpy Mymik is not neglected and does not need medicine. It is in that mood for a couple of hours, the way it is calm in another. It is the three meters along the top that say whether it actually needs something.
Supplies refill on their own, once a day. There is no way to buy more, and there is nothing to pay for.
| Supply | Added each day | You can hold |
|---|---|---|
| Meals | 3 | 6 |
| Medicine | 1 | 1 |
Food raises fullness, and medicine gives health back.
There are two ways to talk to a Mymik.
Tap chat and write. The Mymik answers within a few seconds — it is thinking on the phone's own processor, so it is not instant. On an old or weak phone this takes longer than on a newer, more powerful one.
Tap the microphone button and speak. The phone turns the speech into text, the Mymik reads it, and the answer appears in a speech bubble and is read aloud in the Mymik's own voice.
Speech recognition is done by the phone's own built-in engine. If the phone has no offline speech pack for the Mymik's language, the app says so and helps you install it if you want to.
Some phones simply cannot handle a given language without a connection; that is decided by the phone maker (and it applies to Norwegian on Android). You are then given the choice of using it anyway, or doing without speech recognition.
A Mymik lives on real time. Fullness and happiness fall slowly whether the app is open or not.
| Property | How long until it is low |
|---|---|
| Fullness | About two days |
| Happiness | About three days |
| Health | Only starts falling once fullness or happiness has been very low for a while — around two days in. A Mymik left entirely alone dies after about four days at the earliest. |
A weekend away is safe. A forgotten week is not. This is deliberate: the app should not have to be opened every other hour, and it never sends notifications nagging a child to come back.
The relationship model: alongside the conversation model, a relationship model runs in the background. It picks up how the bond between the child and the Mymik develops over time. That becomes part of the ground the next conversations are built on, and it means a Mymik will answer differently after a while than it does when it is brand new and knows nothing about the child.
Now and then the Mymik finds an odd little thing while the child has been away from the app. What it finds goes into the chest. From there the child can put things out on the island and move them around exactly as they like. There are a few hundred different finds, and some are much rarer than others.
Memories is a small album in the same sheet: the day the Mymik arrived, the first words, the first find, birthdays, new friends. The cards appear on their own as things worth remembering happen.
Our day appears above the row of buttons in the evening. Tap it, and the Mymik tells the story of the day the two of them had, and reads it aloud. It is written on the phone, right then, so it takes a few seconds.
Two children with two phones, in the same room, can introduce their Mymiks to each other.
Meeting the same friend on several days in a row builds a streak, and the screen shows the friends you have met over the last seven days. This is a direct connection between two phones: nothing about the meeting is sent to us, and no location is collected. The Bluetooth and location permissions Android asks for exist only because Android requires them in order to find nearby devices.
If health reaches zero, the Mymik dies. The care buttons switch off, and if it happened while the app was closed, you will find a message about what happened the next time you open it.
There is a way back: meet the same friend three days in a row. On the third day the spark of life returns, the meters are filled, and the Mymik carries on at roughly half its age. The Meet a friend button is available even for a Mymik that has died, precisely so that this is possible.
If meeting another Mymik three days in a row is not something you can manage, you can always reset the Mymik by scanning the QR code again. That also means all progress is lost, and that the relationship between the Mymik and the child is reset as well.
Scan the same coin's code on the new phone and choose Yes, move it here. A Mymik can be moved at most once every 15 days.
Scan the code on the same phone and choose Yes, reset. The personality is downloaded again and all memories are erased — a completely clean slate. If you did not mean to, choose Cancel (keep memories) and nothing is lost.
If a Mymik should no longer be in the list, press and hold its card in the Mymik list and confirm. The Mymik is deleted from the phone along with everything it remembers: the name, the conversations, the finds and the friend meet-ups. This is also how you erase everything one Mymik has stored without touching the others in the list.
The coin works as before. Scan the code again later and the Mymik comes back with the same personality, but without a single memory. That is the same as starting over. Removing cannot be undone, and there is no copy at our end, so the app asks once before it does it.
Uninstalling the app also removes everything stored on the phone. There is no copy anywhere else, so a Mymik's memories cannot be brought back afterwards.
This is the notice the child meets in the app before they meet their Mymik for the first time. It is worth reading together with them.
A little about Mymiks
Mymiks talk and listen using artificial intelligence (AI) — a computer program, not a real animal or a person. It doesn't think or feel the way we do, and it can sometimes say something odd or get things wrong. That's perfectly fine. Mymiks are fun to talk with, but real friends and family are still the best. If a Mymik says something that makes you sad, tell a grown-up.
If the Mymik says something you think it should not have said, press and hold the message and choose Report this reply. Before anything is sent, you see exactly what the report contains: the reply, the conversation that led up to it, the language, the model, and a random installation ID that is tied neither to the child nor to the phone's identity.
The reports come to us and are read by us. It is the fastest way to make the next version better.
| What you see | What to do |
|---|---|
| “This phone is too small” | The AI needs around 6 GB of memory. Nothing was downloaded. Try a newer phone or a tablet. |
| “Not enough space” | Free up storage. The app says how much it needs and how much is left. |
| The download asks about mobile data | It is around 3 GB. Choose to wait for Wi-Fi unless you know your plan can take it. |
| The download stalls | Keep the screen awake and the app in the foreground while it runs. If it fails, tap try again. It does not start from zero every time. |
| “Could not start the Mymik” | The model was not loaded. Check free space and connection, and try again. The Mymik works, but cannot talk, until it is in place. |
| The microphone does nothing | Allow microphone permission, and follow the one-time speech-pack setup the app shows. If it continues, close the app completely and open it again. |
| “This is not a valid Mymik QR code” | You are scanning something else. The code is on the inside of the lid of the coin's box. Hold the phone steady, 10–15 cm away. |
| “Already in use” | The Mymik is linked to another phone. If you choose to move it here, the old phone loses it. |
| “Transfer locked” | A security lock after a recent transfer. Wait, and try again later. |
| “No meals left for today” | Supplies refill once a day, on their own. |
| The Mymik lost the thread | The model did not produce anything usable. Say it once more, or put it a different way. |
| A reply that seems wrong | Report it (section 13), and tell your child that the Mymik is a program that sometimes gets things wrong. |
Write to [email protected] and you will reach one of the founders directly.
How we handle data is set out in the privacy policy. Safety information for the plush toy itself, and the warnings that go with it, are in the booklet in the box.
Mymiks AS · Rosenlundveien 22C, 3150 Tolvsrød, Norway · [email protected]