Create a Time Capsule for Your Child
A digital time capsule for your child lets you preserve photos, videos, voice recordings, drawings and messages today and reveal them on a meaningful future date — their tenth birthday, their eighteenth, the morning of their wedding. You seal it now, and it opens on the day you chose, with everything exactly as you left it.
You will remember the milestones. The first steps, the first day of school, the holidays with photos attached.
What goes is everything around them: how they said certain words wrong, what they were frightened of, the game they invented that lasted four months. A capsule is a way to write that down while it is still true.
Capture the ordinary things you'll otherwise forget.
Why parents make them
Photographs record what a child looked like. They are much worse at recording what they were like. A ten-second video of them refusing to wear shoes tells them more about their own childhood than fifty portraits.
There is also a second thing happening, which most parents notice only afterwards: the capsule records you. Your voice at this age, your handwriting, what you were worried about the year they turned four. When they open it at eighteen, they meet a version of you they never knew.
And some of it is simply practical. Grandparents' voices do not stay available. A recording made this Christmas costs an hour and cannot be made later.
What should I put in my child's time capsule?
Anything you can photograph, film, scan or type. These are the ones parents most often say they were glad they included.
Of them, right now
- Photos that never made social media — the blurry, unposed, unflattering ones
- A short video of a completely ordinary moment: breakfast, the walk home
- Their first words, or the words they still get wrong
- Drawings and schoolwork, photographed flat on a table
- Their favourite song, book, meal, cartoon and person this year
- A recording of them talking about what they want to be
From you
- A voice message describing them as they are today, in detail
- A letter written on each birthday, added to a new capsule each year
- The story of the day they were born, told properly
- Funny stories they are too young to remember
- What you find hard about this age, honestly — they may be a parent when they read it
- Predictions about who they will become, signed and dated
From everyone else
- Messages recorded by grandparents, in their own voice
- A note from each aunt, uncle and godparent
- What their best friend at four years old sounds like
- A photo of the house, the street and the car, which will date instantly
- Prices: what a loaf of bread and a cinema ticket cost this year
You add all of this yourself — including anything other people send you. There is no way for someone else to upload straight into your capsule, which also means nothing can appear in it that you did not put there.
The recording you make this month
Their voice at this age is only available at this age. It takes ten minutes and you cannot go back for it later.
When should it open?
The date is the decision that changes the capsule most. A capsule for a six-year-old is a different letter from a capsule for a young adult.
Their first birthday
Made during the pregnancy or the first weeks. Opened by you, together, while they are too small to care — which is rather the point.
Their tenth birthday
Close enough that they remember some of it, far enough that the video of them at three is genuinely strange to watch.
Their sixteenth
Often chosen by parents who want to say something to a teenager, from a time when the child was still uncomplicatedly delighted to see them.
Their eighteenth
The most common choice by a distance. Eighteen years of ordinary detail, handed over on the day they are legally done being a child.
Their graduation or wedding day
Longer waits, and the ones people write to us about most emotionally. Our plans cover up to thirty years, with longer dates available as an add-on.
One capsule per year, each opening on the same future birthday, works better than one enormous capsule you keep meaning to finish.
Practical things worth knowing
Your child does not need an email address
A recipient can be added by name alone, saved in your contacts. When the day comes you hand them the link or the QR code yourself.
You cannot change it afterwards
Once sealed, the capsule is read-only and the date is fixed. Reread it before you lock it — and if you change your mind entirely, you can delete it and start again.
Keep it private
Set the capsule to private so only your recipients can open it, or add a password with a hint only your family would understand.
Storage is the real constraint
50 MB per file, 1 GB in a paid capsule. Video eats it fastest, so trim to the ten seconds that matter rather than uploading the whole clip.
Will it still be there in eighteen years?
This is the fair question, and we refuse to answer it with a slogan. Files sit on Cloudflare R2 and capsule details on Cloudflare D1, encrypted at rest. If we ever had to stop, we commit to warning you in advance and releasing every pending capsule early rather than letting it disappear.
What we will not tell you is that a small company can promise you thirty years. Nobody can honestly say that. On the opening day everything downloads in standard formats, and the most durable copy of your child's capsule will be the one they save themselves.
Questions parents ask
What is a time capsule for a child?
What should I put in my child's time capsule?
Can I make a time capsule for a baby who has no email address?
Can I make a capsule that opens on my child's 18th birthday?
Can grandparents add their own messages directly?
Should I make one capsule or one every year?
Can my child see the capsule before it opens?
Give them back their childhood, in their twenties
Seal it now. They open it on the date you chose.
Pay once — yours to download and keep on opening day.