BabyPaints

Ten fingers, ten colours, ten notes at once. Every stroke plays a tone from a scale that cannot sound wrong.

BabyPaints is a drawing toy for very young children. Drag a finger and it leaves a smooth coloured stroke. Every touch also plays a note, so the drawing and the music happen together.

It takes ten fingers at once. Two hands flat on the screen make ten strokes and a ten-note chord, which is the point: it rewards the way small children actually touch a screen, rather than asking them to be precise.

THE SOUND Notes come from a pentatonic scale, so there are no wrong notes - anything played sounds like it belongs. Pitch follows the screen: higher toward the top, lower toward the bottom. Each note is panned to where the finger is, so a stroke across the screen travels across the stereo field. Sounds are synthesised as you play rather than sampled, so the same gesture is never quite the same twice.

TWO WORLDS Classic is bright colour on black: a grid of hexagons that scatter as you draw through them. Winter is white, with snowflakes that drift and shiver on a wind you can hear, and chime softly when they settle. Shake the device to change worlds and start a fresh page.

MADE FOR SMALL HANDS No menus, no buttons, no scores, no way to get lost. Nothing to read. There is no failure state - every touch does something good.

KEEPING THE DRAWINGS Drawings are saved on their own as you go, so nothing is lost when a page is cleared or the app is put down mid-scribble. Each one is saved twice: once as you saw it on screen, and once as just the drawing on its own - the version worth printing for the fridge. They are in the Files app, under BabyPaints.

NO STRINGS No ads. No in-app purchases. No accounts. No analytics, no tracking, no data leaves the device. No internet connection required, ever.

BabyPaints was written for one particular toddler and has been quietly maintained since.