How Peeka works.

The whole loop

1. 01

   Point

   Find something with a heartbeat. Your own cat, next door’s dog, a magpie eyeing you from the fence.

2. 02

   Tap

   One tap. No modes, no settings, no account in the way — the free three a day never needs one.

3. 03

   They speak

   Two or three sentences in their voice, built from what is actually in the frame — the ears, the eyes, where they’re standing.

Any language

It speaks your language.

Peeka reads whatever language your phone is set to and replies in it — no picker, no setting, nothing to turn on. The voice is translated, not just the words: it stays as warm and as dry in Japanese or Thai as it is in English. Share cards are typeset for it too, including scripts that don’t put spaces between words.

Name them

It remembers who they are.

Tap Recognise them? Name them under any reading and that animal stops being a stranger. Peeka keeps what it noticed about them — the coat, the ears, the way they sit — and every later reading is written by something that has met them before.

How it knows it’s them.

Nothing is scanned, and no face is matched against a database. When you name an animal, Peeka keeps what it actually noticed about them — the coat, the markings, the build — and reads every later photo against those notes. The question is narrow: is there anything here that contradicts them? A coat that’s the wrong colour, markings that don’t line up, a plainly different animal. If there isn’t, it’s them. Curled up, in the dark, half behind a chair — that isn’t a contradiction, it’s just a hard photo, and they still count as themselves.

That’s the check that stops the second animal in the house being quietly written into the first one’s story. It runs on Plus and Pro.

After 5 peeks, it can write them down.

Peek at the same animal 5 times and Peeka can write a short profile of them — who they are, built only from what it has actually seen across those encounters. Not a horoscope: if it says they’ve claimed the warm end of the couch, it’s because it kept finding them there. Another 5 peeks and you can have it written again, from more.

And everything they’ve said, in one place.

Open a named animal and their whole record is there — every line since the peek that named them, newest first, each with the date and, if you tap it, what Peeka saw that day. It starts there because until you name them Peeka has no one to keep it for. Free reads back 6 lines, Plus 32, Pro 84. The lines themselves stay on your phone either way, so the rest of the story is waiting rather than gone. One tap turns the profile and their photo into a card you can share.

If it gets them wrong, say so.

Under any reading you can correct the animal — tap the right one and Peeka reads the photo again knowing what it’s looking at. If you’ve named them, the correction sticks to them: their species and what Peeka noticed are rewritten too, so it doesn’t keep making the same mistake. Worth doing the moment you spot it — a dark photo, or one taken from behind, is genuinely hard, and what’s stored when you name an animal is what every later reading is compared against.

The byline under each line tells you which meeting you’re on. Free keeps 3 named animals, Plus 6, Pro 12. Named or not, nothing is uploaded anywhere it doesn’t need to be — the photo is used for the reading and then it’s yours.

The Library

100 species, and none of them are free.

Every tile starts as a silhouette. It only fills in when you photograph that animal — there are no samples, no demo photos, no way to unlock a tile except by actually meeting one. Cats and dogs are the easy end. Kookaburra, capybara and moose are not.

It goes a level below species.

A dog is rarely just a dog. Peeka names the breed too — a Labrador, a Persian, a kelpie — and it does that on every plan. It also stops when it can’t see enough: a sleeping dog curled nose-to-tail is hiding the exact shape a breed is read from, so you get its build and its coat and no breed at all. That is deliberate. A confident wrong breed is worse than none.

On Plus and Pro the breed also changes how they sound. A retriever standing at the water’s edge is not thinking what a lapdog on a tiled floor is thinking, and the writing knows the difference — without ever naming the breed in the line.

See all 100, and what each one is thinking →

Badges

Proof you went outside.

Filling the Library earns badges, by count and by region. They arrive on their own — there is nothing to opt into and nothing to buy.

• Getting StartedThe bare minimum, exceeded.
• SeasonedHalfway through the field guide. Nobody made you do this.
• Wild SightingThe couch doesn’t count anymore.
• Field NaturalistEvery wild tile filled. Actually impressive.

Sharing

One tap turns it into a card.

Share on any reading and Peeka draws a card — your photo, what they said, and their name if you’ve given them one — then hands it straight to your phone’s share sheet. Free cards carry a small Peeka mark; Plus and Pro drop it.

Read aloud

Or let your phone read it to you.

Any paid peek — on a plan, or paid for with a peek pack — carries a Read aloud button under the writing. It uses the voice your phone already has, in the language it’s already set to, so there’s nothing to download and nothing to choose. It only ever starts when you tap it — never on its own. Useful with a lead in one hand, or for a passenger, or for a reader who is still learning to read.

The plans

What each plan gives you.

The free tier is the whole app, not a trailer — no account, no card, no time limit. Paying raises the daily count and sharpens the parts that depend on Peeka looking harder.

Annual plans trade a lower daily count for the cheaper year — 5 a day on Plus, 8 on Pro. Every plan keeps the same one-tap app; nothing is held back behind a mode or a menu.

History is a count, not a clock — nothing disappears on a timer. Fill your allowance every day and that works out at about 2 days on Free, 4 on Plus — a long weekend — and 7 on Pro, a full week. Peek less than the daily limit and they stretch further.

Peek packs sit outside all of this. They’re a one-off top-up that works on any plan — the free one too — and they never expire; you only spend them once the day’s peeks are gone. Buying a pack doesn’t change the numbers above.

Pro is the only plan that reads at the closest setting: the same photo, looked at harder, and more often noticing the thing you hadn’t. It keeps the longest memory to go with it — and it is the same app, read more carefully, not a different one.