Documentation

1Talking with the board

Tap any tile to hear it spoken out loud. Switch between topics — Core Words, People, Feelings, and so on — using the row of tabs along the top, or swipe the board itself sideways. Swiping past the last category wraps around to the first, and swiping back past the first wraps around to the last, so navigation keeps going in either direction.

The board is plain tap-to-speak with no hidden menus, so it stays safe and predictable during everyday use.

2Sentence Builder mode

Turn on Sentence Builder Mode in Settings and tapping a tile adds it to a strip above the categories instead of speaking right away. Tap the checkmark to speak the whole sentence at once. A "Sentence Words" category appears alongside the others, holding connector words like What, Where, and Can.

A tile with a recorded voice plays that recording inside the sentence, and the words around it are still spoken together as one phrase — only a recording breaks the phrase.

• Once the strip is empty, the checkmark becomes a repeat button that re-speaks the last sentence with one tap.
• Suggest Next Word shows up to four likely next tiles below the strip, learned entirely on-device from words that have actually been used together before. It starts empty and improves with use — nothing is pre-loaded from anywhere else.

3Quick Actions & Recently Used

Two optional shortcuts, turned on in Settings under Quick Access:

• Show Quick Actions Bar keeps a row of go-to tiles (like Yes, No, or Stop) visible along the bottom of the screen no matter which category is showing.
• Show Recently Used Tab adds a tab, pinned first, holding the last several tiles that were tapped from any category — handy for quickly repeating something just said.

Both update automatically as the board is used.

4Type to Speak

For someone who can spell what they want to say, the app can offer a keyboard instead of tiles. Turn on Type to Speak in Settings under Interaction Mode, and a keyboard button appears just above the caregiver gear.

• Typing something and pressing Speak says it in this profile's voice. The words stay in the box afterwards, so pressing Speak again is how you repeat yourself.
• The bookmark button saves what's in the box as a phrase. Saved phrases sit above the keyboard and speak with one tap — and typing a few letters brings up any saved phrase that matches, so "bath" can fetch a whole sentence.
• Anything said this session sits under Just said and can be said again. It is never written to the device: close the app and it's gone. Only phrases saved on purpose are kept.
• Hide the Picture Board makes this the whole app for that profile — no tiles, no categories. For someone who reads and writes, especially an adult who lost speech, a board of picture symbols is usually the wrong tool. Caregiver settings stay reachable from the gear in the top corner.

5Showing a message in big text

Speech doesn't always land. In a loud room, at a drive-through window, or with a listener who is hard of hearing, the message can be handed over to be read instead of heard.

From Type to Speak, the expand button beside Speak puts the typed message across the whole screen, set as large as it will fit. Turn the device sideways for more width. Tap anywhere to close.

6Entering Caregiver Mode

Everything below this point — adding tiles, changing settings — lives behind the small gear icon in the corner of the main screen. Tapping it opens Caregiver, with four choices: the in-app guide, Edit Board, Settings, and Credits & About.

The PIN is optional. Skip it when the app first runs and the gear opens straight through; set one if a curious tapper shares the device. One PIN covers the whole device.

Setting a PIN also asks for a question only you would know the answer to. If the PIN is ever forgotten, Forgot PIN? under the keypad takes that answer, clears the PIN so you can set a new one, and leaves every tile, picture and recording exactly where it was — there is no wiping the board to get back in.

7Adding & editing tiles

From Edit Board, tap Add Tile under any category (or under Quick Actions to add a quick-access tile). Give it a label, and optionally a different phrase for it to actually say out loud — a tile could display "Mom" while speaking "I want Mom."

For the picture, tap Choose Image for five options:

1. Take a photo
2. Pick one from your photo library
3. Paste an image URL
4. Search a symbol library
5. Skip the picture, and let the word stand alone

Beside it, Copy from Existing Tile starts from a tile you already have and brings all of it — the picture, the words and the recorded voice — replacing whatever is on the tile you are editing. It is a copy with its own files, so changing or deleting it never touches the tile it came from.

Symbol search pulls from dozens of free picture-symbol libraries at once, including ARASAAC. Choose which libraries are searched from Symbol Libraries to Search in Settings. Tap an existing tile to edit it, its trash icon to delete it, or press and drag its row to reorder it within the category.

8Recording a real voice

Any tile can speak in a recorded voice instead of the synthetic one. Open the tile and tap Record a Voice. Useful when the built-in voice mangles a name, or when hearing a familiar person say the word matters more than a neutral one.

• The recording plays instead of the device voice whenever that tile is tapped — on its own, and inside a sentence.
• Stop ends the recording. Tapping Save while still recording also keeps it, so a recording cannot be lost by saving the tile too early.
• Recordings are stored on the device, travel with an exported backup, and are deleted with the tile or the profile.
• A tile can always be returned to the built-in voice by removing its recording.

9Finding a word on the board

A board grows quickly, and the starter board alone is around ninety tiles. The search box at the top of Edit Board finds a tile by typing part of it, so nothing has to be hunted for by scrolling.

It matches both the label on the tile and what the tile says out loud, so searching “juice” finds a tile labelled “Drink” that says “I want juice”. Each result shows the category it belongs to, and tapping it opens the same editor as usual. Clearing the box brings back the normal category-by-category view.

10Categories

Tap Category at the bottom of Edit Board to add a new topic with its own name and color. Use the "⋯" menu next to any category to rename it, change its color, or delete it — deleting a category also deletes every tile inside it, so it always asks first. Press and drag a category's row to reorder categories themselves; that order controls both the tab order and the swipe order on the main screen.

11Voice & display settings

Pick a voice and adjust how fast or high it sounds, then tap Test Voice to hear it before committing. Other controls worth knowing:

• Language sets which language the board speaks and which language symbol search looks in — English and Spanish so far, each with its own translated starter board. Changing it never rewrites a board that has already been built: a Spanish board comes from adding a profile in Spanish, or from Reset to Defaults once the language is set. If the device has no voice installed for the language, the app says so rather than reading the words in the wrong accent.
• App Language is separate, and sets the language of Settings, the guide and Edit Board. It follows the device unless you change it — so a phone already in Spanish gets a Spanish app without anyone hunting for a setting. It is separate from the board's language on purpose: an English-speaking therapist may be setting up a Spanish board.
• Spanish is a beta. The wording was written carefully and is consistent, but no native speaker has reviewed it yet, so the app says so once when you pick it. Corrections to hbarnett@malachispeaks.com are genuinely the fastest way it improves.
• Repeat-Tap Delay adds an extra pause before the same tile can be tapped again right after it finishes speaking — useful if repeated taps tend to happen by accident. Leave it blank to turn that off. Tapping a different tile always interrupts and speaks immediately, regardless of this setting.
• Grid Size controls how many tiles fit per row.
• Default Starting Tab chooses which page shows first when the app opens.
• Reset to Defaults wipes custom categories and tiles and restores the original starter board — export a backup first if you might want them back.

12Offline picture symbols

Boards get built where the person actually is — a waiting room, a car, a school hallway — which is exactly where the signal is worst. Offline Symbols in Settings downloads every ARASAAC picture symbol once, after which searching for a picture needs no connection at all.

• About 106 MB, over 13,000 symbols. Best done on Wi-Fi.
• Entirely optional. Without it, symbol search works exactly as before, online.
• Once it has started you can leave the screen and carry on using the board — it keeps downloading.
• A download can be stopped partway and picked up later without starting over.
• Symbols on the device appear the instant you search, ahead of any online results.
• Searching works in the board's language. The one download carries both English and Spanish words, because the pictures themselves have no language — the drawing of water is the same drawing whether you search "water" or "agua".
• They can be removed at any time to reclaim the space. Pictures already placed on tiles are copies and stay put.

Picture symbols by ARASAAC (arasaac.org), author Sergio Palao, owned by the Government of Aragón (Spain), licensed CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.

13Profiles

One device can hold a board for more than one person. Turn on Multiple Profiles in Settings under Profiles. It's off by default, and a device serving one person never has to think about it.

• Each profile keeps its own categories, tiles, voice, grid size, quick actions, usage log, and saved phrases. Nothing crosses between them.
• The caregiver PIN and the automatic backup schedule are shared by the whole device.
• Adding a profile can start from the standard starter board, or copy a board already set up. A copy brings the tiles and settings across, but not the other person's usage history — that describes how they communicate, not how the board is arranged.
• Switching lives here, behind the PIN, so the person using the app can't switch away from their own words.
• Deleting a profile removes its board and its photos for good. The profile in use can't be deleted — switch to another one first.

14Word usage reports

Settings → Word Usage shows which tiles actually get tapped: an all-time running total for each one, plus 7-day and 30-day trends computed per word — not just a board-wide total — so you can see whether a specific target word is trending up or down. A Never Used list surfaces candidates to teach directly or swap out.

Tap the export icon to share a CSV with every tile's label, category, all-time count, 7-day count, 30-day count, and last-tapped date — built for handing off as documentation for an IEP meeting. Reset Usage Log clears everything and starts fresh.

15Backup & Restore

One screen in Settings covers moving a board on or off the device:

• Export Board / Import Board — save or load a full board (categories, tiles, custom photos) as a file, for moving to a new device. Importing always asks to confirm first, since it replaces what's currently on the device.
• Backup Schedule — Off, Daily, Weekly, or Monthly. When set, the app writes a timestamped backup on its own whenever it's opened or brought back to the foreground, roughly on that schedule — a safety net separate from manual export.
• Keep Last — how many automatic backups to retain (3, 5, 10, or 20) before older ones are quietly deleted.
• Saved Backups lists what's been kept. Each one can be put back with its restore button, or shared or deleted individually. Restoring names the point it goes back to, and asks first — it replaces the board as it is now.
• Export for Another App — writes the board in Open Board Format (.obz), the AAC interoperability standard, so it can be opened by a different app entirely. It carries the board, pictures, and recordings, but not usage history or saved phrases — the backup file above is still the one that restores everything.

Importing reads the file to work out what it is, so the same Import Board button takes either a Malachi Speaks backup or an .obf/.obz file from another AAC app. A board arriving from elsewhere is always added as a new profile rather than replacing the one in use.

16Printing a board

Batteries die, devices get left at school, and no tablet goes in the pool. Print Board in Settings produces a PDF laid out to match the screen — same categories, same order, same number of columns — so a word sits where the person already reaches for it.

• One page per category, with Quick Actions first, continuing onto more pages when a category is large.
• Tiles print as picture plus word; a tile with no picture prints the word on its own.
• From the print dialog the PDF can also be saved or shared, which is what most speech therapists ask for.

17Privacy & data