The Hearth Display Finally Moved Its 'Helper' Where It Belongs

The Hearth Helper offered a way for Hearth Display users to text or email customer service to upload a list of events on their behalf, like bulk uploading a school calendar worth of events. But as of March 19, the feature has also been integrated into the Hearth mobile app.

Hearth Display, the modern family management tool that functions as a shared digital calendar and to-do list tracker, used to include a feature called "Hearth Helper" directly in the 27-inch tablet. When I reviewed the Hearth Display to see if the device was worth the hype (and the $699 price tag, often on sale for $599), I found the feature odd. You might assume that the "Helper" would be a direct line to customer service support, but pressing the "Helper" option only offered a pop-up giving users a phone number and email address if they wanted AI to bulk upload a list of events. You could send the Helper a picture of your kid's school calendar, for example, and the AI would import the data onto your Hearth calendar. I thought little of the feature since then—personally, the last thing I would want is for AI to bulk upload something like a school calendar and clog my calendar—but when Hearth moved the feature into the mobile app, I became curious again.

Where to find Hearth Helper in the mobile app

To use the Hearth Helper in the mobile app, start by updating the Hearth app on your device. You may not even be able to use your Hearth app without having this latest update: When I opened the app, a full-screen notification prompted me to update to the latest version. It was the first time I was ever forced to update the app; in the past, I manually updated the app for bug fixes and newer features, like the ability to update Routines directly from my phone or to add custom to-do lists.

Credit: Jordan Calhoun / Lifehacker

After updating the app, the Hearth Helper can be found as a chat box icon on the top-right of the screen, next to the notification bell. It's an intuitive spot for a "Helper" feature, and much better placed than before: Prior to this latest update, Hearth Helper had a prominent tab on the Hearth Display right next to the Calendar, Lists, and Routines menus. Since the update, my Hearth Display tablet pushed a pop-up announcement that read, "Hearth Helper has moved!" with an explanation that their AI calendar companion now lives on the app.

Credit: Jordan Calhoun / Lifehacker

How to use Hearth Helper

Testing the new mobile-based Hearth Helper was straightforward enough: The AI prompt gives examples of the types of wording you can use to have calendar events created for you, or you can simply press the camera icon to take a picture of a schedule or upload one that you already have saved on your phone. I was mostly curious how long it would take to process a request. Here's how the Hearth Helper looks when you click the icon on the mobile app:

Credit: Jordan Calhoun / Lifehacker

When I asked Hearth Helper to create a basic appointment, it took under a minute for the AI to send me a "Pending Event" for approval. It comes with the option to "Accept All" or "Reject All" for users who submitted multiple events, or a basic thumbs up or thumbs down for each pending event.

Credit: Jordan Calhoun / Lifehacker

To give it a more complicated task, I downloaded a PDF of the New York City Department of Education 2024-2025 School Year Calendar to see how long it would take to upload a full calendar. Then I realized the Hearth Helper can't upload PDFs. I took a picture of my screen instead—not a screenshot, but a lazy, grainy photo of my laptop screen that I took from my phone camera—which included eight events across two months. Surprisingly, it still took under a minute for the events to process, and the AI sent me a list of Pending Events that were formatted much better than I expected. Of course, though, if I actually wanted a full calendar of events then I would need to send multiple pictures to span the year.

There are a few notable limitations of the Hearth Helper though, which include:

• You can't upload Lists (like to-do or grocery lists) or Routines with the Hearth Helper.

• You need to stick with basic pictures: Hearth Helper can't upload from URLs, Word docs, Google sheets, or other formats like those.

• Hearth Helper is fully run by AI. If you need help with something from a real person, you should contact support@hearthdisplay.com.

Is using Hearth Helper worth it?

Candidly, I never expected to use the Hearth Helper for its intended purpose. One of the problems that I mention in my initial review is that I feel the premise of the Hearth Helper is pretty shaky. Call me old fashioned, but I want a "helper" to answer my customer service questions, preferably by a human, instead of bulk uploading events that I could do myself in my preferred formats. I tend to be nit-picky about calendar organization and event formats, and I assume most people who use an expensive family management device to run their home are too. But looking at these results from the Hearth Helper bulk uploader, I may have changed my mind for two reasons.

Credit: Jordan Calhoun / Lifehacker

First, the events are accurate and consistently formatted; and second, the list of imported events are clickable and easy to manually edit or outright reject. My main concern was uploading an overwhelming list of poorly formatted clutter into my calendar, but that seems like less of a concern than I thought: I can just bulk upload calendars that serve as optional event suggestions that I can edit, thumbs up to approve, or thumbs down to reject. Overall, it does feel like this latest update to the Hearth Display will mean faster event management and fewer manual steps, and the Hearth Helper will be useful at back-to-school time, during planning for a new year, or whenever my kids join a new extracurricular or club.