The iPhone and iPad app

Pepper on your phone: the same conversation, rooms and apps as the web, plus the things only a phone does well — notifications you can act on, a widget, the share sheet, Siri and the Action button, and a live voice call one tap away.

Getting it and signing in

Install Pepper from the App Store; the same app runs on iPhone and iPad, and the Apple Watch app comes with it. Sign in with Google or Apple — tick the box agreeing to the terms first, and the two buttons wake up. It's the same account as the web, so your chat, rooms, notes and everything else are already there. Signing out is at the foot of the home screen.

Finding your way around

The home screen is the app's one starting point. At the top are Calendar, Notes and Apps. Below them, Messages lists your chat with Pepper first and then every room you're in, each with an unread mark when something new has arrived; rooms you've archived fold away under Archived at the bottom. The button beside Messages starts a new conversation with people. Settings is at the bottom of the screen.

The message box sits at the foot of your chat with Pepper. Open an app and it shrinks to Pepper's icon in the corner; tap the icon to bring it back and ask about what's on screen. Pepper knows which app you're looking at, so "mark the second one done" means the second one in front of you. The home screen, the Apps list and Settings don't have a message box.

• The grid button in the message box opens the app launcher, in the same order as on the web. See Apps for what each one does and which are drawn as proper iPhone screens.
• Type / to jump to an app or run a skill by name, the same commands as the web.
• The paperclip attaches a photo from your library, a new photo from the camera, or a file.
• The microphone starts a voice call (below).
• Press and hold a message to react with an emoji, reply to it, or see what else you can do with it.

Your chat refreshes by itself when you come back to the app; pull down to refresh it by hand. While Pepper is working you see what it's doing ("Checking your calendar…"), then the full reply, with lists, tables and links laid out as they are on the web. Earlier days aren't in the scroll — ask Pepper about them instead.

Rooms

Tap a room on the home screen to open it. A switcher along the top moves between the room's topics and shows which ones have something new; Room info shows its people, topics, apps and what's shared there. Everything a room can do is in Rooms — it works the same on the phone.

Notifications

The app asks to send notifications the first time you sign in. Say yes, and Pepper reaches you on the phone whenever something lands in your chat — a scheduled task's result, a reminder, a reply.

• A scheduled task's notification opens that task, not the main chat. Its Thread is the task's own conversation, and a reply there stays with the task. Runs shows each time it ran, what it said and where it went.
• A to-do reminder has Done and Snooze buttons right on the notification, so you can deal with it without opening the app.
• Want notifications that don't show what they say? Turn off notification previews in Settings → Notifications, and the alert only tells you something arrived. See Reminders and scheduled tasks for what a notification says and when.

Talking to Pepper

Tap the microphone in the message box and you're in a live voice call with Pepper: talk as you would on the phone, interrupt whenever you like, mute or hang up at the bottom. The call is saved to your chat, so what you said and what Pepper did are there afterwards.

You don't have to open the app first:

• The Action button (iPhone 15 Pro and later). In Settings → Action Button, choose Controls and pick Talk to Pepper, and pressing the button starts a call. After your first call, a card in your chat reminds you this exists.
• Control Center and the Lock Screen. Add the Talk to Pepper control from the control gallery.
• Siri. "Talk to Pepper" starts a call; "Open my calendar in Pepper" and "Show my Pepper notes" open those apps. The same three are in Spotlight and the Shortcuts app with nothing to set up.

The Brief widget

Add the Brief widget to your home screen or Lock Screen and your morning brief is there without opening anything: the day, the one line that shapes it, what's committed, what's coming, and what happened, with smaller sizes showing the top of the same list. Tap the widget to open the full brief, or its microphone to start a call. There's nothing to configure — it's your brief.

Sharing into Pepper

In Safari, Photos, Files, Notes or any app with a share button, tap Share → Pepper and then Save. Text, links and documents become notes; photos and other files are saved to your Artifacts. You can share up to ten things at once, and the sheet tells you where they went ("Saved to Notes", "Saved to Files").

Travelling

When your phone's time zone changes, a banner asks whether to switch Pepper to the new zone. Switch moves your account over, so times in your chat, calendar and reminders follow you; Not now leaves everything as it is.

On iPad

The iPad gets a sidebar with the same home screen in it. On a wide screen it docks beside your conversation and collapses to a narrow rail when you want the room; on a narrower one it slides over and gets out of the way after you pick something. Open an app and it sits beside your conversation rather than replacing it, and you can hide the conversation to give the app the whole screen.

Your account

Settings → Account & security has the parts of your account that need extra care: your connected Google accounts and what each one may do, the email address Pepper writes to you at, and access tokens. Changes here ask you to confirm it's you first. Delete account is here too — with Face ID if you signed in with Apple, or by signing in with Google again. Settings → Blocked people lists the people you've blocked and lets you unblock them. See Permissions for what a connected account can and can't do.

Good to know

• To make or change a scheduled task, ask Pepper; the app shows your tasks and their runs.
• The watch app borrows your phone's sign-in, so sign in on the phone first. See Apple Watch.
• For every other way to reach Pepper — text message, email, WhatsApp, the web — see Ways to reach Pepper.

Things to try

• Talk to Pepper from your pocket. Set the Action button to Talk to Pepper and ask what's next on your day without unlocking anything.
  Needs the iPhone app.
• Save an article for later. In Safari, tap Share → Pepper → Save, then ask Pepper to summarize what you saved.
  Needs the iPhone app.
• Glance at your day. Add the Brief widget to your home screen and see your morning brief before you open a single app.
  Needs the iPhone app.
• Clear a reminder from the lock screen. When a to-do reminder arrives, tap Done on the notification itself.
  Needs the iPhone app.