01
open the app
it’s a phone app — iPhone and Android. no account, no “verify your email.” open it and start.
GOOD GRIEF
R · I · P
private. yours. coming this year.
get your affairs in order before the universe does it for you.
a quiet little app for the parts of life we keep meaning to sort out — wills, wishes, passwords, the photos you’d want shown, the songs you’d want played, and the why. it lives on your phone. never anyone else’s.
not ready to decide? just keep me posted.
not a “coming soon” page — the whole app is running in your browser right now, Margaret’s sample plan already loaded. poke around, export a real PDF, then decide.
no subscription required. no cloud you didn’t ask for. no “we’d love to share your data with our 487 partners.”
we’re all going to die. probably not today.
probably not for a long time. but the universe is undefeated, and somewhere between now and then there’s a person — a partner, a kid, a friend, an executor — who has to work out what you wanted.
most apps for this are either all paperwork or all pan-flutes — “glum glum glum,” as our founder zinta puts it. good grief is neither. it’s a tool with a sense of humour and a job to do. you open it, fill in the bits that matter to you, close it again, go live your life. and when you’re gone, the people you love have answers instead of guesses.
no one should have to guess your netflix password while planning your funeral.
- built — done
- final testing — in progress
- store review
- on the stores
last updated 7 july — in final testing. next up: store review. no dates we’d have to apologise for.
four steps. no ceremony — that part comes later.
how it works
02
fill in what matters
fifty-odd sections, each one a bite-size piece. do the ones that matter to you, skip the rest. there’s no scolding progress bar.
03
save it, back it up.
one file on your phone. when you want a copy elsewhere, export an encrypted backup (AES-256-GCM) — tuck it in a password manager, email it to your executor, print it for the safe. you decide.
04
update it once a year
we’ll nudge you gently. (zinta wanted “a little poke up the bum”. cooler heads — also zinta — settled on nudge.) either way, what you’ve written down beats what your family has now — which is nothing.
the actual app, not a promise
a quick look
actual screenshots, running on a phone — no mockups, no wishful thinking.
don’t take our word for any of this
the whole app, in your browser, right now.
Margaret’s sample plan is already in there — fifty-odd sections, filled in the way a real person’s would be. nothing is saved and nothing is sent; close the tab and it never happened.
while you’re in there, go open —
- her note to her granddaughter Lily: “marry kindness. the rest works itself out.”
- the guest list — and the one name she marked not to be let in
- Biscuit the cat’s care notes (the green dish, not the blue one)
then change something, hit export, and watch a real keepsake PDF build right there in the tab.
the real thing runs on a phone — this is the same app, wearing a browser.
recommended method: a glass of wine, the good playlist, one section at a time.
everything they’ll wish they’d asked you
what’s in it
the admin, and the tenderness — we kept room for both. fifty-odd sections in all; what’s below is a taste of each list, not the whole of it.
the practical stuff
so no one has to play detective with your bank.
- will & legal register
- bank accounts, pensions, debts
- crypto & digital assets
- subscriptions to cancel
- password hints — never the actual passwords
- trusted contacts
- …and more like it
the personal stuff
the things no form would ever think to ask.
- letters to specific people
- photos with captions
- music for the day — and why each song matters
- life moments timeline
- family recipes
- favourite things
- …and more like it
the ceremony stuff
your send-off, run the way you’d run it.
- burial / cremation wishes
- run sheet for the day
- guest list — and who is not to be admitted
- pallbearers, readings
- live stream setup
- letter to the celebrant
- …and more like it
the after stuff
the weeks after, already thought through.
- pet care plan — the fur babies are family
- charities & donations
- social media announcements
- the notification kit — who to tell, and the words to use
- grief support resources
- what to do if a death happens abroad
- …and more like it
two quiet helpers — and only two
you don’t have to start from a blank page
most of Good Grief is just you, a quiet field, and as much time as you want. but two moments are genuinely hard to start cold: writing an obituary, and seeing what you’ve left out. so there are exactly two helpers, for exactly those two moments — no sparkle for sparkle’s sake.
the obituary generator
a blank obituary field is a cruel thing to hand a grieving person — especially when that person is you. so if you’d like, Good Grief reads your profile and the story you’ve already started in your own words, and drafts a first obituary to push against. a starting point, never the last word: you edit every line, or throw it out and write your own. it won’t invent a feeling you didn’t put there.
a second pair of eyes
you can’t spot the gap in your own plan — that’s what makes it a gap. tap once and Good Grief reads a summary of what you’ve filled in and tells you, plainly, what’s still thin: the contact with no phone number, the wish you started and never finished. a gentle audit, never a scold.
this is the part where other apps show you a sunset.
we’d rather show you the paperwork.
what your family actually holds
meet margaret walsh.
she isn’t real. her paperwork is. the four documents below are the real output of the exports built into the app — open them, print them, show them to your executor. your own would look exactly like this.
full plan
cover page, life story, ceremony preferences, contacts, documents, budget, the works. several pages — the whole story.
open sample (opens in a new tab)
executor summary
the practical-only version. what an executor needs in the first forty-eight hours. no life story, no preferences — facts and contacts.
open sample (opens in a new tab)
order of service
the A5 ceremony booklet — speakers, readings, music moments, a short farewell in her own words. hand to a printer or print at home.
open sample (opens in a new tab)
wallet card
credit-card-sized, for your wallet. executor, doctor, next of kin, wishes. the thing first responders would actually find.
open sample (opens in a new tab)
same plan, ten keepsakes
the four documents above are only the start. each one can be set in ten typographic styles — editorial, memoriam, manuscript, keepsake, and six more — so the booklet in someone’s hands looks like the person it’s for, not like a form.
the samples are PDFs of a fictional plan — Margaret Walsh, retired teacher, Rivermouth. generated by the same code path that runs in the app. no real person’s data is shown.
morbid is leaving your family a locked laptop in the worst week of their lives. this is the opposite of that.
a note from the person building this
hello. I’m Zinta, and I’m building Good Grief — which is either brave or silly, depending on the week.
my husband Dave died in my arms, seven days after we were married. planning his funeral, I kept finding questions I wished I’d asked while I could — which songs mattered and why, which photos he’d have chosen, who he wouldn’t have wanted in the room. a friend said, offhand, “wouldn’t it be great if there was an app?” — and the idea never left me alone. the first developers I asked wanted seventy thousand dollars. the dream waited. it’s done waiting.
I didn’t want a grim insurance brochure, and I didn’t want soft pastels and whale music. I wanted the thing I wish someone had left me. so: no subscriptions that outlive you, no cloud nobody asked for, no “data partners”. your plan lives on your phone — and when it matters, it becomes paper your family can hold.
the app is built. I use it. the slow part now is the last round of testing, then the app stores’ queue — and I’d rather wait properly than ship badly. if this sounds like something your family needs, save a seat below. or just leave your email, and I’ll write when there’s something real.
— zinta
founding members
be first. we saved you a seat.
good grief is built. the app in those pictures is the real thing, running today — not a concept, not a render. we’re opening it first to a small group of founding members, at a price we’ll only ever offer once.
founders get lifetime access for $39 — one payment, on iPhone and Android, every feature, forever. no card today: leave your email and you’re on the founders list — first to know the day it lands, with the $39 founder price held for you.
(the planner itself will be free for everyone. the $39 is every unlock, for life — a fifth of what it’ll cost after launch.)
founding member
$39once
- lifetime access, iPhone & Android
- all features, no upsells, ever
- free updates for life
- founder credit in the app, if you’d like it
after launch
$199lifetime
- the same app, the same features
- or $40 a year, auto-renewing — cancel whenever
- (founding members pay a fifth of this.)
join the founders list
no payment now — just your email. you’ll be first to know when Good Grief is on the App Store and Google Play, with the founder price yours to claim.
the no-commitment option
or just keep me posted
not ready to commit? drop your email. we’ll write when there’s something real to show — typically a few times a year, never more. no marketing, no upsells, just shipping news.
you can’t spare them the grief. you can spare them the guessing.
we use your email for shipping news only. we don’t sell it, share it, or “leverage” it. one click and you’re out. privacy policy.
asked out loud so you don’t have to
questions you’d reasonably ask
Is it really finished, or is this a “coming soon” page?
it’s real, and it runs. the pictures above are screenshots of the actual app, not concept art. Good Grief is a phone app — iPhone and Android — in final testing now, landing on the App Store and Google Play this year. founding members get in the day it does.
Where does my data actually live?
your data lives in a single file on your phone — we never see it. when you want a copy elsewhere, you can export an encrypted backup to email to your executor, tuck in a password manager, or print on paper. it’s yours either way. there’s no cloud sync in v1, on purpose — sync that genuinely respects your privacy is hard, and we’d rather get the fundamentals right first.
Hang on — there’s AI in a death app?
only if you press the button, and only in two places. Good Grief can draft an obituary from what you’ve written, and it can read a summary of your plan and point out what you’ve forgotten. that’s the entire list. both are optional, both sit behind a button, and both run on your own Anthropic key — so the one time anything leaves your phone, it’s the words you chose to send, going to a company you’re paying directly, not to us. no key, no sending, no difference to the rest of the app. we didn’t sprinkle AI on this because it’s fashionable. we added exactly two bits, for the exact two moments a blank screen is hardest.
What if I die before you ship?
honestly: write your stuff down somewhere now. a Word document, a notebook, whatever. the biggest gift is having things written down at all. we’re trying to make that easier and more thorough, but the basic act of writing things down beats every app on earth, including ours. don’t wait for us.
Why “Good Grief”?
because the alternative names were either grim (“Final Wishes”, “End of Life Planner”) or saccharine (“Forever Yours”, “Legacy of Love”). good grief is what you say when something annoying happens, and planning for death is annoying. we want you to do it anyway.
Will my family actually use this when the time comes?
only if they know it exists. the app produces a one-page printable summary you can stick in your important-papers folder with the line “if I’m gone, look here.” that’s the bridge between a digital file and a real human at a hard moment.
Is it morbid to use this?
it’s the opposite of morbid. morbid is leaving your family to sort through your laptop in the worst week of their lives. this is responsibility. it’s a quiet act of love.
Will it make me cry?
sometimes, probably. zinta’s bar for this whole thing is the way she watched the gentle art of swedish death cleaning — crying and laughing at the same time. if a section stings, skip it and do an easy one; the app doesn’t mind. you’re not filing your taxes. you’re planning the last party you’ll ever throw.
Are the sample PDFs above what I’d actually get?
yes. the four samples are produced by the same code path that runs in the app, fed a fictional plan (Margaret Walsh, retired teacher, Rivermouth). the fictional bits are the names, dates, places, and contents — the layout, typography, page structure, and export options are exactly what you’d see when you click Export in your own copy. if anything looks off, that’s a bug we’d want to know about.