Every change and fix in Hamdam 2.1
Hamdam 2.1 gives every new reader a free first week of Plus, adds Ferdowsi and Nezami to the poets, brings Yalda into Today, and lets you ask Hamdam about your own reflections. Here is everything that changed, area by area.
Your first week
- Every new install of Hamdam has all of Hamdam Plus for its first seven days, given by the app itself. There is no purchase, no free trial to start and nothing to cancel.
- On day seven, or the first time you open Hamdam after the week ends, Today shows what you used: the Plus features you opened most, then your reflections, Garden days and saved verses. The usual Plus offer follows, with "Not now" as an equal button.
- When the week ends Hamdam returns to the free tier and you keep everything you wrote.
- Deleting and reinstalling Hamdam does not start a second week, and moving the clock back does not extend the first.
- If you already use Hamdam, the welcome week does not apply to you. It begins only with a new setup in 2.1.
- On your second or third day, Today shows the morning riddle once, and opens the Garden's riddle so there is one record of your progress.
Seven poets
- Ferdowsi and Nezami join Hafez, Rumi, Saadi, Khayyam and Parvin Etesami. Each brings 100 couplets, so the verse library is now 700 verses, every Persian line taken from Ganjoor.
- Both are now in the daily verse, the whispers that come with a reflection, Roots, Mosha'ereh, the verse widget and the Apple Watch.
- A Shahnameh story library in Roots: 14 stories, each a short retelling with Ferdowsi's own couplets, linked from Norooz, Mehregan and Yalda. For readers with a Persian connection.
- If you chose the poets in English, Ferdowsi and Nezami come to you in English too, and never with Persian script.
- Ferdowsi and Nezami have portraits in Roots, and their poet pages join Saadi, Khayyam and Parvin in the Plus poet deep dives.
- Mosha'ereh now draws on all seven poets, with a new Game Center achievement, All Seven Voices, for answering with a bayt from each. All Five Voices still asks for the original five.
- The Persian of every verse now uses the Persian letters ye and ke, never the Arabic ones.
- The English of 162 verses no longer carries long dashes.
Yalda and Persian moments
- In the week of Yalda, from six nights before to the morning after, a Yalda card sits under the verse on Today. In 2026 that is 15 to 22 December, with the night itself on 21 December.
- The card carries the night's headline, a line that suits the hemisphere you live in, a Yalda Faal of Hafez, a link to gather your family in Roots when you have one, and a greeting card to share.
- The link hamdam://yalda opens the Yalda Faal over Today.
- Yalda is for readers with a Persian connection. Readers without one see nothing Persian for it: no card, no Faal.
- Sadeh joins the Roots moments, on 10 Bahman, for readers with an Iranian or Tajik heritage. Nezami Day joins the observances on 21 Esfand.
Ask Hamdam
- Ask Hamdam answers questions you type about your reflections, your journal and your family's stories, using only what you have kept in Hamdam. It is part of Hamdam Plus and is open during the welcome week. Find it in Your Hamdam.
- In English it answers with Apple Intelligence, on iPhones that have it, on the device.
- In Farsi it uses Gemma 3 4B, a model of about 2 GB that you download from Apple only when you tap Download, and that then runs on your iPhone. The download cannot be limited to Wi-Fi, so check your data plan first. If your iPhone is not quick enough, or you have not downloaded it, Ask Hamdam shows matching entries instead of an answer.
- Every sentence in an answer carries a quiet label: from your entries, a pattern, a suggestion, or Hamdam's own words. Sources are numbered and open the original entry, and How I know this lists every fact behind an answer.
- Patterns in your week, such as sleep, movement, busy days or the people who come up, are counted by Hamdam itself, not guessed by the model, and a sentence whose numbers or names are not backed by a source is dropped.
- Suggestions come with one tap into the coaches' player, the Garden's planting sheet, the reflection writer, a verse or a person in Roots.
- A question about a medical, legal or money decision gets who to ask and what to ask them, never advice. If your words sound like you are struggling, care comes first.
- What Hamdam knows about you lists the lines Ask Hamdam remembers. You can edit or forget any of them, anything inferred is labelled, and the memory stays out of your iCloud backup unless you turn that on.
- Ask Hamdam is typed only, and a reader who does not meet the poets gets no verses in its answers.
- About now shows the Gemma notice and links to Google's Gemma Terms of Use.
Hamdam Health
- The Garden's coaches area is now called Hamdam Health.
- The Move coach asks four questions you can skip: your goal, any pain, tight muscles and a comfortable level. It picks from 38 bodyweight exercises, never loads a painful area, never goes above your level, and offers three a day, two on a gentle day. Pain points you to a doctor or physiotherapist.
- The Mind and Sleep coaches gain 11 practices, picked from the day the coaches already read, including a 4, 7, 8 breath that the Watch carries too. The verse practice is for readers with a Persian connection.
- For Plus members, Hamdam reads your heart and sleep signals from Apple Health against your own usual of the last 30 days: heart rate variability, resting, walking and sleeping heart rate and how far it dips at night, breathing rate, sleep stages and regularity, heart rate recovery and cardio fitness.
- It needs about two weeks of readings to learn your usual, and says so until then. Cardio fitness and heart rate recovery learn from four readings in sixty days.
- The Mind coach reads your body as calm, a little strained or strained. The Sleep coach describes last night in plain words with one suggestion. Today shows at most one line of this.
- This is wellness, not diagnosis: Hamdam does not read ECG or rhythm data, and a change in breathing, sleep disturbances or wrist temperature points you to Apple Health's own alerts or a doctor.
- The Apple Health permission text now names every signal Hamdam reads. Everything it keeps stays on your devices.
- The coaches fall back to the sunrise and sunset for the city you picked when the weather has none.
Today
- Surprise me is a small button among Today's quick ideas. It opens one thing drawn only from what you may see: a verse if you read the poets, today's riddle, one of your own past reflections or family stories, or a reflection prompt.
- Today can bring back one memory: your family anniversary as before, or your own words from this date a week, a month, three or six months, or a year ago. It comes at most once a week, never beside a first-days card, never a reflection you deleted or set aside, and Memories on Today in Settings turns it off.
- The memory card links to See all your past reflections, which opens the Archive, behind its Plus gate.
- Where you live now is a city you pick by hand in Settings, About You, separate from your heritage. It is found through Apple Maps with no location permission and no GPS.
- The city stands in for weather when location is not allowed, gives Roots its time, season and sunrise for where you live, and sets the holidays Roots shows.
- In Full setup, the heritage screen has one link to it. Quick setup is unchanged.
- The observation under the verse now shows in full, in both languages, rather than stopping mid sentence.
Finding things
- Search now reaches across your reflections, the people and relationships in Roots, family stories, voice transcripts, wisdom, traditions and recipes, places and family dates. It opens from Reflections and from Roots.
- It reads Persian and English together, and results are grouped by kind, each opening its original.
- The index is built on your phone, kept only in memory, and never saved or synced.
- A free reader sees how many older reflections match, a count only, which opens the Archive's Plus offer.
- A family story now ranks above a body-only match when its title matches.
Siri, Spotlight and Apple Watch
- Siri and Spotlight can find your reflections, the people in Roots and verses, and you can ask Siri to open one, add to your journal, search your journal, or ask Hamdam a question (Plus). Siri works in English only.
- Reflections stay out of Spotlight until you say yes: Hamdam asks once in Reflections, and Let Siri and Spotlight find my reflections in Settings turns it on or off. Turning it off clears them, and deleting a reflection always removes it.
- Spotlight and Siri see a mood, a date and the first 60 characters of a line, never the whole reflection.
- If a recording on the Watch or in the phone's spoken reflection is interrupted, Hamdam offers Continue your recording and adds to it.
- Reflections and On This Day people on the Watch hand off to the phone, and the On This Day complication opens Roots.
- The Watch's settings show a status line: Plus or free, when it last synced, how many items are waiting and what the Watch can do. Waiting items now also send when Hamdam becomes active and when the network returns.
Family
- Ask an Elder lets you correct the transcript, with the phone's original kept, and review the facts it suggests. Facts, years and new people are never pre-ticked, you keep the story with its confirmed year, and you see who in the family can see it.
- A stopped recording is saved at once and offered back after a call or a crash, and the audio is kept even if a save is refused.
- Ask an Elder gains question collections beside the weekly question: seven for everyone and three more for readers with a Persian connection.
- Family invitations now explain what an invited relative can and cannot see, before you send them, and send a warm message of your own through the system share sheet.
- A relative who joins sees a first-step card, and new arrivals from other family members reach you in at most one evening notification a day.
Roots and Today
- Family on Today: when Roots has family in it, Today carries one small line from Roots each day, such as a message waiting, the time where a relative lives, or a birthday coming. It is free, it is on when you have family in Roots, and its switch is Family on Today in Your Hamdam, Content.
- After you save a reflection that mentions someone in Roots, Hamdam quietly offers to keep it with them. Kept reflections appear on that person's page and are never shared with your family. The most recent one is free, and the whole timeline is part of Hamdam Plus.
- Hamdam may suggest inviting someone after you add a living person to Roots, after you record an elder's answer, or on a birthday countdown. It asks at most once a week, and nothing is sent without your tap.
- Your year with family, part of Hamdam Plus, counts your year in Roots, and you choose which lines go on a card to share. Counts only, never a message, a story or a reflection.
- Ask Hamdam can tell you what you have written about someone, such as Mum, and finds the reflections you kept with them even where you called them something else.
Privacy and your data
- A new Privacy and your data page in Settings maps where Hamdam keeps things, lets you review who in your family can see what and revoke access, shows every control and permission with a link to the system setting, and gives deletion guidance.
- You can export your data as a zip: JSON, Markdown and your original audio, with a README in English and Farsi.
- Delete my reflections, letters, habits and favourites now reaches letters and habits too.
- A new Delete my Roots asks first, by your role: an owner deletes the family zone for everyone, a participant leaves and deletes only their own copy, and a solo reader deletes their own copy.
- Your Move coach answers and food preferences are kept out of device backups.
Sharing and the Faal
- Sharing a reflection to any app no longer needs Hamdam Plus. For readers who set up Hamdam in 2.1 it is on from the start; if you already use Hamdam it stays as you set it.
- The Faal of Hafez is unlimited for every reader who is offered it, on Today, in the Mind coach, with Siri and on the Watch. The three a day limit is gone.
- The Plus offer no longer lists unlimited Faal readings or reflection sharing, since both are free.
- The Yalda greeting card shares through the same formats and signs itself Hamdam in your language.
Words, dates and small fixes
- Gregorian months in Farsi now stand alone, such as ژانویه and مه, without the extra mark that made them look Arabic, on the date field, the birthday card and the screens that show Gregorian dates.
- Years in About You and the birthday sheet show in Persian digits in Farsi, and the Farsi Roots region strip shows Farsi holiday names and dates.
- The coach pages are labelled Hamdam Health, Body, Spirit or Mind, the Mind coach is named روان in Farsi like its tile, and the How it decides tab is now Rules.
- The Sleep coach header and its night card now read the same hours of sleep.
- The riddle card shows the whole riddle, and content no longer sits under the Done, search or clock controls on the coach pages and Roots.
- The welcome week summary has a close button, and the setup buttons are easier to read on the dawn colours.
- The Yalda share sheet matches the rest of Hamdam's sheets, and the portrait credit is in Farsi for Farsi readers.
- A Farsi reader sees a Shahnameh couplet in Persian only.
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