You bought Pro on your phone. Your child practices on a tablet. The tablet is a hand-me-down Android with no account signed in to it, or it is an iPad on a different Apple Account, and now the thing you paid for is on the wrong device.
One Spelling Stream Pro subscription covers your family's phones and tablets, whichever store you bought it from and whichever store the other device came from. Devices that can sign in do so. Most children's tablets cannot, and those join with an eight-digit code instead.
You generate that code in the Parent Center, under Activate Another Device. The app asks which device you are setting up, because a tablet that already has Pro needs something different from one that has none.
Which option to pick
Three rows sit under Activate Another Device. Two of them hand over Pro, and the third hands over your lists to a device that already has Pro.
- Activate Android Device or Activate Apple Device, for a phone or tablet with no Pro on it yet. Pick the row matching where that device gets its apps. Granting Pro this way switches Cloud Sync on at the same time, so one code finishes the job.
- Activate Cloud Sync, for a device that already has Pro but cannot sign in. This is the Apple case: an iPad already covered by your Family Sharing group has Pro and is only missing your word lists.
Either way it is one code, never two. If you are unsure which the tablet needs, check whether it already shows Pro. It does if Apple Family Sharing covers it, and it does not if it came from Google Play on someone else's login.
Signing in is still the simplest route where it works. Open the Parent Center on the second device and sign in to Cloud Sync with the same Apple or Google account, and it picks up Pro and your lists directly. Codes exist because a child's tablet usually has no adult account on it, and putting yours there means putting your email, your purchases and your password on a device a seven-year-old carries around.
Connecting a device with a code
- On the device that already has Pro, open the Parent Center and pass the parent lock.
- Tap Activate Another Device, then pick the row that matches what you are setting up: Activate Android Device, Activate Apple Device, or Activate Cloud Sync.
- Enter your parent PIN. An eight-digit code appears.
- On the new phone or tablet, install Spelling Stream, open the Parent Center, and tap Activate This Device.
- Type the eight digits. The device joins your account and pulls down your word lists, profiles, stars and stickers. If it did not already have Pro, Pro switches on too.
A code lasts five minutes and connects one device. Adding a second tablet means generating a second code. The short life is on purpose. A code opens your family's account, and a key like that should stop working quickly. Our servers hold only a one-way hash of it, never the digits, so nobody can read a code back out later.
iPhone and Android on the same subscription
Your subscription follows your account, not the store you bought it in. Buy Pro on the App Store and share it to an Android tablet. Buy it on Google Play and share it to an iPad. Both directions work. A household running one of each is the ordinary case.
Android households feel this more than Apple ones do. Google Play Family Library has never shared subscriptions, for any app on the store, so on Android a family group was never going to solve this. Signing in or typing a code is how one subscription reaches every device.
Apple Family Sharing spreads a subscription across an Apple family group, and Spelling Stream supports it. It carries the subscription only. Your word lists, profiles and progress live in your account, and a child's iPad has no way to sign in to that account on its own. Family Sharing leaves that iPad holding Pro and an empty list, which is the gap the Activate Cloud Sync code fills.
What travels, and what stays put
| Syncs across your devices | Stays on the device it was made on |
|---|---|
|
Spelling lists and words Child profiles and their progress Stars, stickers, themes and rewards Pro itself |
Your recordings of the words in your own voice Photos of spelling sheets Your parent PIN and Face ID settings |
The right-hand column is deliberate. Voice recordings count as biometric data under the children's privacy rules, and a photo of a school sheet carries your child's name and their teacher's. Both stay on the device that made them, so whatever happens to an account cannot expose either one. If you want your voice reading the words on the tablet too, record them on the tablet.
Signing out no longer empties the device
Signing out of Cloud Sync leaves this device's lists, stars and stickers exactly where they are. They sit on the device and sync again when you sign back in. Earlier versions wiped them on sign-out, which caught a lot of parents out. Current versions leave everything alone.
What happens if Pro lapses
If the subscription ends, Cloud Sync pauses on every connected device and your cloud data is held for 30 days. Resubscribe inside that window and lists, profiles, stars and progress come back automatically. Data already on each device is untouched either way. The free version keeps working, with one list of up to ten words and all nine games.
Keep codes inside your household
An activation code hands over access to your family's account: your word lists, your children's profiles, your progress. Give one to someone outside your household and you have handed over all of it, the subscription included. Pro is licensed for a single household, and codes exist for the tablet in your kitchen.