Comment Coach on iPhone & iPad

What “install” really means

When you add Comment Coach to your Home Screen, iOS does not download an app. It creates a shortcut that opens the website full screen, without the Safari address bar, and gives it a private storage area of its own.

That storage area is the important part, and it has two consequences that surprise people:

The Home Screen app and Safari are separate. Signing in inside Safari does not sign you in inside the Home Screen version, and the other way around. You will sign in once in each.
Deleting the icon deletes the data. Removing the Home Screen icon clears that private storage — your sign-in, and anything the app had saved on the device.

Your account is never at risk. Your comments, subjects, and settings live on our servers, tied to your account. Everything in this guide is about what your device holds on to — and signing back in restores it.

Should you install it?

For most people on iPhone, yes. Here is the honest trade.

What you gain

Full screen — no address bar, no tab strip. More room for the outliner and for reading study material.
Its own icon — one tap from the Home Screen instead of hunting through Safari tabs.
Better offline behavior — the app shell is stored on your device, so it opens even with no signal, and work you do offline queues up and syncs when you're back.
It stays put — Safari tabs get closed by accident, or reshuffled. The icon doesn't.

What you give up

A second sign-in — the Home Screen version starts logged out the first time, even if Safari is logged in.
No shared Safari session — passwords still autofill from iCloud Keychain, but the login itself doesn't carry over.
iOS can clear it. This is the real one, and it's covered next.

Installing it

Open comment.coach in Safari

It has to be Safari. Chrome, Firefox, and Edge on iPhone can't add a working Home Screen app — that's an iOS restriction, not ours.

Share → Add to Home Screen

Tap the Share button (the square with an arrow, at the bottom of the screen), scroll down the list, and choose Add to Home Screen. Confirm with Add.

On iPad the Share button is at the top right.

Open the new icon and sign in

Expect to be asked to sign in, even though Safari already knows you. That's the separate storage area doing its job. Sign in once here and it will remember you.

How iOS handles your data

iOS is deliberately strict with websites, including ones you've added to your Home Screen. It treats their saved data as something it may clear to protect your privacy or reclaim space. Three different things are stored, and they carry very different risk:

Your account — on our servers. Comments, subjects, outlines, settings, group sessions. Safe. Nothing iOS does can touch it. Sign in on any device and it's all there.
Your sign-in — on the device. A small token proving it's you. iOS can clear it. Losing it means signing in again, and nothing more.
Your on-device library — on the device. Publications and Bibles you imported yourself, plus any work queued up while you were offline. iOS can clear this too, and it is the only category worth actively protecting.

If you have imported publications into your Resource Library, make a backup. See Library Transfer — it also lets you move your library to another device.

Why it sometimes asks you to sign in again

A real installed app remembers your login essentially forever, because iOS gives it the Keychain. A Home Screen web app doesn't get the Keychain — its login is ordinary website data. So iOS will occasionally clear it. The usual causes:

An iOS update. Major system updates have historically reset the storage of Home Screen web apps.
Low storage. When your iPhone is nearly full, iOS clears website data first.
You cleared Safari data. Settings → Safari → Clear History and Website Data clears this too.
You removed and re-added the icon. That's a clean slate by design.
A long absence. Go many months without opening it and the sign-in eventually expires on its own.

What is not a cause: us releasing an update. Comment Coach updates the way a website does — you just get the new version next time you open it. Our updates don't sign you out, and they don't clear anything on your device. If a sign-in prompt happens to land right after an update, the timing is a coincidence.

Being asked to sign in is inconvenient, not dangerous. It never means data was lost from your account.

Making it stick

Save your password to iCloud Keychain. Then signing back in is a Face ID glance rather than a chore. This is the single most useful thing you can do.
Open it regularly. Regular use keeps your sign-in fresh indefinitely.
Keep some free storage. An iPhone running at nearly full is the most common reason website data gets cleared.
Back up an imported library. Anything you imported yourself lives only on that device until you back it up.
Don't delete the icon to “refresh” the app. It updates on its own. Deleting it throws away your on-device data for no benefit.

Common questions

Will I lose my comments if iOS clears the app's data?

No. Your comments are saved to your account on our servers. Sign back in and they're all there. The only exception is work you did while offline that hadn't synced yet — open the app on a good connection before deleting anything.

Why not just make a real App Store app?

It's on the roadmap for consideration. The web version means one codebase that works identically on iPhone, Android, laptop, and desktop, and updates the moment we ship — no review queue, no waiting for people to update. The Home Screen trade-offs on this page are the cost of that.

Can I use it without installing it?

Yes, entirely. Everything works in Safari as a normal website. Installing only changes how it looks and how reliably it opens offline.

Do I need to install it on every device?

Only if you want the Home Screen icon on each. Your account syncs across all of them either way. An imported Resource Library does not sync automatically — use Library Transfer for that.

Is Android different?

Yes, and easier. Chrome on Android offers to install the app for you, shares its session with the browser, and is far less aggressive about clearing data. Most of this page is specific to iOS.

If something looks broken

Blank or dark screen — close the app fully (swipe up from the App Switcher) and reopen. This is almost always a half-applied update.
Still stuck — the Troubleshooting page walks through clearing stale data on iOS, step by step.
Before you delete the icon — that's the last resort, not the first. It clears your on-device library along with everything else. Back up first.