Common questions

QuipCast is a reflective e-paper picture frame that quietly cues a rotating mix of short, meaningful content throughout your day: the affirmations and habits you set, quotes and wit, quick lessons, factoids, and mantras, whatever you ask for. It pairs with a curated library of hundreds of thousands of quips and lets you bring your own. No wires once it's charged. No notifications. No glow.

From the Latin quippe, meaning an observation or indeed, a truth. The shortest modern definition: any compact piece of wisdom, wit, or fact worth a pause. We use it as an umbrella for 70+ distinct forms humans have invented to compress meaning, including aphorisms, koans, jokes, factoids, scripture, mottos, idioms, and more. See the taxonomy page for the full list.

QuipCast doesn't scroll. It doesn't reward swiping. It doesn't reward longer sessions or more taps. The frame refreshes on the cadence you set and otherwise just sits there. We tune to your taste, not to your dopamine. That's the whole posture.

People who underline books, screenshot passages, forward quotes to a group chat. The kind of person with a notebook somewhere of lines they wanted to remember but forgot to revisit. If you find yourself wishing you actually returned to the things that moved you, QuipCast is for you.

No. A notes app is for capture. QuipCast is for cueing. You can paste lines from your notes into your QuipCast library, and they'll start showing up on the frame alongside the curated content. The science behind this is called spaced repetition: short, recurring exposures are how language teachers, medical students, and memory champions actually retain things. QuipCast brings that rhythm into your room, on a passive frame on the wall.

The service that pairs your frame to a curated library of quips and casts them onto the screen on the cadence you choose. QuipCast LLC is the company.

The QuipCast frame, a 10" black-and-white reflective e-paper display. $299, built to order and ships within 45 days. United States only. The shop is public to look at; checkout uses a Founders Club code.

Any short piece of wisdom, wit, scripture, factoid, mantra, motto, or other compressed meaning that lands on the frame. See the question above on the Latin etymology.

The personalized rotation of quips lined up for your frame. The QuipQueue is generated from your wizard preferences, your loves and passes, your BYO library, and your photos. It refreshes on the cadence you choose.

Sending a quip to the frame, the way you cast something to a screen. Hence QuipCast.

A QuipCast member who curates an original channel of quips that others can follow. We're building creator tools so Quipsters can earn a share of subscription revenue. Premium subscribers will be the first to apply.

$299 for QuipCast Compass, one-time. Every Compass includes two months of Premium, delivered as a redemption code with the frame. See full pricing.

Three tiers:

• Free ($0 forever): a narrow public-domain library, refreshes once per week. Useful as a sampler.
• Pro ($3.99/mo or $39/yr): the full library of hundreds of thousands of quips, refresh as often as hourly, fine-grained personalization, bring your own quips (up to 100) and photos (up to 100).
• Premium ($6.99/mo or $69/yr): everything in Pro, plus refreshes as often as every 10 minutes, bring-your-own quips and photos at scale (up to 1,000 each), personal mantra builder, learning cue cards, and up to 3 frames per account (additional frames at $1/mo each).

Annual plans save 18% over monthly. Cancel any time.

Compass is built to order and ships within 45 days. If you have a Founders Club code you can order today. If not, join the list for the next codes. Every Compass includes two months of QuipCast Premium, delivered as a redemption code with the frame. United States only.

Yes, on the Premium tier (up to 3 frames per account included). Each frame can have its own personality: a family-safe kitchen frame, an edgier office frame, a meditative bedroom frame. Need more? Additional frames are $1/month each, easy to add and remove.

Not yet. Compass ships to the 50 United States and the District of Columbia only.

Three buttons along the bottom of the frame: Love, Pass, and Next. One press each, awake or asleep (any press wakes the frame):

• Love. The quip stays on screen (nothing visibly changes, on purpose), it lands in your Favorites, and we boost its author, source, and tags so more of that flavor shows up later.
• Pass. A fresh quip appears in a few seconds, this exact quip leaves your rotation permanently, and we reduce the weight on its author, tags, and topic.
• Next. A fresh quip in a few seconds, no opinion recorded, no influence on your profile.

Tapping the same button repeatedly counts once, and pressing different buttons together deliberately does nothing, so a curious child can't reshape your rotation. Holding the two outer buttons together for 6 seconds opens the on-screen service menu (WiFi setup and more). Over time, the love and pass signals refine your QuipCast more than any wizard ever could; review saved items and recent passes from your dashboard. Full walkthrough: Set up your frame.

Exactly what you'd hope. The frame wakes instantly on any press and applies that button to the quip on the wall: Love records the love and keeps it up, Pass and Next paint a fresh quip in about 5 to 7 seconds. The frame keeps one quip pre-loaded precisely so a button press never waits on WiFi.

Hold the two OUTER buttons (Love and Next) together for about 6 seconds. A service menu appears on the screen with its options labeled: Love opens WiFi setup, Pass erases all saved networks (with a confirmation step), Next goes back to your quips. A frame that can't reach any known network also opens its setup screen on its own periodically.

Yes. Passed items show up in your dashboard under "Recently passed." One click restores any of them to your rotation, and the associated weight dampening on the author/tags reverts too.

Yes. Every loved item lands in your "Favorites" tab on the dashboard. You can share individual ones, or set the favorites list to rotate on a specific frame.

No wires once it's charged. The frame uses reflective e-paper, which draws power only when the image changes, not while it's sitting there. How long a charge lasts depends on how often you refresh, from about a year on a daily schedule down to about four weeks on the 10-minute Premium cadence; see “How long does the battery actually last?” below. Then you take it down, plug it into any standard USB-C cable for an hour or so, and hang it back up.

Reflective electronic paper, also called e-ink or e-paper. The screen reflects ambient room light, the same way ink on paper does. There's no backlight, no flicker, no glow, no glare. Visible from any angle. Easy on the eyes, especially at night. Compass uses a 10" black-and-white panel.

About 5 to 7 seconds from press to fresh ink. The frame keeps the next quip pre-loaded on board, so a press never waits on WiFi; most of those seconds are the e-paper display physically rearranging its ink, with a brief flash. That's not a phone screen, and it's part of why the frame runs for months on a charge and doesn't pull at your attention. Occasionally, if the pre-load didn't land (a WiFi blip), a press takes longer while the frame fetches fresh. For the deeper why, see Calm Technology and E-paper Explained.

Plug the frame in to charge. It joins your WiFi via a setup screen on your phone (no app required), shows a short pair code, and you type that code into your account at quipcast.app. Three minutes. Step-by-step walkthrough: Set up your frame.

Yes, that's our fallback. Every frame ships with a QR sticker that pre-claims the device to your account before you even unbox it.

QuipCast is an American company. Every frame is assembled in the United States: the wood frames are made in America, and the electronics inside come from trusted suppliers around the world.

A mix of public-domain sources (Project Gutenberg, classic literature, and other public-domain works), licensed corpora, original QuipCast writing, AI-assisted curation with human review, and your own library. Every item carries provenance metadata. Anything that flags rights-review-needed never reaches a frame.

A small portion of the affirmation and learning-card library is AI-generated under our editorial guidelines. Every AI-generated item is tagged as such in the database. You can opt out of AI-generated content in your preferences.

The QuipCast dashboard has a "Your library" section where you paste in your own lines. They mix into your rotation alongside the curated content: up to 100 items on Pro, up to 1,000 on Premium. Visibility defaults to private (only your devices see them). One thing to know: your library only appears on the frame once you dial the BYO mix above 0% in Preferences, anywhere from an occasional appearance to 100% (only your own content).

One tap on the pass button removes it from your rotation permanently and dampens its author and tags for future picks. Done.

No. The frame has no microphone and no camera. It has no sensors at all beyond what's needed to know its own battery level and WiFi strength. It is, in your words, a dumb display with a battery and WiFi. If you'd like, we're happy to walk you through the motherboard and components, just write to hello@quipcast.app.

Your email, your preferences, which items you've seen on which frame, and your feedback (love/pass taps). We use this to make your rotation better. We don't sell it, don't share it with advertisers, and we don't run third-party trackers on the marketing site or the dashboard. Full privacy policy.

One click in your account settings. Wipes your preferences, your library, and your impression history. The frame becomes unpaired and can be re-paired under a fresh account if you sell or give it away.