Days to Christmas
The cosy, calm way to count the sleeps. Behind every one of the 24 Advent doors is a free activity for one of the senses, made with autistic and sensory-seeking children in mind, and loved by every family who tries it.
Free. The countdown and all 24 Advent doors stay free forever. Premium adds the pretty, and there is no auto-renewing subscription.
What Is Inside
Version 2.0 is a complete rebuild. What used to be a countdown widget is now a whole December, and the parts that matter most are the parts that cost nothing.
A Free Sensory Advent Calendar
Twenty-four doors, each one a small activity for a single sense. Crunch fake snow, jingle bells, smell a clove orange, taste a candy cane, blow bubbles by the tree lights. The doors follow Sense’s guidance on making a sensory advent calendar. Nothing to buy, no streaks and no guilt: a door you missed says ready to open, never missed.
Track Santa on Christmas Eve
Watch the sleigh fly 83 stops around the world, and replay the whole flight hour by hour. Before that, see how far the North Pole is from your country and roughly what time he reaches you, which is about 10 pm, so be asleep. The workshop sends a daily report as the sleeps run down.
Letters to Santa, Spoken or Typed
Children can write a letter by speaking it or typing it, and a few hours later Santa writes back by hand. The app can read his reply aloud. Everything is composed on the device, so a letter never leaves the iPhone it was written on.
Sleeps on Every Screen
Home Screen and Lock Screen widgets that turn over at midnight, an interactive widget that opens today’s door without launching the app, and a Live Activity that moves into the Dynamic Island on Christmas Eve. Count in sleeps, days, hours, minutes, or heartbeats.
A Selfie With Santa
Put a Santa hat, beard, specs or reindeer antlers on everyone in the picture and stand Santa beside you. Faces are found on the device by Apple’s Vision framework, nothing is uploaded, and no photo exists at all unless you save or share it.
A Gift List and a Music Box
Keep track of who you are buying for and tick things off as you go, with a matching sensory gift idea suggested behind each Advent door. Six public-domain carols play from a built-in synthesiser, so the music adds nothing at all to the download.
Accessible by Design, Not by Afterthought
This app was built by an accessibility researcher, and it shows in the details rather than in a feature list.
- A countdown you can hear and feel. Tap once and the app speaks the number of sleeps, then taps it out in haptics, one tap per sleep, so a child who cannot read numbers yet can feel how close Christmas is.
- Calm mode. One switch turns off the snow, the sparkle, the parallax and the haptics. The app follows the system Reduce Motion setting on its own too.
- Doors that behave for switch users. A locked door is not announced as a button, so Switch Control and Voice Control never send you to a target that cannot be opened.
- A High Contrast theme, free for everyone. Black background, white and yellow text, and none of the decoration. It is not locked behind Premium.
- Full VoiceOver support. Every door announces its number, its title, its sense and its state. Decoration is hidden. Toasts are announced rather than left to be hunted for.
- Dynamic Type throughout. Text scales with the system setting, and the Advent grid drops to three doors across at accessibility text sizes instead of squeezing.
Read the full accessibility statement for Days to Christmas, including what is supported on each platform and what is not yet done.
Days to Christmas in Pictures
On Every Apple Device You Own
Beyond iPhone and iPad there are four more native apps, and each one has its own idea rather than being a copy of the phone. One purchase covers all of them, in 23 App Store storefronts.
Start Counting the Sleeps
The countdown and all 24 Advent doors are free, forever. No accounts, no tracking, and your gift list never leaves your device.
