How do my TapToTalk albums get to my iPad?

We are often asked, "How do my albums get to my iPad (or Nook or iPod touch or iPhone or Android device)?" It may seem like magic, but it isn't. The answer is that you have your own private "mailbox" where your published albums are stored. When you publish your albums, they go into the "mailbox."



1. Your TapToTalk is just a set of one or more of your albums. When you added your TapToTalk to Designer and named it, Designer gave you a unique number for that TapToTalk. That is your "mailbox" number which we call a TapToTalk ID. You either gave the TapToTalk a password then or the first time that you published your albums. Your password is the "key" to the mailbox. Your "mailbox" is on the TapToTalk Designer server "in the cloud." If you bought more than one TapToTalk, you get different TapToTalk IDs for each one.

2. On your iPad, you use the Settings App to enter the TapToTalk ID and password, and you turn on the "Download Albums" option. When "Download Albums" is "ON" you are telling the TapToTalk App to check the mailbox automatically.

3. Each and every time you run the free TapToTalk App on the iPad, it checks to see if there are new albums in the "mailbox." If there are, the app downloads the content from the server and stores it on the iPad. All this happens as the app is starting up. You'll see messages like "Downloading Albums" and "Extracting Content" when this happens.

If your Device is not connected, you will get a message that tells you it is not connected. To be honest, we wish we didn't have to have that message come up, but Apple makes us do it. You can turn download albums "OFF" if you don't like the message, but remember to turn it back "ON" the next time you publish.

There is one difference between our server and a mailbox. Your albums can be picked up by as many devices as you have that use your TapToTalk ID and password. It's like the mailbox is never really empty. Your iPad, the school's iPad, your Android phone, whatever, can all pick up the same mail. (That’s how we distribute the "free additional content" that you may have tried. It's a public "mailbox" and key we let everyone use.)

Also, the iPad doesn’t have to be in same room, state or even on the same continent as your computer. It's all in the "cloud." Just like your email, you can get it from anywhere your iPad can connect to the Internet.

That's how the magic works!

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The same process described above is how TapToTalk works on the iPod touch, iPhone, Android devices and the Nook Color. There is also a way to download albums to these devices through a Windows PC or Mac computer if the device itself is not online. All of this is explained in Designer's online help.

How to Move TapToTalk from Nintendo to iPad

You can run your TapToTalk on any of the many devices we support. You can run it on as many devices as you want.

But since one of the most common questions we get is "How do I move my child's TapToTalk from a Nintendo to an iPad?" we thought we'd give some step-by-step instructions for how to do just that. Here they are:

Step 1. Download the free TapToTalk App from the App Store. Do this right on your iPad or through iTunes on your computer, whichever is most convenient.

Step 2. In TapToTalk Designer, publish your albums for the iPad.

a. When publishing completes, you will see your 10 digit TapToTalk ID.

b. If you have not yet given your TapToTalk a password, you will be asked to give it one. You only have to do this once. We recommend that you use one that is different from your Designer password.

Step 3. On your iPad, configure your TapToTalk App using the iPad’s Settings App.

a. In the Settings App, find TapToTalk in the list of apps.

b. Enter the TapToTalk ID and password from Step 2, above. You only have to do this once. For more details, see the "TapToTalk iPhone and iPad App Guide" in Designer's online help.

4. Start the TapToTalk App on your iPad.

a. If your iPad is connected to the Internet, it will download your published albums automatically.

b. Once the albums are on your iPad, you don’t need to be connected to run TapToTalk until the next time you update your albums.

Remember, you can publish your content to any and all of the devices we support. You can keep using the Nintendo if you choose. If your school or SLP has an iPad, you can give them your TTT ID and Password and they can receive the content, too!

Announcing TapToTalk on the BlackBerry PlayBook

We're happy to announce that TapToTalk now runs on the BlackBerry^® PlayBook^™.

Now you have yet another choice for an AAC device. The TapToTalk PlayBook App is available free from BlackBerry App World and works just like the other TapToTalk apps.

As always, there is no cost for this capability for TapToTalk Designer users. You can run your TapToTalk albums without change on the PlayBook, and on as many of our supported devices as you wish. No extra charge. Click here for details on setting up the PlayBook App for your TapToTalk.

And the TapToTalk PlayBook App with sample albums is free to any PlayBook user. Just use this link or search for TapToTalk in App World.

So give TapToTalk a try on your PlayBook!

Distributing Your AAC Albums

TapToTalk Designer users may want to share album templates they have developed with others. The purpose of this article is to explain the two ways to do this, "TapToTalk Sharing" and "Sending an Album."

 TapToTalk Sharing Here is how to distribute albums using TapToTalk Sharing:

1. With your TapToTalk Pro or Agency account, develop your album templates and store them in your TapToTalk album library (the album library is a feature of Pro and Agency accounts).
2. When you want to distribute one or more albums to another TapToTalk Designer user, have them share their TapToTalk from their Designer account with you.
3. Add the album(s) you want from your album library to the shared TapToTalk. These are a copies, so you can make changes to without affecting the originals. You can customize at this point if you want, as can the owner of the TapToTalk you are sharing.
4. When you are done, have the owner of the TapToTalk cancel sharing.

That's all there is to it. You can serve as many TapToTalks as you want this way.

More information about TapToTalk Sharing

Sending an Album
There are times when you simply want to send a copy of one or more of your albums to someone for use in their own Designer account. You can do this by giving them a file containing your album(s). They can then import the album(s) from that file into their Designer account using the Import function of TapToTalk Designer. Since it is a single file, you can email it, copy it to a memory stick, or use any other way that you would use to send someone a computer file.

More information about Sending Albums

Whether you distribute albums for free or as part of your business, TapToTalk Designer makes it easy to do serve others anywhere in the world.