Moments preserved across time

Some emotions deserve to be preserved to be shared with the ones you love.

shTime keeps what you write today: a note, a letter, a photo, your voice. And delivers it to the person of your choice, at the moment of their life you have set. For their 18th birthday. For the birth of their child. For your 20th wedding anniversary. For yourself, ten years from now.

Open a life path See how it works
A few words from the founder…

I often find myself thinking of the people who matter to me. I follow those thoughts with a message, a wink, an emoji.

My first grandson was born a little over five months ago. How do I talk with him? How do I connect with him? I could not bring myself to wait for him to grow up before telling him how much he matters to me.

I wanted to write to him, to send him messages, voice notes… for him to discover once he is older. And I thought: surely I am not the only one in this situation. That is why I created shTime!

Marc

The promise

A bond built over years. Not a scheduled message.

A grandmother writes to a granddaughter who cannot read yet. Two lovers write to each other for birthdays still to come. Someone writes to themselves, for later. On one side, words are left year after year; on the other, they are discovered year after year. It is a correspondence. It has simply set out ahead of time.

A grandmother, to her granddaughter

“Today you are one, asleep on my shoulder. I will tell you everything — just not yet.”

Left in 2026 · for her 18th birthday

A husband, to his wife

“One note for each anniversary, all the way to our golden wedding. You don't know yet that I have already written them.”

Left in 2026 · one a year, 25 times

A woman, to herself

“If you are reading this, we made it ten years. Here is what I wanted you never to forget.”

Left in 2026 · for 2036

How it works

You leave white pebbles along a path.

Like the trail of white pebbles in the fairy tale — but pointing forward. You create a life path for each person you write to. Along it you leave white pebbles, at the moments of their life that mattered to you, and that will matter one day to them. They will be discovered later, when that person is ready to receive them.

Open a life path

You start with a person, not a blank page. One path per recipient. It never ends: you come back to it for years.

Leave white pebbles

A short note. A long letter. Photos. Or your voice, recorded right there. A voice is worth ten pages.

Place them at milestones

Not necessarily on an exact date: at a moment of their life. “Their 18th birthday.” “Their first child.” The days worth marking with a white pebble. shTime turns them into dates, and recalculates if the birth date changes.

Choose the rhythm, then seal

All at once, drop by drop, or at random. You decide milestone by milestone. Then you seal. You can come back to leave more whenever you wish.

“14 white pebbles for Léa, one a month from her 18th birthday.” The sentence that sums it all up, at the moment of sealing.

Léa's path

Granddaughter · born in 2023 · 21 white pebbles left

Her 10th birthday

3 white pebbles · all at once · in 2033

Her 18th birthday

14 white pebbles · one a month · from 2041

Her 25th birthday

4 white pebbles · at random · between 25 and 30

Her wedding day

Nothing yet. Come back and leave one

The birth of her first child

Nothing yet. Come back and leave one

The signature screen

Her life, unfolded before you.

Milestones, not dates

You don't leave a pebble “for June 3, 2041”. You leave it for her 18th birthday. If the birth date is corrected, everything realigns. You choose your milestones freely; nothing is imposed.

Milestones make you want to come back

The path shows what is already waiting, and what remains to be written. It is a place you return to, an evening now and then, for years.

And if life changes

A path can be paused in one click, no questions asked: nothing more is sent, everything is kept, reversible whenever you wish. Because a twenty-year correspondence must be able to stop in a single gesture.

When the day comes

The recipient receives a letter. Nothing to install, nothing to buy.

They don't know shTime, and they don't need to. On the day itself, an email arrives, from you, never from us. The subject line looks like nothing else in their inbox: a first name they know, and an impossible year.

The text is in the email, in full. Nothing behind a button. The photos are right there; your voice plays on a calm reading page, with no account to create.

If more white pebbles are still to come, a single sentence will say so. No countdown, no number, no dates. The surprise is part of the gift.

From: Anne Meunier (via shTime)
To: Léa
Anne wrote to you in 2026

You don't know this service, and that's expected. Anne knows you: she wrote this message on August 5, 2026 and asked that it reach you today. There is nothing to buy and nothing to install.

My Léa,

Today you are eighteen. On the day I write these lines, you are three, and you have just spent twenty minutes showing me the same little grey pebble, telling me it was magic.

You were right, after all. Here is the proof.

Others are waiting for you. There is nothing you need to do: they will arrive.

The rhythms

You decide how and when the path opens.

The rhythm is chosen milestone by milestone. What you see on screen is exactly what will happen, to the day.

All at once

Everything arrives on the same day. For a birthday, a solemn delivery, one single great letter.

Drop by drop

One white pebble a day, a week or a month, in the order you left them. A correspondence that lasts.

At random

Surprises drawn within a window you set: between their 18th and 30th birthdays. The draw is made once, then honored.

On a date

One precise day, simply. January 1st, 2040. The day you both turn 40.

The import

What you have already written counts too.

Notes kept on your phone. A folder of letters. Voice memos recorded one evening and never played again. You don't have to start over: drop them in as they are, and shTime lays them out along the path.

Dates find themselves

A future date, in the file name or at the top of a note, becomes a milestone. 2041-06-03 and 03/06/2041 (day first) are both recognized. Everything else — including past dates, which date the memory, not the delivery — lands on the milestone of your choice.

You see it before it exists

The screen shows what will be kept, where on the path it will go, and what will be set aside. Nothing is created until you have looked.

A refusal that says why

A file we cannot read is refused, with the reason written next to its name. We would rather say so than settle for an approximation: a half-recovered text is worse than a missing one.

Supported formats: text (.txt, .md, .rtf), Word documents (.docx), spreadsheets (.csv, .tsv, .xlsx — a dated row becomes a pebble at its milestone), photos, audio recordings, and .zip archives containing them.
Unsupported formats: PDF — not yet, it will come — and the legacy Word and Excel files (.doc, .xls from 97-2003), to be saved again as .docx/.xlsx. We chose formats whose integration we can guarantee, so your memories are never distorted.

Our promises

Being trusted with twenty years of letters has to be earned.

Your words will stay readable

The risk of format obsolescence is ours, not yours. What you deposit today will be readable with tomorrow's technology: we carry your content forward through time, and we keep your originals. There is nothing you need to do. Neither does the recipient.

Everything is yours, at all times

At any moment, you can download all of your paths: text, photos, voice, in open formats. No data held hostage.

No algorithm, no advertising, no eyes on what you write, no interference from shTime: it is your life, and it concerns no one but you and the people around you.

Reachable twenty years from now

An email address from 2026 can die before 2046. That is why every recipient can have several contact points, and why, once a year, we simply ask: “are these details still the right ones?”

The important gestures are protected

Changing a delivery rule or an address, stopping a path: these gestures require a verification code. Deleting leaves 30 days to think it over. Twenty years of letters are not undone on a whim. Nor through a stolen login.

The recipient stays free

Receiving is a gift, never an obligation. Every letter carries a discreet, permanent link to decline the ones to come. Their wishes come first, always.

Hosted in Europe, encrypted at rest

Your emotions are intimate treasures. They are encrypted at rest, hosted in the European Union, isolated account by account. And we say this without over-promising.

Pricing

One simple subscription, scaled to what you entrust.

The first two weeks are wide open: every plan, no payment, long enough to try it for real. After that, you return to Discovery, which stays free.

Discovery

Free

  • 1 path, 1 recipient
  • Limited to:
  • 10 messages
  • 5 photos
  • 5 voice notes

To leave a first white pebble.

Essential

€1.99 / month · or €19.99 / year

  • Unlimited recipients
  • 10 GB for photos and voice
  • Every delivery rhythm
  • Yearly review of contact details

The full path, as it is meant to be.

Ultimate

€4.99 / month · or €49.99 / year

  • Everything in Essential
  • 50 GB — room for years

For the richest life paths.

Tribe

€12.99 / month · or €129 / year

  • 100 GB
  • Linked accounts: family, friends, a group
  • Shared paths

For letters written by several hands.

Extra space: +€2/month per additional 50 GB. If a subscription ends: your paths become read-only for 12 months, everything remains exportable, and whatever is sealed is delivered all the same.

Begin

Who are you thinking of, right now?

That person is where it begins. Open their life path, leave a first white pebble. Three lines are enough.

shTime is opening its service: the trial is free and unrestricted for two weeks. When it ends, nothing will be deleted — you will return to the free plan, your content will stay, and you can export it at any time.

Open a life path