What the app does
NileGlyph turns a name into an Egyptian cartouche. You type letters; each one is matched to the hieroglyph a scribe would have used for that sound — the twenty-six single-consonant signs catalogued after Gardiner — and the result is carved into the oval frame that royal names were sealed inside.
Nothing is generated or guessed along the way. The table is fixed and lives inside the app, so the same name always produces the same signs, whether or not you have a connection.
Your first cartouche
- Open the Create tab and type a name. Letters and spaces are carved, up to twelve signs.
- Pick the stone it is cut from — gold, sandstone, lapis or onyx — and the scene it rests in: dunes, sunset, a temple or the starry Nile. The frame accent sets the colour of the oval itself.
- Save puts the cartouche in your Treasury. Share hands it to the usual iOS share sheet, which is also how it reaches your photos.
- The Treasury tab keeps everything you saved, newest first. Tap one to see it full screen, share it again, or delete it.
- Profile holds the defaults: your avatar, the material and scene new cartouches start from, and the language the app speaks.
Questions we get
- Some characters vanished as I typed. Why?
- Only letters and spaces can be carved. Digits, punctuation and emoji have no sign in the table, so the app drops them instead of substituting something invented.
- Is my cartouche a translation of my name?
- No — and the difference matters. The signs spell the sounds of your name, one consonant at a time, the way Egyptian scribes wrote foreign names. They carry no meaning of their own, and an ancient reader would not have read one into them.
- Why twelve signs and not more?
- A cartouche has to stay readable inside its oval on a phone screen. Past a dozen signs it stops being legible, so that is where the app draws the line.
- Which languages does the app speak?
- English, Spanish, Korean and Romanian. You choose one on first launch and can change it any time under Profile → Language.
- Why does it ask for my photo library?
- Two separate requests, both optional. One adds a finished cartouche to your photos; the other reads a picture you pick as your avatar. Decline either and everything else works as before.
- What is the tracking prompt for?
- It measures which advertising campaign a new user arrived from. Declining changes nothing about how the app behaves, and you can change your answer later under Settings → Privacy & Security → Tracking.
- Can I stop the notifications?
- Yes — Settings → Notifications → NileGlyph. They are optional; the app works the same without them.
- Does NileGlyph cost anything?
- No. It is free, and there are no purchases, subscriptions or adverts inside it.
What it won't do
- Only the twenty-six single-consonant signs are used — no determinatives and no full hieroglyphic spelling.
- A saved cartouche can't be edited afterwards. Carve it again with the style you want and save that.
- There is no account and no sync: a cartouche saved on one iPhone stays on that iPhone.
Your data
Saved cartouches live on your iPhone, in the app's own storage. They are never uploaded, which also means there is no copy to restore: Clear treasury in Profile and deleting the app both remove them for good.
What the app itself collects, and why, is set out in the Privacy Policy. To ask what is held about you, or to have it deleted, write to contact@idoitdoo.com and say which you want; we answer such requests within 30 days.
Writing to us
The fastest route is Profile → Support inside the app, which opens a message already addressed to us. Writing directly to contact@idoitdoo.com works just as well.
If something went wrong, these four things usually save a round of questions:
| Your iPhone and iOS | Settings → General → About |
|---|---|
| The app version | at the bottom of the Profile tab |
| What happened | what you did, what you saw, what you expected instead |
| The name you carved | if the signs themselves are the problem |