Your Family's Whole Year Lives in That App. Here's How to Keep It.

If you opened Maple this week and saw the sunset notice, your first thought probably wasn't about software. It was about the orthodontist appointment in March. The swim lesson schedule. The birthday party you finally remembered to add. Years of small, careful entries that added up to a household that mostly runs.

That work is not gone, and in most cases it is easier to keep than you think. But some of it does need you to act before December 31, 2026. Here's what's happening, what is already safe, what quietly isn't, and how to move without losing the parts that matter.

What's Actually Happening to Maple

Maple announced it will sunset on December 31, 2026. Its founders, Michael Perry and Mike Taylor, have joined Wander, a vacation rental company. Wander acquired the team rather than the product and isn't continuing the family app, so this is a wind-down rather than a handoff.

A few specifics worth knowing:

• Your data stays accessible until December 31, 2026. After that, Maple says all data will be deleted with no way to recover it.
• Annual subscriptions will no longer renew. Monthly subscriptions stay active through December 31.
• External connections end at shutdown, including Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, Outlook, and TeamSnap.
• Maple recommends exporting or transferring your data before the shutdown date.

Maple was a genuinely thoughtful product, built around the invisible mental load that most family software ignores entirely. It's a real loss. The practical question now is just what to carry forward.

The Good News About Your Calendar

Here's the part that saves most families the most work.

If you ever connected Maple to Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, or Outlook, your events have likely been living in that calendar the whole time. Maple was writing into a calendar you own. When Maple shuts down, the connection ends. But events already written into your own Google or Outlook account generally stay in your account.

That distinction matters. "Maple is deleting my data" and "Maple is disconnecting from my calendar" are two different events, and the second one is much less scary than it sounds.

The catch is that you shouldn't assume. Sync setups vary, some families connected one parent's account and not the other, and a calendar that was only ever inside Maple never made it out. So verify it now, while the app is still running and you can still fix what you find.

How to Check Your Calendar Is Safe

Do this once, on a laptop, in about five minutes:

1. Open your calendar directly, not through Maple. Go to Google Calendar, Outlook on the web, or the Calendar app on your Mac or iPhone.
2. Look for a Maple calendar in the sidebar. It may be named "Maple," your family name, or something you chose during setup. If it's there, tick it visible.
3. Click into three or four real events, ideally ones in different months. Check the title, time, and any notes or location came through.
4. Jump ahead a few months. Recurring events sometimes sync only a limited window forward. Look at spring 2027 specifically.
5. Check the other parent's account too. If only one of you connected a calendar, the other's view may disappear entirely at shutdown.
6. Fix any gaps now, by hand. Anything you can see in Maple but not in your own calendar needs to be re-entered while both still exist.
7. Write down what you find. A short list of what synced and what didn't makes the next step much faster.

If everything checks out, your calendar is genuinely portable. Any app that connects to Google or Outlook will pick it up from there, including Momwise, which connects to both.

What Doesn't Move on Its Own

Calendars are the easy part. These usually aren't, and they're what families forget until January:

• Shopping and grocery lists, especially the staples list you rebuilt over months so nobody forgets the oat milk again.
• To-dos and household chores, including anything assigned to a partner or an older kid.
• Meal plans and saved recipes, which rarely have anywhere standard to sync to.
• Routines and checklists, like school mornings, bedtime, and the packing list for grandma's.
• Notes on each kid, from sizes and allergies to teacher names and the pediatrician's number you never memorized.

None of these live in your Google account. They live in Maple. The good news is they're small and you already know them by heart. Most families can screenshot or copy the whole lot in twenty minutes on a Sunday. The bad news is that it takes twenty minutes you have to actually spend, before December.

Meal planning is the one that tends to feel most daunting to rebuild. If that's the piece stopping you, our free meal plan generator will give you a full week of family dinners in about a minute, no account needed. That's enough to get you through the first weeks somewhere new.

Questions Families Are Asking

• "Do I have to do this right now?" No, but do the five-minute calendar check soon. Everything else can wait until you have a quiet evening, as long as it happens before December 31.
• "What if I never connected an external calendar?" Then your events only exist inside Maple, and they need to be moved by hand or through whatever export Maple offers. Start earlier than you think you need to.
• "Will my partner lose access when I switch?" They'll lose Maple when everyone does. Whichever app you land on, add them on day one rather than treating it as a later task.
• "Can I just use plain Google Calendar?" Absolutely, and for some families that's the honest answer. You'll lose the shared lists, meal planning, and the sense that one place knows what's happening this week.
• "What about Apple Calendar?" Your events stay in iCloud, which is safe. Just know that fewer family apps connect to Apple Calendar than to Google or Outlook, so check that before you commit to a new app.

Tips for a Move That Actually Sticks

Do it before the December rush

November and early December are the worst possible time to migrate a family calendar. That's exactly when holiday events, school concerts, and travel are landing. Moving in early fall means the new app is already familiar when the busy season hits.

Bring your partner along on day one

The most common way a family app quietly dies is that one parent sets it up and the other never opens it. Whatever you choose, send the invite immediately, while the reason for switching is still fresh and everyone is paying attention.

Don't rebuild everything at once

Move the calendar, add the four or five recurring things that actually structure your week, and stop. The staples list and the packing checklists can come back gradually as you need them. A half-set-up app you use beats a perfect one you abandoned.

Take screenshots, not notes

For lists, routines, and kid details, screenshots are faster than transcribing and you can retype them later at your own pace. Put them all in one album called "Maple" so they're not scattered through your camera roll in February.

Keep reading:

• The Mental Load Is Real: How Smart Tools Can Help
• The Invisible Mental Load of "Fun"
• Getting Started with Momwise

You Won't Lose the Year You Built

It's genuinely frustrating to have a system you trusted announce an end date, especially one you spent real effort setting up. But the important part of that effort is knowing how your family's week actually works, and that lives in you, not in the app. The calendar is portable, the lists are twenty minutes of copying, and the rest you already carry around in your head.

Take the five minutes to check your calendar this week. Do the lists on a Sunday sometime this fall. Then pick somewhere new and give it until the holidays to prove itself.

Momwise connects to Google and Outlook calendars, keeps your family's lists and meals in one place, and answers in plain chat rather than making you learn another dashboard. If you're looking for where to land, we put together everything a Maple family needs to switch, including free access through March 2027.

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Moving your family off Maple? Chat with Momwise anytime for help getting your calendar, lists, and week set back up.