Help & FAQ

Getting Started

PickleBoard runs on Apple Watch and iPhone. The Watch app is the primary experience — a glanceable scoreboard right on your wrist. The iPhone app mirrors the same scoreboard for sideline scoring or Live Activity and Dynamic Island use during a game.

Your first game

1. Open PickleBoard on your Watch (or iPhone).
2. Tap a team’s side of the scoreboard to add a point.
3. Use the toolbar to undo a point, open Settings, reset the match, or call a timeout.
4. When the game ends, review the game-over card and tap Rematch to play again.

Free vs Pro

PickleBoard is free to download and play. Pro features — Live Activity, Dynamic Island, voice announcements, and match stats — are unlocked with a one-time in-app purchase. See the Pro Unlock section for details.

Scoring Modes

PickleBoard supports the three most-played pickleball scoring formats. Switch modes from Settings on either device.

Doubles

Standard pickleball doubles with automatic server rotation, side-out tracking, and a court position indicator. Default mode — works for the most common rec game.

Singles

Singles serving rules: one server per side, with sides switching based on the server’s score. The server number is suppressed because there’s only one server per team.

Rally

Score every rally, not just your serve. An optional freeze-at-target rule limits the leading team to scoring on their own serve once they reach game point. Default OFF (matches 2026 USAP rules); enable in Settings if your house rules call for it.

Game targets and win-by-2

PickleBoard supports targets of 11 (default), 15, and 21. Win-by-2 is enforced automatically — a game ends only when one team reaches the target with a 2-point lead.

Voice Announcements

After each point, your Apple Watch speaks the score aloud — server, receiver, server number, the way the pros call it. For example, “4, 2, 1” means the serving team has 4 points, the receiving team has 2, and the second server is up. Your eyes stay on the ball.

How to enable

1. Open PickleBoard on your Watch.
2. Tap the Settings button on the toolbar.
3. Toggle Voice Announcements on.

Tip: Voice announcements use the on-device speech synthesizer. No audio is recorded, and nothing is transmitted off your device.

iPhone vs Watch

Voice announcements play on the Apple Watch only. The iPhone scoreboard is silent by design — Live Activity and Dynamic Island carry the visual update on iPhone.

Live Activity & Dynamic Island

When the first point is scored, PickleBoard automatically pins the score to your iPhone Lock Screen as a Live Activity, and to the Dynamic Island on iPhone 14 Pro and later. No app to open. No interruption to play.

What you’ll see

• Lock Screen: Both team names (or “Team 1” / “Team 2”), the live score, and the serving team’s indicator.
• Dynamic Island compact: Score split between the two leading and trailing edges of the island.
• Dynamic Island expanded: Long-press the island for the full scoreboard.

How it ends

The Live Activity dismisses automatically about 30 seconds after the game-over moment, giving you time to glance at the final score before the system clears it.

Home Screen Widget

Add a PickleBoard widget to your iPhone Home Screen for at-a-glance access to the scoreboard.

Sizes

• Small: A quick-launch tile that opens straight into the scoreboard.
• Medium: A last-game summary with the final score and mode.

How to add

1. Long-press the Home Screen until icons jiggle.
2. Tap the + button at the top-left.
3. Search “PickleBoard” and pick the size you want.

Watch Complication & Always-On Display

Complication

Add the PickleBoard complication to a configurable Apple Watch face for one-tap launch. Supported families include Modular Compact, Corner, and the Lock Screen accessory variants.

1. Long-press the Watch face.
2. Tap Edit and swipe to Complications.
3. Tap a slot and pick PickleBoard.

Always-On Display

When you lower your wrist mid-game, the Always-On Display dims to a luminance-friendly version of the scoreboard — the score is still readable, and there’s no extra battery drain. The display restores full brightness when you raise your wrist.

Swipe-to-score gesture

Don’t want to tap? Swipe up on a team’s side of the scoreboard to add a point. Swipe gestures are an alternative to tap input — both work the same way.

Match Stats, Weather & Rematch

When the game ends, PickleBoard captures match metadata — final score, mode, target, duration, and (with your permission) the location and weather conditions of your match. The richer game-over card shows these stats and a Rematch button.

Opt-in flow

Match stats are off by default. Enable them from Settings; you’ll see a one-time iOS prompt for Location access. Weather data is fetched once per game-end via Apple WeatherKit and is never stored off your device.

Rematch

Tap Rematch on the game-over card to start a new game with the same settings (mode, target, freeze-at-target, timeout count). The score resets to 0–0 and team names carry over on iPhone.

Share card

Tap Share on the game-over card to generate a 1080×1080 image — team names, final score, mode, and the PickleBoard mark — ready to share via Messages, Photos, Mail, or any social app.

Privacy: Location is captured once per game-end (never continuously), and weather data is requested only when stats are enabled. Both are explained in the Privacy Policy.

Timeouts

Each team gets 2 timeouts per game by default. The count is configurable in Settings (0, 1, 2, or 3 — matches USAP rules).

Calling a timeout

1. On iPhone: tap the Timeout button on the toolbar, then pick the team.
2. On Watch: tap the Timeout button, then pick the team via the team-select sheet.

What happens

• The dot indicator below the team’s score decrements (3 dots → 2 → 1 → 0).
• If voice announcements are on, the Watch speaks “Time-out, team one” or “Time-out, team two”.
• Timeouts are not undoable (per pickleball rules — calling one is final). Score actions remain fully undoable via the Undo button.

Pro Unlock

PickleBoard is free to download. Pro features — Live Activity, Dynamic Island, voice announcements, and match stats — are unlocked with a single one-time in-app purchase. There is no subscription, no auto-renewal, and no recurring charge.

Restoring your purchase

If you’ve already purchased Pro and want to restore on a new device:

• iPhone: Settings → Restore Purchases.
• Watch: The Pro screen on Watch shows a hand-off button to wake the paywall on your paired iPhone. Purchase and restore both flow through iPhone.

Pickleball Rules — Official References

PickleBoard handles the scoreboard. The rules of the game itself come from USA Pickleball, the national governing body that publishes and maintains the Official Rulebook. The links below open the current rules straight from USAP’s site.

Quick references

• USA Pickleball — Rules Summary — concise plain-language overview, great for new players.
• USA Pickleball — Official Rules — full rulebook (PDF).
• usapickleball.org — rules updates, equipment standards, and tournament info.

What PickleBoard implements

PickleBoard supports the three most common casual-play scoring formats: Doubles (traditional side-out), Singles, and Rally (also called Rally Scoring). For first-server-only-on-first-service, server rotation rules, and the official 7-foot non-volley zone, defer to the USAP rulebook. For everything that happens on the scoreboard — points, sides, timeouts, freeze-at-target — PickleBoard is the source of truth.

Troubleshooting — FAQ