Help with One Bam Board

Getting a tile set or a mat into the app

Photograph the tiles you already own, or take a screenshot of some you want to buy. Then tap the part of the picture you are adding and the app lifts it off the background.

A tile set needs three things off the picture, and the third one surprises people:

• The face grid, the block of tile faces.
• One tile back, which is what the four walls are built from.
• A box around a single tile. This is a ruler, not a crop. It tells the app how many tiles wide your picture is, which is what makes the tiles in the middle come out the same size as the tiles in the wall.

The detection grabbed the wrong thing

Tap Adjust. You get a crop box with handles on the corners and edges, a rotation slider, and a re-detect that takes a new tap anywhere in the photo. Cancel puts everything back the way it was.

My tiles look far too big or too small

This is almost always the one-tile ruler. If the box was drawn around two tiles instead of one, or around a tile and part of its neighbour, everything in the centre scales wrong. Re-import and draw the box around exactly one tile.

Which photos work best

A picture where the tiles are square-on to the camera and evenly lit will always beat a dramatic angle. A listing photo that shows the tile backs somewhere is worth more than one that does not, because the walls are built from a back.

Your table looks different from the real thing

The table can be laid out from real American Mahjong dimensions or at showcase scale. True size is honest about proportion, which sometimes means the tiles look smaller against a big mat than a product photo led you to expect. Showcase scale makes the tiles more legible. Neither is wrong; they answer different questions.

Set your table, and hosting

Mark what you actually own by tapping the tag on the mat, tile set, or rack itself. If you own more than one of something, the count lives behind the (i). Racks count in sets of four, because a table seats four players.

Nothing is marked as owned to begin with. The shelf has always been a wish list, so "none" is the honest starting point, and there is one tap to say you own all of them.

When you plan a night for more than one table, the app will refuse to dress a table you do not have a mat for. That refusal is the feature, not a bug: it is how you find out you are one rack set short a week early instead of an hour early.

Sharing

Pick your favorites and send them out as images. They go out lettered, with the question written for you, and your group flips through them full screen. There is nothing for them to install, no account, and no sign up. The voting happens wherever the images land, which is usually the group chat it started in.

iCloud and your library

If you are signed in to iCloud, your library syncs across your own devices through your private iCloud storage. If you are not signed in, the app still works and everything simply stays on that one device.

Something I made on one phone has not appeared on the other

Check that both devices are signed in to the same Apple account with iCloud Drive on, and that both have a connection. Sync is usually quick but is not instant, and a device that has been asleep may take a moment after you open the app.

How do I delete everything?

Delete items inside the app, delete the app to remove the copy on that device, and remove the iCloud copy in Settings, then your name, then iCloud, then Manage Account Storage. We hold nothing, so there is nothing to ask us to erase. The full detail is on the privacy page.

The unlock

One Bam Board is free to try. One tile set, three mats, and every bundled rack style are free, which is enough to see whether the app works for you.

The unlock is one payment of $14.99 for lifetime access. It gives you unlimited tile sets and mats, and rack styles you make yourself. There is no subscription and there will not be one.

Purchases are handled by the App Store, so refunds are requested from Apple at reportaproblem.apple.com rather than from us. If you have paid and the unlock is not showing on a device, make sure it is signed in to the same Apple account you bought with, then write to us if it still will not appear.

Is this a mahjong game?

No. One Bam Board previews the table, not the hands. Nothing is played, scored, wagered, or ranked in it. It is the step before the game, when you are still deciding what to buy or what to put out.

One Bam Board is not on the App Store yet. This page is here so that help exists the day it arrives, and so you have somewhere to write in the meantime. If you have a question about the app before then, send it to hello@inkwell.solutions and we will answer it.

One Bam Board is an independent tool. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by any tile maker, mat maker, or card publisher. You supply the product images yourself; the app does not include or distribute any.