Only a Diary

What it will not do

Reading some sixteen thousand reviews of diary apps, the one- and two-star complaints were rarely about missing features. They were about being locked in.

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  No advertising Bought once. Nothing appears later asking for more.
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  No notifications It will never tell you that you have not written today.
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  No streak counter Count the days and the app becomes hard to open after you miss one.
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  No account No email address, no sign-in.
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  Nobody reads your diary The developer runs no server. There is no path by which it could arrive.
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  No connection needed On a plane, underground, out of range — it writes exactly the same.
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  Nothing is taken away later What works today works tomorrow. Nothing moves behind a paywall.

Writing

Open it and write. It saves itself as you go, so there is no save button. Photos can sit anywhere in the text.

When you finish, nothing happens. No prompt to rate it, no suggestion of what to do next.

Looking back

A list in reverse order, a calendar to reach a particular day, and full-text search across everything you have written.

Taking it with you

Export everything, whenever you like, as many times as you like. What comes out is .txt, .json and the photos as they were taken. Readable without this app.

Changing phones means importing that one file on the new device. The same file works between iPhone and Android.

If you ever stop liking it, take your diary and go. Nothing here is built to keep you.

It works offline

On a plane, underground, or somewhere with no signal at all, it writes exactly as it always does. So does looking back, adding a photo, and searching.

There is no loading screen. Your diary is on your device; there is nowhere to fetch it from.

It stays on your device

The app reaches the network only when you press "Back up now" or "Restore". At no other time does it communicate.

The destination is your own cloud: the private area of your Apple ID on iPhone, the app-specific folder of your Google Drive on Android. The developer cannot see either, and has no means to.

One thing to know