Paperkept
What you wrote is still there.
A private journal for iPhone and Android. No account to be logged out of, no server to lose it, and — on Android — no permission to reach the network at all.
Coming to the App Store and Google Play
Why this exists
Five journals lost people's writing while we were reading their reviews.
“Journaled almost daily for two years and it logged me out and won't let me sign back in, so I just lost everything.”
A review of one of the largest journal apps on the store.
Every one of them is a company far bigger than this one, and every one of them fails in the same place. Durability is not a hard problem. It is a priority, and it was nobody's.
Here it is the first requirement. Every keystroke goes to the disk as it is typed, and a write is not reported as done until the disk says so. Killed mid-sentence from the app switcher, on both platforms, the text was still there — checked character for character, not assumed.
What it promises, in order
What you wrote is still there
No account, no sign-in that can fail, no sync that can win an argument against you.
Nothing leaves the device
The released Android build does not hold the INTERNET permission. Not a promise — a line in the store listing you can check yourself.
Your own words are never behind a paywall
Writing, reading, search, the lock and exporting everything are free forever, including after a subscription ends.
A real lock
Face ID, Touch ID or your device passcode, asked when you open the journal and after you have been away.
What is in it
Write and find
Dated entries, full-text search, and previews built around the match.
On this day
What you wrote on this date in earlier years, above the list.
Export and import
Everything in one Markdown file — photographs included — and readable back in. Import never overwrites what is already here.
A daily reminder
One notification, at a time you choose. It never says what you wrote, and there is no streak to keep.
Notebooks
Work, dreams and letters kept apart. Exports always include every one.
Paper and type
Plain, cream or slate, light or dark, in a reading serif or your system face.
What it does not do
The list of absences is the product.
No AI
Nothing reads your entries. Not to summarise them, not to score your mood, not to suggest anything.
No account
Nothing to sign into, so nothing to be locked out of.
No sync
One device, one journal. That is the cost of the sentence above, and it is deliberate.
No cloud backup
Your journal is excluded from iCloud and Google backups. Export whenever you like — it is free, and the copy goes where you choose.
No analytics
No usage statistics, no crash reports, no advertising identifiers.
No mood tracking
This is a journal, never therapy. No diagnoses, no wellbeing claims, no scores.
This page, too
There is no analytics script on this site, no cookie, and no request to any third party. The typeface is served from this domain rather than from Google. A page selling an app that holds no network permission should not be phoning anybody either.