Only a Diary

ただの日記帳

App Store$3.99 Google Play$3.79 One payment

No ads, no notifications, no streaks.
It works with no network at all,
and you can take everything out, whenever you like.

What it will not do

Seven things it refuses

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.

01
No advertising You buy it once. Nothing appears later asking for more.
02
No notifications It will never tell you that you have not written today.
03
No streaks Count the days in a row and the day you break it is the day you stop opening the app.
04
No account No email address, no sign-in, nothing to remember.
05
Nobody reads your diary There is no developer server. There is no route by which it could reach anyone.
06
No connection required Out of range, on a plane — you write exactly as always.
07
Nothing you can do today moves behind a paywall tomorrow What works now goes on working.

Writing

Open it and write

It saves as you write, so there is no save button to press. Photos go anywhere you want them in the text.

When you finish, nothing happens. No request for a rating, no suggestion of what to do next. Where an entry ends is your call.

Looking back

Years of it, still in reach

A list in reverse order, a calendar to go by date, and search across everything you have written.

The list of entries — Newest first. However many there are, keep going and you arrive at the first day.

The calendar — Days you wrote are marked. You can go back across years.

Yours to take

The door is left open

Export everything, as often as you like. What comes out is .txt, .json and your photos as you took them. It can be read without this app.

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

If you don't like it, take your diary and go.

One entry, as it comes out — it opens in any text editor.

Date: 2026-09-20 Mood: plain Images: 2026-09-20-01.jpg Created: 2026-09-20T21:05:00+09:00 Updated: 2026-09-20T21:30:00+09:00 Rain from the morning. I left without an umbrella and was soaked in the five minutes to the station. The clear plastic one I bought at the convenience store was already useless on the way home.

Works offline

With no network, just the same

On a plane, underground, up a mountain with no signal — you write exactly as always. So does reading back, adding photos, and searching by words.

There is no loading screen, because your diary is already on your device. There is nowhere to go and fetch it from.

It connects only when you press "Back up now" or "Restore". At no other moment does this app talk to anything outside.

It stays with you

Even the backup is yours

When you do keep a copy, it goes to your own cloud: the private area of your Apple ID on iPhone, the app-specific folder of your Google Drive on Android. The developer can see neither, and has no means to.

One thing to know

In return, we ask one thing

Lose the device and you lose the diary

There is no server holding a copy. That is the other side of this design.

Export to a file now and then, and keep that file somewhere other than the device. With this design, that is the one sure safeguard.