Private beta · iPhone
The journal that
writes itself.
Photos, places, music, sleep, workouts — woven into a complete, searchable memory of every day, automatically. Stored on your phone. Nowhere else. Built for people Day One and Apple Journal left wanting more.
Private by default. No account. No Retrography cloud. Optional AI only when you ask.
Thanks. One more thing?
I'm building this on my own and your notes shape what gets made next. If you can, tell me what brought you here, where you heard about it, or what you'd hope this could do for you.
Got it. Invite on its way.
Invites are automated — the TestFlight email comes from Apple, usually within minutes. If it doesn't arrive, check spam, then drop a line to beta@retrography.app.
One day in the archive
This is what a Thursday looks like.
- The entry you wrote, or dictated on a walk
- Every photo from the day, placed at the hour you took it
- The places you went, mapped, with arrival and leaving times
- The music you played, hour by hour
- Sleep, steps, workouts and the morning's weather
- The same date in past years, resurfaced every day
You lived it. Retrography wrote it down.
Kept whole, kept yours
Journal entries you wrote. Photos you took. Music you played. Places you walked through. Tasks you finished, and the news from that morning. One page per day, every day, indefinitely.
Everything stays on your phone. No accounts. No cloud but your own iCloud. When AI summarizes your months, your words travel encrypted from your phone straight to the model. They never touch our servers and are never stored.
From the beta inbox
Strangers, on why they signed up.
“Found it on Reddit, the screenshot looks amazing. Would love to give it a shot.”
“I’m on a perpetual hunt every few years for a better journal app. Especially one that doesn’t feel like a toy.”
“I really like Apple Journal, and the only thing I miss is the ‘On This Day’ feature.”
“No subscription. No roach motel. And ‘share’ entries via PDF.”
“I hate that my memory isn’t great. My wife and my friends often have clear, detailed memories.”
“This is a feature I’ve been looking for for a long time.”
from beta signup messages · 150+ testers in the private beta
Reading
What it does, one story at a time.
Engineering
Your phone has no idea when you left.
iOS reports arrivals reliably and departures rarely. What every location timeline quietly guesses — and how to guess honestly.
Trips
Every trip you took.
Found from your photos and your nights, named and flagged, back through your whole library.
Time travel
Zoom out.
Memory is not a list. Week, Month and Year views turn every period into one tile: trips, highlights, summary.
Philosophy
Days, not moments.
What taking the Apple Journal export apart taught me: precision belongs to what's measured, days to what's remembered.
Music
Your days have a soundtrack.
Spotify, Last.fm, and a built-in Shazam button — every track lands on your day.
Voice
Speak your day. Nothing leaves the phone.
On-device Whisper dictation — airplane-mode proof, even from CarPlay.
Drives
Every drive, logged and mapped.
No start button. CarPlay detection, routes on your day's map.
Your life, on paper.
Day sheets, photo books, travel logs — real vector PDFs.
The journal your sent folder already wrote.
Private IMAP sync, any provider, credentials never leave the Keychain.
Memory
On This Day, done properly.
The whole day a year ago — photos, places, weather, music — not just old text.
Photos
Keep the one.
Photos.app keeps all 18 shots. Retrography keeps the one that matters.
Places
Your places, remembered.
Google Timeline is gone. Your iPhone can keep a better one — privately.
Switching
Bring your journal with you.
Moving from Day One? Entries, photos, places, and weather come along.
Ownership
Never locked in.
Complete JSON archive, real vector PDFs. A journal you can leave is the only kind worth keeping.
Comparing options? Retrography vs Day One · vs Apple Journal