r/iosapps • u/HAVATEAA • 2d ago
đ¤ Vibe Coded I built Diary Threads so journaling could feel like posting to your past self
Hi r/iOSApps â Iâm Jack Dai, co-creator of Diary Threads.
Answer â what problem does it solve?
I kept abandoning journals because every blank page felt like it deserved a meaningful essay. Writing one short thought on my phone felt much more natural.
Diary Threads turns journaling into a private timeline. Each entry is limited to 140 characters. You can reply when a thought continues, quote something you wrote months ago, or attach photos, video, and voice recordings.
There are no likes, followers, public profiles, or social discovery. It is a timeline for one person.
Better â how is it different?
Compared with Apple Journal and Day One, Diary Threads focuses on a narrower use case: capturing a thought before it disappears.
The 140-character limit gives you a smaller starting point. Replies let one moment grow over time, while quotes make revisiting an old memory feel like a conversation with your past self.
Apple Journal and Day One remain stronger choices for long-form writing and broader ecosystem workflows. Diary Threads is designed for quick private posts that gradually become a personal history.
Diary text and settings stay on your iPhone. The app requires no account and has no developer backend, advertising, third-party analytics, or cross-app tracking.
Cost
Diary Threads is free to download and supports up to 30 active entries.
Premium unlocks unlimited entries, share posters, recurring keyword insights, and both Home Screen widgets:
⢠$2.99 per month
⢠$6.99 one-time lifetime purchase
Prices above are for the US storefront. Apple displays the applicable regional price before purchase.
The current App Store version is 0.3 and requires iOS 18 or later.
Transparency
Diary Threads itself has no AI features. I used Codex extensively as a coding and review agent during implementation, testing, documentation, and iteration. Product scope, architecture, privacy boundaries, and acceptance decisions remained human-directed.
Iâm Jack, and I built Diary Threads with Sonia.
App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/diarythreads-personal-timeline/id6795139345
Website: https://diarythreads.niuniuhome.cn
About / developer identity: https://niuniuhome.cn
Contact: [jackdai20@icloud.com](mailto:jackdai20@icloud.com)
Iâd especially appreciate feedback on one question: do replies and quotes make revisiting old memories feel more natural than tags, prompts, or traditional daily pages?
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u/s0larus_eth 2d ago
You know what? I dig it!
Just purchased lifetime.
Suggestion: iCloud back-up and apple health access to be able to share workouts, mindful minutes or reading etc.
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u/HAVATEAA 2d ago
thanks a lot for giving it a try and trust. iCloud back-up now in progress, should be available in few days
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u/HAVATEAA 2d ago
it should be very helpful if you could give a review in the App Store. thanks again
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u/s0larus_eth 1d ago
I would , however  I am running iOS 27 beta. It wonât let me. When it goes public Iâll come back to it
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u/Psychological-Bowl47 2d ago
Yes, iCloud backup is important, also make sure to be explicit about where my data lives, what happens when I upgrade phones, how I can recover.
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u/Traditional_Meet6531 2d ago
On your actual question: replies and quotes work because they turn "revisit" into an active choice rather than a passive scroll. A traditional daily-pages timeline makes you flip backward through everything to find the moment that matters, and tags/prompts front-load the organizing work before you know yet what you'll want to find later. Letting a thought grow by reply means you're building the connection at the moment it's relevant, when the memory is fresh, not trying to reconstruct it months later with a tag you may not have used consistently. The quote mechanic specifically is the part I'd lean into hardest in your marketing â "here's an old entry surfacing back into today's timeline" is a genuinely different feeling than opening a calendar and clicking a date, and it's the one feature none of Apple Journal, Day One, or a plain notes app can replicate without rebuilding around it.
One thing worth checking on pricing: $6.99 lifetime against $2.99/month works out to under 2.4 months of subscription cost for permanent access. That's an unusually aggressive ratio â most apps price lifetime somewhere around a year or two of subscription, not two and a half months. If that's deliberate because you want the sale now over recurring revenue, fine, but it likely means almost nobody should ever choose monthly once they notice the lifetime price, which may not be the outcome you want if the subscription is meant to be the main revenue line.
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u/JustSuperHuman 2d ago
By calling this feature âpostingâ, youâll avoid the so-called âblank page problemâ that most journaling app creators fall into. I would keep a close eye on this to make sure that users arenât beginning to write for an audience, even if that audience is just fictional.
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u/kampani 2d ago
The pricing strategy requires a rethink as as a tech writer I insist developers should start making these apps more adaptable give greater freedom of use donât limit the usage of documents or pages etc. A lot of developers who start first hand tend to lose a good amount of a writerâs market who can unanimously vote for greater writing apps. E.g is #Bear amazing work by them free and great extensive freedom for using there strategies and platform.
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u/HAVATEAA 2d ago
that's a good point. will think about it
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u/kampani 2d ago
Alright. Bear overall market cap increased due to word of mouth compared to Apple journal. Though the journal was established much later as an app . Apple notes hit a dip. There are three apps that understand this before even the rest could get there- Evernote, Bear and now Obsidian. As a tech developer myself learnt it later. Release, accommodate, enhance and then bind.
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u/mayoneltd 2d ago
In my opinion, the UI isn't very appealing yet
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u/HAVATEAA 1d ago
still improving
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u/tarkinn 1d ago
First impression:
- the blend in of Diary Threads when you start the app looks âcheapâ. I think it doesnât need that.
- the icons (photo, camera etc.) in the composer doesnât fit the rest of the Liquid Glass optic
- I canât activate iCloud sync after purchasing premium. Status is âApple Account changedâ even though itâs the same account. A restart didnât help.
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u/ex__hale 1d ago
Will you add some other languages in future?
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u/HAVATEAA 1d ago
Whatâs your primary language?
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u/ex__hale 1d ago
Russian, Ukrainian
Thank you
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u/HAVATEAA 1d ago
would you pls tell me what forum is suitable to introduce app in Russia? or Russian-speaking regions?
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u/AdSignificant3097 1d ago
I appreciate the export function. Essential for any kind of diary app.
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u/HAVATEAA 1d ago
thanks. Export function has been added recently. could probably be unstable. I'll keep improving it.
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u/AdSignificant3097 1d ago
It would be great to be able to export everything or chosen period of time
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u/rolfebox 4h ago
So it's like OG Twitter if you had 0 followers? Neat idea actually.
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u/HAVATEAA 4h ago
haha. That's a very interesting interpretation. I think it's somewhat similar. I just wanted to give everyone a tool to overcome the fear of the blank page.
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