Gratify: Daily Journal & Diary

Write a sentence, keep a moment, shake a jar to find it again. A cosy gratitude journal for people who keep quitting journals.

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Inspiration

Most journaling apps assume you have twenty quiet minutes and something important to say. Most days we have neither. We have one small thing: a text that made us smile, a win at work, a worry we'd like to put down. Streaks, blank pages and "you missed 4 days" notifications turn that small thing into homework, so people quit.

We wanted a journal that asks for a sentence, not a session. It should be somewhere to keep the good things so you can find them again on a hard day. And it should stay private: no account, no server, and no one reading your diary.

What it does

Gratify is a native iPhone and iPad journal built around three ideas.

✍️ Write a little

  • Moments for one line and Journal pages for when you want to write more. Both can have a title, a mood and photos.
  • A week strip and calendar timeline, with search and filters.
  • Drafts save automatically and survive the app being closed.
  • Voice input, with no audio saved.
  • Looking back: return to an entry later and add a dated reflection. On supported devices, Apple's on-device Foundation Models can suggest a reflection question. AI questions are always labelled, and only that one entry's text is used.

🫙 Keep it in jars

  • Moments go into colourful glass jars: Gratitude, Happiness, Calm, 11:11 Wish, Motivation, Future Me, Ideas, Kindness, Dream Life, and your own custom jars.
  • Shake or tap a jar to draw a memory back out.

🌿 Take a pause

  • Encourage me: a kind reminder paired with something you wrote.
  • Help me relax: pop drifting bubbles, burn a worry on paper, or play in a little pool.
  • Help me notice: a one-minute grounding exercise.

Also included:

  • Liquid Glass on iOS 26.
  • Siri and Shortcuts: "Write a moment in Gratify".
  • Home Screen and Lock Screen widgets.
  • Daily reminders and an 11:11 wish nudge.
  • Export any entry as an image or PDF in 14 paper themes.
  • Full Dynamic Type, VoiceOver and reduced-motion support.

No streaks. No guilt. No account.

How we built it

  • SwiftUI and Swift 6, targeting iOS 17 and later.
  • SwiftData with versioned schemas, plus a separate device-only store for drafts.
  • Optional CloudKit sync into the user's private iCloud database. There's no backend of ours.
  • Foundation Models and SpeechAnalyzer on iOS 26, with fallbacks on older devices.
  • App Intents (including the .journal.entry App Schema) and WidgetKit.
  • Metal shaders and native animation for the Pause activities, and a custom paper-grain surface.
  • RevenueCat for all purchases:
    • RevenueCat Paywalls, configured in the dashboard, so prices and experiments change without an app update.
    • Customer Center, so subscribers can cancel, get refunds or change plans in-app.
    • customerInfoStream, so renewals, refunds and grace periods show up live.
    • Entitlement matching that survives repricing: ent_yearly_2027_24 works with no code change, and an unrecognised active entitlement still grants access.
    • A shared app user ID through iCloud, so all of a person's devices count as one customer and Plus unlocks without tapping Restore.

How it makes money

Freemium. The free tier is a complete journal:

  • Unlimited writing
  • Four jars
  • Reflections and reminders
  • One photo per entry
  • A daily session of every Pause activity

Gratify Plus (Monthly, Yearly or Lifetime) adds:

  • Every jar and unlimited custom jars
  • Unlimited photos per entry
  • All 14 export themes
  • Unlimited Pause sessions
  • iCloud sync

We charge for more, never for access to your own writing. When Plus ends, nothing is deleted or locked.

Challenges we ran into

  • Sync that respects "no." A diary going to the cloud should be a choice. We had to tell apart never asked and said no across devices, and offer sync exactly once, right after purchase.
  • Lapsed subscriptions. We designed the lapse notice, a one-time banner and a free iCloud recovery so nobody believes they have a backup they don't.
  • One codebase from iOS 17 to iOS 26, with Liquid Glass, on-device AI and new speech APIs, plus equivalent experiences on older systems.
  • Honest AI. Suggestions are labelled, limited to one entry, cancelled when the app goes to the background, and never required.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • A journal that feels like paper and glass, not a form.
  • A free tier generous enough to recommend. People pay for sync and creativity, not to escape a lockout.
  • A privacy promise we can make in one line: your writing never leaves your devices, except to your own iCloud.

What we learned

  • Letting RevenueCat own entitlements and paywalls turned pricing into a dashboard decision instead of an app release.
  • The best moment to offer sync is straight after purchase, when the customer has just decided they want Plus.
  • Gentle design is hard engineering. Much of the work went into the states people rarely see: lapses, restores and failed downloads.

What's next for Gratify

  • Paywall A/B tests with RevenueCat Experiments
  • An introductory free trial
  • More Pause activities and jar themes
  • A Mac app and localisation

Built With

  • app-intents
  • apple-intelligence
  • cloudkit
  • foundation-models
  • icloud
  • ios
  • ipados
  • liquid-glass
  • metal
  • photosui
  • revenuecat
  • revenuecat-customer-center
  • revenuecat-paywalls
  • shortcuts
  • siri
  • speech
  • speechanalyzer
  • storekit
  • swift
  • swiftdata
  • swiftui
  • usernotifications
  • widgetkit
  • xcode
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