SnapJournal-Project

Privacy-first offline Polaroid journal for iOS. Built with SwiftUI & MVVM, it captures memories, tracks moods, secures notes with Face ID, and keeps everything on-device.

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📸 SnapJournal

A tactile, private, and offline-first Polaroid journaling app built natively for iOS.

iOS 17.0+ Swift 5.9+ SwiftUI Architecture Offline First License

🌟 Overview

SnapJournal re-imagines daily journaling through the tangible nostalgia of Polaroid photography combined with modern iOS design principles. Capture moments, attach emotion-driven color gradients, jot down public reflections, and lock confidential memories on the back of your polaroids using Face ID / Touch ID.

SnapJournal is 100% native, private, and offline-first. All your photos and metadata are stored locally on your device with zero tracking, zero cloud dependencies, and zero accounts.

✨ Key Features

📸 Tactile Polaroid Cards

  • Instant Eject Experience: Authentic sound effects (AVAudioPlayer) and haptic feedback when capturing or creating moments.
  • Dual-Sided Memory Cards:
    • Front Face: High-resolution image framing, emotion-tinted background gradients, and public reflections.
    • Back Face: Lined paper aesthetic for private notes and deeper reflections.
  • 3D Flip & Interactive Gesture: Tap edges or shake device to trigger smooth 3D rotation card flips (rotation3DEffect).
  • Pinch-to-Zoom: Fluid magnification and panning gesture support to inspect photo details.

🔒 Biometric & Device Security

  • LocalAuthentication Protection: Private back notes are automatically locked behind Face ID, Touch ID, or device passcode.
  • Zero Cloud Exposure: Your private journal entries stay strictly on your device hardware.

🎨 Interactive Mood Mosaic

  • Visual Calendar: Color-coded month grid representing your emotional journey day-by-day.
  • Adaptive Multi-Moment Clipping: Dynamic geometrical clip shapes (half-split, quadrant split, diagonal slices) when multiple moments occur on the same date.
  • Interactive Day Anchors & Popovers: Tap any day to inspect individual moments with smooth hero transition animations.

📚 Memory Shelf & Binder Albums

  • Custom Shelving: Organize your polaroids into physical-style photo binders.
  • Custom Sticker Icons: Personalize albums with dozens of SF Symbols stickers.
  • Dynamic Spine Gradients: Album covers dynamically calculate their dominant emotion and render matching gradients.
  • Interactive Pager: Flip through album polaroids seamlessly in a full-screen card viewer.

💾 100% On-Device & Offline Storage

  • Local Image Storage: Photos are saved to the app's DocumentDirectory with JPEG compression and atomic disk writes.
  • Fast Metadata Persistence: Metadata and album structures are safely serialized via Codable into UserDefaults.
  • Offline Sentence Starters: Built-in emotion-curated reflection prompts that work offline without internet access (with optional support for iOS 26+ FoundationModels on-device LLM).

📤 High-Res Polaroid Exporting

  • Export to Photos: Render polaroid cards into crisp image files using SwiftUI ImageRenderer and save them directly to your device library (PHPhotoLibrary).

🏗 Architecture & Tech Stack

SnapJournal strictly follows the MVVM (Model-View-ViewModel) pattern powered by Apple's modern Observation framework (@Observable).

SnapJournal
├── App/
│   ├── SnapJournalApp.swift         # Main App Entry & Scene Lifecycle
│   └── MainTabView.swift            # Root Tab Bar Navigation & Glassmorphism
├── Core/
│   ├── Models/                      # Data Entities (Codable & Identifiable)
│   │   ├── Moment.swift             # Polaroid Moment schema
│   │   ├── Album.swift              # Shelf Album schema & sticker options
│   │   ├── Emotion.swift            # Emotion gradient palettes & definitions
│   │   └── PhotoSource.swift        # Camera vs. Library photo source enum
│   ├── ViewModels/                  # Reactive @Observable Data Stores
│   │   ├── MomentStore.swift        # Local disk & UserDefaults CRUD for Moments
│   │   └── AlbumStore.swift         # Album creation & collection manager
│   └── Utilities/                   # Helpers & Native Integrations
│       ├── Color+Theme.swift        # Theme system colors & lined paper assets
│       ├── LiquidGlassBackground.swift # Glassmorphic UI utilities
│       ├── PolaroidSoundPlayer.swift# Audio playback for camera eject sound
│       └── ShakeDetector.swift      # Motion shake event notification
└── Features/                        # SwiftUI Views by Feature Modules
    ├── Journal/                     # ContentView, MomentDetailView, ReflectionView
    ├── Mosaic/                      # MoodMosaicView, DayMosaicCell, ClipShapes
    ├── Shelf/                       # BookshelfView, BinderCard, PolaroidPagerView
    └── Common/                      # CameraPickerView, EmotionSheet, SplashView

Frameworks Used

  • SwiftUI – Modern declarative UI framework.
  • Observation (@Observable) – Fine-grained reactive state management.
  • Foundation & UserDefaults – JSONEncoder/JSONDecoder data persistence.
  • FileManager – Efficient local disk storage for high-resolution images.
  • LocalAuthentication – Native Face ID / Touch ID security verification.
  • PhotosUI & AVFoundation – System image picker and custom camera interface.
  • UIKit Integration – Native share sheets, haptic feedback, and window gestures.

🚀 Getting Started

Prerequisites

  • macOS: Sonoma 14.0 or later
  • Xcode: 15.0 or later
  • iOS Deployment Target: iOS 17.0+

Build & Run Instructions

  1. Clone the repository:

    git clone https://github.com/your-username/SnapJournal.git
cd SnapJournal/SnapJournal_SSC_Project

  2. Open in Xcode:

    open SnapJournal_SSC_Project.xcodeproj

  3. Select Target & Simulator/Device:

    • Select the SnapJournal_SSC_Project scheme.
    • Choose an iOS Simulator (e.g., iPhone 15 Pro) or a connected iOS device.

  4. Build and Run:

    • Press Cmd + R to build and launch the application.

🔒 Privacy & Permissions

SnapJournal places user privacy above all else:

Permission Usage Description
NSCameraUsageDescription SnapJournal requires camera access to capture instant polaroid photos directly inside the app.
NSPhotoLibraryUsageDescription SnapJournal accesses your photo library to let you select memories to turn into polaroids.
NSPhotoLibraryAddUsageDescription Required to export rendered polaroid cards back to your Photos library.
NSFaceIDUsageDescription Enables Face ID authentication to unlock private back notes on polaroids.

📄 License

Distributed under the MIT License. See LICENSE for more information.

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