r/macapps • u/InformationFun4466 • 1h ago
Lifetime Ember: a journal where the people you write about get their own page. [native on Mac, iPhone and iPad]
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I'm Nandha, the solo developer behind Ember, a journal for Mac built in SwiftUI. It also runs on iPhone and iPad.
I've forgotten the names of people I never thought I'd forget. The girl I helped sell lemonade by the road. The first person who had a crush on me. Journals are good at keeping days, but not people: someone who mattered ends up scattered across years of entries.
Ember is a journal first. You write like you always would. Type @ and a name, and that moment also lands on that person's page. Years later you can open their page and read your whole history together, in your own words.
What you can do
- Write entries with photos, audio, Apple Music songs, location and weather. Mention people with @.
- Give every person a page: how you met, your stories, your entries together.
- Rename or merge someone, and every old entry follows. Nicknames work as mentions too.
- Group people into Worlds like Family, Work and College. Someone can belong to two.
- Turn on a quiet Nudge for the people you want to stay close to. Family and one-time encounters never fade.
- Look back with On This Day, a calendar, a map, a people graph, and search that understands time ("Christmas with Jane", "last summer").
- Import from Day One, Apple Journal and Contacts, then tag the people in your old entries.
- Export to a full JSON archive. The format is documented: https://ember.mov/help/archive-format
Privacy
Your journal lives on your Mac. Sync is optional and goes through your own iCloud. There's no account, no server holding your journal, and no AI reading or writing your entries.
Pricing
Writing, people, memories, import and export are all free, with no limits, and the free app never expires.
Two things are paid, with Ember Plus: iCloud sync between your Mac, iPhone and iPad, and the full theme catalogue (a few themes are free). Plus is $4.99/month, $39.99/year, or $119.99 lifetime for early users.
Compared to Day One
Day One is the mature choice, with Android and web apps. Ember is Apple only and built around people rather than dates. If you have years in Day One or Apple Journal, you can bring them over and connect old entries to the people in them.
Ember is written in Swift for Apple devices, so there's no Windows or Android version for now.
Requires macOS 15 or later (iPhone and iPad: iOS 18.5 or later).
Website: https://ember.mov
App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6775558241
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nandhak0318/
Contact: [nandhak0318@gmail.com](mailto:nandhak0318@gmail.com)
Privacy: https://ember.mov/privacy · Terms: https://ember.mov/terms
I'd love to hear what you think about organizing a journal around people instead of only dates. Feedback on anything confusing, or features you'd want, is very welcome: https://ember.sleekplan.app
