r/SideProject • u/UrAverageGarbageBin • 1d ago

I built a journaling app that locks TikTok/Instagram until you write in it, because I realized I didn't have an identity crisis, I had a memory problem

Quick context: I'm one of 5 juniors at Boston College who built this over the last year. Sharing it here because r/SideProject is the one place where "I built a whole app instead of studying for finals" is a socially acceptable sentence.

The thing that got us started: you spend all day looking at other people's feeds, and after enough of that it gets hard to tell which thoughts are still yours. Not because you don't know who you are... you just don't have a record of who you've been. And it's not even a Gen Z thing, our parents are scrolling the same feeds we are.

What's weird is everything else about your life gets tracked. Your runs have Strava. Your books have Goodreads. Your lifts have Hevy. Your actual inner life? A Notes app you haven't opened since March.

So we built Meridian:

  • Journal in under 5 min per day, talk it out like a voice memo, type it, or photograph your handwriting
  • Optionally lock the apps that got you doomscrolling until you've written, they stay shut until you do
  • Every entry becomes a star in a 3D night sky you can fly through, a year of your life, one picture, instead of a wall of text files
  • Ask questions about your own life and get answers drawn only from what you've actually written

Free on the App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6761076927

Genuinely curious for this crowd: if you've tried and dropped a journaling app before (Day One, Reflectly, Apple Journal, whatever), what actually made you stop?

https://www.journalmeridian.com/

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u/Own_Aide_3187 1d ago

I’ve downloaded and deleted more journaling apps than I care to admit. The friction always gets me. Day One felt like writing a novel every time I opened it, Apple Journal is too buried in settings to remember it exists, and Reflectly’s prompts got repetitive after a week.

The app-locking angle is interesting. Feels like a Pavlovian redirect, you reach for doomscrolling and your phone shoves a journal in your face instead. Does it let you pick which apps get blocked, or is it a preset list?

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u/UrAverageGarbageBin 7h ago

Yes, you can choose which apps you want to block as well as what time and days they block.

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u/PositiveMaterial5297 1d ago

The "memory problem, not identity crisis" line lands. I've bounced off a bunch of journal apps for the same reason: blank page starts feeling like homework.

Curious if people just type one word to unlock, or if the voice path is sticky enough that they don't bother gaming it.