Encrypted on your device
Entries are encrypted where they are written. The key is held in your phone’s secure storage and never leaves it.
Sensemaking Personal
A page a day, and the shape of it later.
A journal on your phone. Record an experience, reflect on it, and explore patterns as they emerge.
- Your entries are encrypted on your phone and never sent to us
- A question to answer, so a blank page is never the ask
- Patterns drawn from your own reflections, once there are enough to be honest
How it works
Start with writing and reflection. Explore patterns when you’re ready.
Choose your questions
Pick a set of prompts to write against. You can change it later, or keep more than one for different parts of your life.
Write a page
A few lines is a page. Add a photo or a voice note if it helps. There is no minimum and nothing to finish.
Answer the reflection
After writing, place a few marks — where your attention sat, how the week felt. Seconds, and optional.
See the shape of it
Once there are a few entries, Patterns draws the line through them. It stays empty until it would be honest.
It stays on this device
Your journal stays on your device. Spryng does not hold a copy.
We never receive what you write
The app makes one network call: fetching the question sets. Nothing you write travels the other way.
Backups only you can open
Back up to your own iCloud or Google Drive, encrypted with a passphrase only you hold. Without it the file cannot be opened, by us or by anyone.
Leave with your writing
Export everything as readable files or a printable book, whenever you like. Backup and export work whether or not you subscribe.
The full detail is in the privacy policy for this app, which is the same document it links to from Settings. If you want to leave, deleting your account takes a minute and does not need the app installed.
Backing up to your own Google Drive or iCloud
Because the journal lives on your phone, a backup is the only thing standing between a lost handset and lost writing. So the app can put an encrypted copy in storage you already own — your Google Drive or your iCloud — and nowhere else. It is optional, and the journal works without it.
Only ever when you ask
Nothing is uploaded on its own. A backup happens when you start one in Settings, and the app has no background upload and no sync loop.
One permission, and the narrowest one
On Google Drive the app asks for a single permission — drive.appdata. It grants access to a private application folder that this app creates, and to nothing else. The app cannot see, open, list or change any other file in your Drive, including files another app put in its own application folder.
Encrypted before it leaves the phone
The backup is a single file, encrypted on your device with a passphrase you choose. What reaches Drive is already unreadable without it. We do not have the passphrase and cannot recover the file if you lose it.
Yours to withdraw
Remove the app’s access whenever you like, from your Google Account’s third-party connections page. Doing so stops further backups and leaves the file already there; you can delete that from Drive’s application-data storage.
iCloud works the same way
On an iPhone or iPad the app writes the same encrypted file to your own iCloud container. Same rule: your storage, your passphrase, started by you.
How the app handles data received through Google APIs, including its adherence to the Google API Services User Data Policy, is set out in the privacy policy.
Patterns, once they mean something
The reflections you add build a picture of how your framing shifts over time. Patterns stays empty until there are enough entries to say something true — a line through three points is a drawing, not a finding.
None of that analysis leaves your device either. It is computed where it is shown.
A look at it
Free to keep, paid to go further
Writing, reminders, export and backup are part of the free journal. The instrument-editing add-on is $49/yr. It adds the question catalog, more than one instrument at a time, and the editor for writing your own questions. The Personal plan itself is free.
Subscriptions renew until you cancel them. The Terms of service say how, and the Privacy policy says what the app does and does not send.
Questions people ask first
- Is this the same as Journally?
- No. Journally is for participants contributing to a facilitator’s study, where the point is that the group learns something together. Sensemaking Personal is a private journal — nobody else sees it, and there is no study behind it.
- What does it cost?
- The journal is free. The instrument-editing add-on is $49/yr. The Personal plan itself is not a paid plan.
- What do I get for paying?
- The instrument-editing add-on ($49/yr) adds the question catalog, more than one instrument at a time, and the editor for writing your own questions. Your entries, reminders, export and backup are part of the free journal and stay that way.
- What happens if I stop paying?
- Nothing you have written goes anywhere. It stays on your device, still exportable and still backed up.
- Do I need an account?
- For a subscription, yes — it is what carries the subscription between your devices. It is not where your journal lives; that is your phone, and only your phone.
Looking for the app participants use in a facilitated study? That is Journally.