An On This Day Journal for iPhone
You probably know the little jolt already: your phone offers up a photo from this day three years ago, and for a moment you’re back in that kitchen, that trip, that haircut. Photos are good at this. But the camera only caught what it could see — not the joke that made that dinner funny, or the thing you were quietly hoping for on the drive home.
An on this day journal keeps the part the camera misses: one written line per day, returned to you on that same date in the years after. Little Memory has been exactly that since 2011 — a quiet little time capsule holding over 1,000,000 memories from over 30,000 people, featured by Apple three times.
Your memories come back
Write one line tonight and that’s your journaling for the day. Seven days on it turns up again, and after that it keeps turning up.
- a week later
- a month
- three months
- six months
- a year
- every year after
little memory
now
Exactly 1 year ago
Walked the long way home for no reason.
Have it come to you at an hour you pick, or leave notifications off and find them waiting the next time you open the app.
This day, every year you’ve kept
Open the app on any day and there they are: your lines from this date in each of your other years. In your second year that’s a single line, and it’s already a small time machine. By your fifth, each day carries a little stack — the you of several Julys, sitting together on one screen. (If you’ve seen the paper five-year memory books, it’s that same pleasure, without the last page.)
It’s easy to assume the dull lines won’t be worth much later, and that turns out to be the thing people get wrong most reliably. When researchers had people read back their own everyday moments months afterward, the ones they’d rated as most ordinary at the time were the ones they’d most underestimated.
You don’t have to wait a year
The looking-back starts long before your first anniversary. Little Memory also brings back what you wrote a week ago and a month ago, so the first happy returns arrive in your first month. Sometimes an old line lands on exactly the right day — people here call those happy coincidences.
The writing side asks almost nothing
For this day to have something waiting next year, tonight only needs one line: the joke from dinner, the first rain of the season, the name of the song in the car. About fifteen seconds, and it’s a little memory for your future self. No prompts, no empty page to face. If you’d rather not open anything, a quiet reminder arrives in the evening, and replying to it saves the day’s line.
And if a day slips by, it simply slips by. Next year that date will be quiet, and the dates around it won’t mind.
The little extras
- Photos. Some days the memory is a picture — attach it.
- Search. Every on-this-day line is findable across all your years.
- Gentle stats. Streaks if you like them, most used words, and how your emotions have drifted over time.
- Safekeeping. Automated nightly backups to Dropbox, and you can export everything at any time.
I love this app. It is non intrusive. I love the anniversary memories that pop up.
c in canada, App Store Review
Just for you
One-line memories tend to be the honest ones, so yours are always private by default. No social media login required, and support comes straight from the developer.
If the writing habit is the part you’re curious about, there’s a page on the one line a day approach and the wider idea of a daily memory journal. If what brought you here is that the weeks keep running together, there’s a page on remembering every day, and if it’s that Timehop keeps coming up thin, there’s a page on that. Each line is also a small letter to your future self. Or see how Little Memory compares to other journaling apps, or take the little tour.
