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 journalers, featured by Apple three times.

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 Augusts, sitting together on one screen. (If you’ve seen the paper five-year memory books, it’s that same pleasure, without the last page.)

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. No prompts, no empty page to face. A gentle reminder email arrives each evening, and hitting reply saves the day’s line — some nights that’s the whole ritual, and that’s plenty.

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 or Google Drive, and you can export everything at any time.

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. Or see how Little Memory compares to other journaling apps, or take the little tour.