Dear Diary: A Private, Offline Mood Journal for Android

#androidapp #deardiary #journalingapp #moodjournal

A quick look at one of the small Android apps I'm building solo, with .NET MAUI, under Horizon Software.

Most journaling apps want you to create an account, sync to a cloud, and trust a company with your most private thoughts. Dear Diary takes the opposite view. It’s a free Android journal that keeps every word, mood and photo on your phone — no account, no login, no cloud — and quietly helps you notice the patterns in how you’ve been feeling.

Start with how you feel

Every entry begins with a simple mood check-in — calm, content, tired, low or stressed — and then you write. Some days you’ll have plenty to say; other days you won’t know where to start, and that’s exactly what the roughly 150 built-in prompts are for. A single gentle question is often all it takes to get the words moving.

Echoes: a journal that notices

Dear Diary’s signature feature is Echoes, and it works entirely on your device. It can gently flag when your words read differently to the mood you tapped, resurface past entries where you wrote about the same thing before, and show a light, plain-language reflection of your recent mood trend. Echoes only ever describes what you’ve actually logged — it never diagnoses, and it never judges.

See your months at a glance

A month calendar gives every day a mood-colour dot, so a single glance shows how a week or a month really went. On This Day brings back entries from the same date in previous years, and full-text search and tags let you find any moment you’ve written down — the good days and the hard ones alike.

Private by design

This is the part that matters most. Everything you write stays on your device, in a local database and local files. There’s no cloud sync and no backup to us, so nothing ever leaves your phone unless you choose to export it. You can lock the app with a PIN, attach photos that are never uploaded, and export any date range to plain text or PDF — always free, never behind an ad. And if you’re going through a hard time, the built-in Get Support screen lists region-appropriate helplines and stays completely ad-free.

What you get

Works 100% offline — no account, no login, no cloud
A mood check-in and around 150 optional writing prompts
Echoes: gentle nudges, related past entries and a light mood-trend card
A month calendar with a mood-colour dot for every day
On This Day, tags and full-text search across everything
Attach photos and lock the app with a PIN — all kept on-device
Free export to text or PDF, and an always ad-free Get Support screen
Free to download

Get it on Google Play
Want the quick tour first? See the Dear Diary app page.

Frequently asked questions

Is Dear Diary really private and offline?

Yes — that’s the whole point. There’s no account, no login and no cloud. Your moods, writing, tags and photos are stored only on your device, and uninstalling the app removes them for good.

Is Dear Diary free?

Yes — Dear Diary is free to download from Google Play. It’s supported by ads, but the Get Support screen never shows any.

What is Echoes?

An on-device reflection feature: it can nudge you when your words don’t match the mood you tapped, resurface related past entries, and show a light trend of your recent moods. It only describes what you’ve logged — it never diagnoses.