Out now on iPhone · Free to start
Your camera roll remembers what they looked like. Pocket Chronicle remembers what they were like.
A question about your kid every day, free forever. A mission to go with it, with membership. Answer in fifteen seconds, or skip it — nothing keeps score. Pocket Chronicle is a private childhood journal app that grows into a whole archive: every moment is filed with the prompt that caused it, so in 2040 you can search “what he was afraid of” and actually find something.
Free on iPhone. The daily question is free forever, and the first two weeks are open with no card.
01 · The problem
You have four thousand photos and almost no context
You know the ones. A blurry shot of a shoe. Him holding something up to the camera. A drawing you photographed because you couldn't keep it.
In ten years you'll have all of those and no idea why you took them.
The photo survives. The reason doesn't.
“Photograph their face mid-laugh. Burst mode. Take twenty, keep one.” — the one that stays is the one with the question still attached.
02 · The prompt engine
Two things a day. Three at the weekend.
There are 133 of them. Here's the deck — drag a card away, or filter it down to one kind.
or drag the card away
Something you'd never think to write down
What is your kid afraid of right now? Answer it in a sentence. This is the half that arrives every day whether you pay or not.
Sometimes there's nothing to upload
Take a photo, film thirty seconds, record their voice, or just go do something — get on the floor for ten minutes. Some missions produce a file. Some don't. Both count. One on a weekday, two at the weekend.
Nothing to tag, nothing to organise
The answer, the prompt that asked for it, the date it actually happened, and anything you captured all land on one timeline. Bigger missions land weekly; once a month something asks for a number — height, hand, foot — or sends you back through this month last year in your camera roll.
The prompt is saved with the moment
This is the whole idea, and no other app does it. Every photo album stores the photo. Pocket Chronicle stores the photo and the question that made you take it.
A picture of a half-eaten sandwich is nothing. A picture of a half-eaten sandwich filed under “what food is your kid refusing this week” is a story.
That's also why search works. You are not searching filenames and dates. You are searching the answers you gave — and each one comes back with the question that asked for it.
What food is your kid refusing this week?
Triangles. Specifically triangles. He checks.
Not everything worth keeping is a photograph
Most memory apps assume you have media. Half of what matters doesn't produce a file. One prompt — “get on the floor for ten minutes” — lands three different ways.
Record how they actually sound
Their voice changes faster than their face and nobody thinks to record it. Some missions ask for their voice — them singing, whatever they're singing; them telling a joke; two minutes of dinner with nobody announcing it. The recorder holds up to ten minutes.
On iOS 26 it's transcribed on your phone, so you can search a recording you'll never have time to relisten to. On an older iPhone the recording is saved and kept exactly the same way — it simply has no transcript behind it.
Free on iPhone. The daily question is free forever, and the first two weeks are open with no card.
No streaks. No badges. No red.
Skip a day and nothing happens. Skip a week and nothing happens. Missed prompts stack quietly and expire after two weeks, and the app never mentions it again.
There is no counter to break, no confetti when you comply, and nothing in the interface turns red because you were busy.
An app that punishes a parent for a hard week is a bad parenting app. That's a design decision, not a missing feature.
03 · The archive
Built to be searched, not scrolled
A timeline with their age on every day
Scan it by date. Age is stamped on every entry, so you're not doing arithmetic to work out whether he was three or four. The point of an archive isn't that it's stored. It's that somebody can find something in it.
Search everything — even what was spoken
Everything you wrote, every caption you added, and every transcript of something they said. Voice notes recorded on iOS 26 are transcribed on your phone, so a sentence forty seconds into a recording you'll never relisten to is still one search away. On an older iPhone the recording is kept without one.
The question and the answer, one object
Every entry keeps the prompt that caused it. And backdating is normal here, not a workaround — the day something happened and the day you got around to writing it down are two different facts, and both are kept. And Look back walks your camera roll month by month, showing you the months you have never written about. It reads dates and counts on your phone and uploads nothing until you pick a photograph.
05 · The handoff
It isn't yours forever. That's the point.
Everything in here is being kept for one person, and it isn't you. When your family decides they're ready, they get all of it — the entries, the photos, the recordings, the questions. Some things you can seal until a birthday you choose. A letter meant for eighteen stays shut until eighteen.
The daily question is always free. Here's what the rest of the day costs.
Free — not a trial
$0
A question about your kid every day, forever. Unlimited written and did-it entries. Search and a full export, always.
Membership
$59.99/year
Two months free versus monthly — or $5.99 a month. Adds the missions, the photographs, the video, the voice notes and the second parent. One membership covers the whole household: every kid, both parents. Everything open for two weeks first — no card, nothing to cancel.
Nothing you write or capture is ever locked behind payment. Membership buys more of the day — never access to your own archive.
See what's in each tier →It’s on the App Store.
Free to start, on iPhone. The daily question arrives every morning and stays free forever; everything else is open for two weeks with no card and nothing to cancel.
Or one question. Tonight.
No phone required. The prompts come by email too — the same ones from the deck, one a day, free — and an answer you write in a notebook tonight files under tonight whenever you get round to typing it in.
- Free, and not a trial — the email prompts stay free whether you install the app or not.
- No third-party trackers, no ad pixels, no analytics on this page. Your address goes nowhere else.
- One click unsubscribes, and we say so in every send.
Your next three mornings