The story & philosophy of D·Diary
A point of reference.
A life of your own.
Choose your own origin. Understand the paths you’ve taken.
Keep looking for the direction that feels like yours.
01 / It began with a personal need
I wanted a journal
for my own life.
I first wanted to make an app I could use on my own phone. I had no experience building an app. Learning how to make one became a beginning of its own.
The question was simple: after a new part of my life began, how could I see what had changed?
In the earliest idea, I used a first day in the United States as a point of reference. Each entry could tell me where that day belonged in the life unfolding around it.
A calendar date became something personal: a distance from a beginning that mattered to me.
02 / Several beginnings, at once
One day.
More than one story.
You can be new to a city and years into a relationship. Beginning a skill and preparing for a change in work.
I wanted to keep these experiences together, with a point of reference for each one. These became Life Anchors.
One entry can belong to a main timeline and, with Pro, a secondary timeline. The same moment keeps its place in both stories.
In Descartes, you can move from a single entry to a longer stretch of life, then focus another timeline and see those days from a different angle.
Explore Life Coordinates03 / A beginning can be ahead of you
The days before
belong here, too.
A future date can become a Life Anchor: the first day of university, an exam, or the start of a new life.
The waiting, the preparation, the small changes along the way — they are already part of the story.
A past beginning helps you look back. A future beginning gives the days leading up to it a place.
Choose a past or future Anchor04 / Finding a language for the idea
The D is
for Descartes.
The idea began with a journal and relative days. Later, while looking for a name, Descartes’ work connecting algebra and geometry gave it a fitting point of reference.
A point becomes easier to describe when it has an origin. A day becomes easier to understand when you can place it beside a meaningful moment in your own life.
That is the question at the heart of D·Diary: what can we see when our days have a personal point of reference?
- D
- Descartes · A way of seeing
- ·
- An origin · Chosen by you
- Diary
- A life · In your own words
In your own coordinates,
see who you are becoming.
Five things we believe
Your life gives
the numbers meaning.
- 01
You choose the origin.
A move, a meeting, a first practice. You decide which moments deserve a place in your story.
- 02
Life can hold many timelines.
One part of life can be beginning while another has been unfolding for years. Each has its own context.
- 03
Keep the circumstances.
Words, photos, sounds, dates, places and feelings help a memory keep the world around it.
- 04
A number is a point of reflection.
Day 100 invites you to look back. Your entries hold what happened. A quiet week or a pause is part of life, too.
- 05
The story and its meaning stay yours.
You choose how to understand your experiences. You should also be able to keep your records and take them with you.
05 / Other beginnings, a wider perspective
A moment can
become an origin.
A discovery, a work of art, a decision to begin. Looking at a person’s actions in history can give the years that follow a different meaning.
D·Diary’s historical origin stories offer that wider perspective. The personal question remains yours: which day would you choose as a beginning?
The smallest ordinary start can be worth remembering, long before you know where it will lead.
06 / A journal you can keep coming back to
There is room
to begin again.
I want the journal to make it easier to return to your own experiences: to notice what keeps happening, what has changed, and what still matters.
You can pause and return. The app’s record of returning after a break is one small way of acknowledging that rhythm.
I also want more people to have a complete journal they can use. Free covers core journaling and reflection; Pro supports the work and adds more flexibility.
Explore Free & ProI want to leave honest coordinates, then slowly understand who I am becoming.
— Gongming Liu
Your entries stay on your device, with private iCloud support, backups and exports to help you preserve them.
D·Diary helps you keep and observe your experiences. The interpretation, the meaning and the next direction belong to you.
Begin wherever you are
Start with a day
that matters.
A new beginning. A moment of change.
A direction you want to explore.