Features
What happens in one day
shouldn’t live in five apps.
What you wrote, what you have to do, what you’re trying to keep up, the people on your mind, the dates you’re holding — in Trace they sit on one line. The Today page keeps them together, and at night they go into the letter together too.
Journal
One line counts.
No pressure to write a full entry, no pressure to write every day. An entry can be nine words — or everything from a whole trip.
- It holds anything. Photos, video, Live Photos, voice notes and a quick finger sketch, all in the same entry.
- It keeps the scene. The weather, your mood, the place, tags, and whoever was there with you.
- Cut out the subject. Tap “Cut out” while picking a photo and the subject lifts off its background, straight into your entry on a transparent layer. It runs on your phone; the original is never touched.
- Backfill an older day. The signature and the seal follow that day, not today — it won’t pretend you wrote it now.
- Leave a note for your past self. Keep writing under an old entry, under a different nickname and avatar if you like.
- Find it again. Full-text search, plus filters by person, place, tag and notebook.
Notebooks
Filed by volume,
and it opens as paper.
“Ordinary Days,” “Travel Scraps,” “Home,” “Books I Read” — entries can be filed into separate notebooks. They stand on a shelf, entry counts printed on the spines.
- Twelve bindings. The cover is chosen from the notebook’s name, or pick your own — or use one of your photos.
- It really turns. Page by page, the paper curls around your finger and the light follows the fold.
- There are things on the page. Handwritten date labels, washi tape, stickers, a page number in the corner — generated from the entries, so flipping back shows the same page.
- Take the whole book with you. Render it as a vertical video of the pages actually turning, then save or share it.
- Don’t want notebooks? Turn them off. It’s a display preference you can switch off entirely — no data changes.
To-dos
Today’s work
sits inside today.
Not another list app. Your to-dos live on the same page as what you write — and the thing you finished shows up in tonight’s letter.
- See it by time. Today, tomorrow, this week, this month — or open the full timeline and month calendar.
- Repeats and roll-over. What you didn’t finish doesn’t vanish; it moves to the next day and waits.
- A line when you finish. Tick it off and write a sentence — that sentence stays with the entry.
- You choose where untimed items land. Top of the day, or tucked at the end.
- Tick it from the Home Screen. One tap in the widget, no app needed.
Goals
From “did I?”
to “how much?”
Habits and goals with an end date both fit. Checking off is only one way — for something like “six glasses of water a day,” you can record how many you actually drank.
- Two ways to log. Tap to check off, or enter an amount; change the target and progress recalculates.
- Your own rhythm. Daily, N times a week, N times a month, or fixed weekdays.
- Rest days don’t count as misses. A day outside the rhythm won’t nag you and won’t break a streak.
- You can see it add up. Lay the year out by month, with your longest streak printed on top.
- Unlimited goals, free forever.
People
Every time you wrote
about them, in one place.
Family, friends, a partner — or anyone you want to keep hold of. Not a contact list. What actually happened between you.
- Your story together. How many times you’ve written about them, when the last time was, which places keep showing up, and every photo from those entries.
- A sense of rhythm. If it’s been a while, it says so; save a number and you’re one tap from calling.
- Their dates. Days until a birthday, the age they’ll turn — the same system as important dates.
- Order them yourself. Avatars can have their background removed in one tap.
Important dates
The dates you hold onto,
without holding onto them.
Birthdays, anniversaries, countdowns, lunar dates, traditional festivals, and the days you keep for remembering.
- Lunar dates, natively. Birthdays and memorial days kept on the lunar calendar convert to the Gregorian date each year.
- Reminders that reach you. Local notifications, Home Screen widgets, Lock Screen and Dynamic Island.
- Sync to your calendar. Grant access and they’re written into the system calendar alongside everything else.
- Make a countdown card. A finished image you can send to someone.
Period · optional, off by default
If you need it,
it’s here too.
Start, end, or backfill a past stretch in one step from the Today page. Dates show up in the journal’s month calendar, so you can read them next to what you wrote on those days.
- Dates live only in Apple Health. Never in Trace’s database, never in iCloud sync, never in a zip backup. Turn the feature off and the Health records stay where they are.
- It states, it doesn’t predict. It tells you “day 2.” It won’t tell you when it ends, and it makes no medical claims.
- It only says kind things. A greeting on the first day; from day eight it switches to “tap here when it’s over.”
Home Screen & Lock Screen
Useful without opening it.
All five widgets are free, they roll over at midnight on their own, and they follow whichever theme you picked.
- Today’s goals — one ring: how many you’ve tended, how many are left.
- To-dos — what’s next, and you can tick it right on the Home Screen.
- Dates coming up — “it’s today” shows up by itself.
- People — how long it’s been since you talked.
- Today’s writing — how many entries so far today.
- Lock Screen & Dynamic Island — Live Activities put goals, to-dos, dates and people on your Lock Screen (Pro).
Make it yours
24 themes,
all of them free.
Page backgrounds, cards, buttons, widgets, Live Activities and share cards all change together as a set. Six bundled fonts adapt to the app’s language — including LXGW WenKai, the one this site is set in. A background photo you’ve already chosen stays exactly where it is.
The cat on the Today page changes pose with the time of day. The empty states for to-dos, goals, journal and people each have their own drawing.