A private journal for iPhone
Notice what shapes your days.
Log how you feel and what you do, a little at a time. Patterns quietly looks for what tends to go together, so the things you half-suspected become a little clearer.
No account. No cloud. Your journal is encrypted and stays on your iPhone.
Headaches were logged more often the day after nights with under 6 hours of sleep.
How it works
Small notes, in your own words. Over time, a clearer picture.
There's no right way to use Patterns. Log when you remember, skip the days you don't. It's here to help, not to keep score.
Choose what matters to you
Make a tracker for anything: a feeling, a symptom, a habit, a medication, a walk. Give it the details that are useful, like a 1–10 scale, a choice, a duration or a place.
Log it on the calendar
Tap + and add a note in a few seconds. Each thing you log becomes a small coloured dot on that day, so a month tells its own story at a glance.
Let the patterns surface
Insights checks what tends to happen together, the next day, or on certain weekdays and times, and only shows links that are unlikely to be chance.
The calendar
A month you can read at a glance
Every tracker has its own colour and icon. Busy days, quiet weeks, the stretch where things felt heavy: you'll see them without having to remember them.
- Log something now, or pick a day first to add it there
- Add photos, videos or files to any entry, each one encrypted
- Filter chips let you focus on just the trackers you want to see
- With Health or Weather on, each day gets an Auto-tracked card
Insights
Gentle explanations, not judgements
Patterns explains what it finds in plain language, and you can tap any pattern to see it charted. It's careful, too: it accounts for how many things it checks, so a bigger journal doesn't fill up with coincidences.
Patterns
Same-day and next-day links, numbers that move together, trends, and weekday or time-of-day peaks, each described in a sentence.
Timeline
Every entry as a dot on its tracker's row. Bigger dots mean higher intensity, so heavier days stand out softly.
How often
Counts per day, week or month, stacked by tracker. Useful for seeing whether something is becoming more or less frequent.
Trend
Any number or count over time, with a moving average and simple summary statistics.
Compare & before/after
Put two things side by side, or pick a day (like starting a new medication) and see how things looked on each side.
When it happens
A weekday-by-time-of-day heatmap, for the things that seem to arrive on Sunday evenings or Monday mornings.
Privacy
What you write here is yours
The things people track are often the most personal things in their lives. Patterns was built around that from the very first line of code.
Encrypted on your iPhone
Every tracker, entry and attachment is encrypted with AES-256. There's no server and no account, so there's nothing for us to see.
Every connection starts off
Health, Weather, Siri, Maps and Apple Intelligence are optional and off until you turn them on, each with a clear page explaining what's shared.
A record of every use
An activity log, kept inside your encrypted journal, shows every time a connection was used. Add a password or Face ID lock whenever you like.
How people use Patterns
One app, many quiet questions
Some people come with something specific in mind, like migraines or sleep. Others just want to understand themselves a little better. Here are a few ideas to start from.
Understanding migraines and headaches
Log headaches alongside sleep, coffee and the weather to see what tends to come before the hard days.
Mood and sleep
See how rest, routines and your feelings move together, without turning your mood into a score to beat.
Cycle-aware tracking
Bring in period days from Apple Health and see how energy, skin, mood or pain shift across the month.
Starting or changing a medication
Use Before & after to see how things looked before and after a change, with notes you can share with your doctor.
Phone habits and how you feel
Gently notice how late-night scrolling, news or certain apps line up with your mood the next day.
Food and digestion
Note meals and how your stomach feels, and look for links up to three days apart.
Pricing
Simple, and fair
Patterns has no ads and doesn't sell anything about you, so it's supported by the people who use it. Every plan includes every feature.
Monthly
Cancel anytime.
Yearly
Try everything for a week first. Cancel anytime before the trial ends and you won't be charged.
Lifetime
One payment, yours for good. No subscription.
Prices are shown in pounds; the App Store shows the price for your country. If a plan ever ends, your journal is never deleted: you can still read and export everything.
From the blog
Notes on noticing
How to keep a migraine trigger diary (and find the triggers that show up a day later)
A gentle, practical guide to keeping a migraine trigger diary, from what to write down to how long it takes, and why some triggers are so hard to spot on your own.
A pattern is a question, not an answer
How Patterns decides what to show you, why it sometimes shows nothing, and how to read what it finds with curiosity rather than worry.
Setting up trackers that tell you something
A few small choices when you create a tracker make a big difference to what Patterns can notice later. Here's what we've learned.
Questions
Things people often ask
Do I need to log every day?
Not at all. Patterns works with whatever you give it. Missed days are simply missed days, and there are no streaks to break. More entries help it notice more, but a few honest notes are worth more than many forced ones.
Can anyone else read my journal?
No. Your journal is encrypted on your iPhone and there is no server or account. You can add a password or a Face ID / Touch ID lock, and the app hides its contents in the app switcher.
What happens if I forget my password?
If you set a password, it's the only key to your journal. There's no recovery, because we never have a copy. Choose one you'll remember, or keep it somewhere safe. Using Face ID alongside it helps too.
Is Patterns a medical app?
No. Patterns is a personal journal. It can help you notice things and bring clearer notes to a conversation with your doctor or therapist, but it doesn't diagnose or give medical advice.
Does a pattern mean one thing causes another?
Not necessarily. A pattern means two things tended to happen together more often than chance would suggest. It's a starting point for curiosity, not a conclusion. We wrote more about this on the blog.
Can I move my journal to a new iPhone?
Yes. Patterns can make an encrypted backup file that you keep wherever you like. It stays encrypted, and restoring it keeps the same protection your journal had.
Can I try it before logging my own data?
Yes. In Settings you can load demo data: four months of example entries with patterns already in them, so you can explore the charts first.
I have an idea, or something isn't working. Where do I tell you?
We'd love to hear it. You can request a feature or report a bug, and every message is read.
Start whenever feels right
Patterns is for iPhone (iOS 17 or later). Try every feature free for a week, then decide at your own pace.
Download on the App Store