Memories Journal

Updated September 2026

🎯 Purpose

Keep a diary you will actually keep — and read it back later as a timeline of your own days rather than a folder of files.

📌 Prerequisites

• An AIOS account. The same sign-in opens Memories Journal, AIOS Receipts and AIOS itself.
• Nothing to install. It runs in a browser and installs like an app on a phone.

🧠 What it is, and what it is not

It is a separate app at /memories/, not a screen inside AIOS. You can use it and never open the dashboard.

What you write is an ordinary note in your own vault. Not a journal database, not an export — the same daily note AIOS reads. So a year of journalling opens in AIOS as a year of daily notes, with nothing to import, and every backup that covers your vault already covers your diary.

There is no AI in it at all. Not as a setting, not switched off — it is not there. Your timeline is built by selecting and arranging the lines you wrote; nothing is rewritten and nothing is summarised. A record of your life described by a summariser is a record of the summariser.

🪜 Steps — write a day

1. Open the app. Today is already there, with anything you left unfinished yesterday carried forward.
2. Write. It is one page, like a notebook — not a set of boxes to fill in. A line is a day; so is a thousand words.
3. 🖼️ puts a photo in at the cursor, where you are writing, not at the bottom.
4. It saves as you go. The line under the page says so.
5. Read lays the same day out to be read back — headings as headings, photos bigger. Write takes you back.

The headings a new day starts with are a suggestion. Rename them, delete the ones you do not use, add your own. It is your page and nothing here enforces a shape on it.

🎯 What a new day starts with

Three layouts, under Settings. This decides what headings a new day is created with — it is not a set of boxes on the screen, and changing it only affects days you write from now on. Nothing already written is touched.

If you name your own sections, one of them can be the "tomorrow" one — that is the section unfinished things are carried into. Without it nothing is carried, because the app will not guess which of your headings you meant.

📸 The timeline

TIMELINE is the second of the app's two pages — press it at the bottom and the timeline is what is on screen; press NOTES and you are back. It is not a window over the top of your notes and there is nothing to close. On a phone the back gesture takes you to NOTES, the same as pressing it.

Every day you write becomes a post: your words, your photographs, in the order you put them down. Scroll back as far as you like.

The line each post shows first is what YOU wrote, in this order: anything typed at the top of the day, then your focus, then on down. What you got done is the last thing it reaches for — a day of yours should not be summarised by a chore when you wrote a sentence about it.

⚙️ Settings

SETTINGS is at the right-hand end of the bar across the top — on a phone that bar is at the FOOT of the screen, behind the ☰ button, and the panel opens upward from it. It holds three things and nothing else; everything in it is about this app.

Your copy. How many days of your free trial are left, and a Buy it once button. Buying it makes it yours permanently — there is no subscription for this app, and nothing you have written is ever removed whatever happens to the trial. If Memories Journal came with an AIOS plan you are told so, and you can still buy it outright so that you keep it if the plan ever ends.

The colour. A full colour picker plus six presets. It changes AIOS and AIOS Receipts too — it is one account, so it is one colour.

The nudge. Below.

🔔 The nudge

Off, or one of two times. Under SETTINGS.

• A good morning — around late morning, and only if you have not already written. If you have, it says nothing.
• An evening reminder — the same thing at the end of the day instead.
• No nudge — never ask.

One a day, and it gives up after two. If two nudges go by without you choosing anything, it stops asking — you may have been busy the first time, and a third is a bother. Opening the app counts as an answer, so writing your day resets it.

It never mentions a streak and never says you missed a day. It is an invitation, not a scoreboard.

🔒 Your days are yours

• Nobody mines this to sell you anything. There is no advertiser.
• Optional encryption tied to your login makes notes unreadable even to the owner — see Private notes.
• The files are markdown in your own vault. Export them and they open in anything.

💳 What it costs

Free for fourteen days, no card. The clock starts the first time you open it, not when you registered — so finding it months after signing up still gives you the full fortnight.

After that it is $19, once. You own it. There is no subscription and no monthly charge, and nothing stops working later.

Why it works that way: there is no AI in this app, so writing your day costs nothing to run whether you do it once a year or twice a day. Charging rent for that would be charging for nothing. The one thing AIOS charges a subscription for is the AI, because that genuinely costs money every time it runs — and if you have an AIOS plan, this app is already included in it.

If a trial ends and you decide not to buy, everything you wrote stays exactly where it is — it is an ordinary note in your vault and it is still yours to export. Nothing is held hostage.

🔍 How to verify

1. Open the app. Today's date is at the top and the page below it is the note.
2. Type a line. Within a second or two the message under the page reads "Saved."
3. Press Read. The same day is laid out to be read back.
4. Open that same day in AIOS — it is an ordinary daily note and your line is in it.
5. Go to Settings, choose My own sections, add one called Dreams, and save. It says your next day uses the new layout; today's page is untouched.

🚨 When it does not work

See what AIOS is All guides