Chronicle your history
A private AI journal for Mac
A personal journal with powerful local AI that runs entirely on your device. No cloud. No company servers. No subscriptions. Just you, your stories, and the people who matter.
Photos
Browse your photo memories with the interactive scrubber. Search by content and navigate through time.
Timeline View
Browse your memories chronologically with the photo scrubber. Relive moments at a glance.
Journaling
Write rich entries with photos, @mentions, and #hashtags. Your daily canvas for capturing life.
Journal History
Track your journaling consistency with contribution heatmaps and calendar views.
People & Groups
Manage the people in your life with profiles, groups, and relationship tracking.
Interests & Topics
Track topics with #hashtags. See patterns in what you write about over time.
Interest Details
Dive deep into any topic to see related entries, co-occurring interests, and trends.
Writing Insights
Discover patterns in your writing with research-backed linguistic metrics and trends.
Build a digital legacy
Everything you need to capture your life story. Powerful features designed for reflection and growth. Build a curated life story rich with context about what makes you unique.
Own it forever
One time in-app purchase to unlock, no subscriptions, no advertising, and no tracking.
Smart Search
Ask questions about your life and explore your memories. Smart Search uses RAG-powered context to find and synthesize answers from across your journal history.
Semantic Search
Find entries by meaning, not just keywords. Ask natural questions like "when was I happiest?" and get relevant results from across your journal.
Local AI Insights
Emotion analysis and writing coaching powered by AI that runs on your computer. No internet required once models are downloaded. Performance varies by hardware.
Choose Your AI
Select from curated LLM models. Bring your own GGUF models for complete flexibility.
Face Recognition
Automatically identify the people in your photos. Train with a few samples, recognize everywhere. All processing happens locally on your device.
Dramatis Personae
Document the people in your story with @mentions. Build profiles, track relationships, and see how the cast of characters in your life evolves over time.
Interests & Topics
Tag hobbies, topics, and passions with #hashtags. Track how your interests evolve over time.
Connections Map
See the network of your life. Visualize relationships between people and interests with an interactive graph. Discover who appears together and how your connections evolve over time.
Photo Memories
Attach photos to your entries. Browse by timeline and shuffle through memories.
Video Export
Turn your photo timeline into shareable animated GIFs. Choose one photo per day or all photos, set playback speed, pick your order, and watch your memories come alive with automatic date overlays.
Audio Journaling
Attach voice memos and audio. Local Whisper transcription with 4 model sizes - from quick notes to professional accuracy. Word-level timing makes audio searchable.
Backup & Export
Create local backups to protect your memories. Export to multiple folder locations with Pro. Your data, your backups, your control.
Mobile & Remote Access
Access your journal from iPhone, iPad, or any device via the built-in local server. No cloud sync needed - your data stays on your Mac while you connect from anywhere. QR code pairing makes setup instant.
How Historicle compares
See how Historicle stacks up against popular journaling and note-taking apps across the features that matter most.
| Feature | Historicle | Day One | Apple Journal | Obsidian | Notion |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| You control where data lives | Local, cloud, or NAS | Cloud (E2E encrypted) | iCloud | Local files | Cloud |
| No account required | — | Apple ID | — | ||
| No subscription | $34.99 one-time | $49.99/yr | Free core / $4/mo sync | $10–20/mo | |
| Zero servers to breach | — | — | — | ||
| Mobile access without cloud sync | — | — | $4/mo sync | — | |
| Local LLM Smart Search | Pro | — | — | — | — |
| Semantic search (by meaning) | — | — | Plugins | Cloud AI | |
| Bring your own LLM model | Pro | — | — | Plugins | — |
| OpenAI-compatible API | Opt-in Pro | — | — | — | — |
| MCP protocol support | Opt-in Pro | — | — | — | |
| @mentions for people | Tags | — | — | — | |
| People profiles with bios | — | — | — | — | |
| Face recognition in photos | Pro | — | — | — | — |
| Connections graph | — | — | Generic graph | — | |
| #Hashtag interests with colors/icons | Basic tags | — | Tags | Database | |
| Unlimited photos per entry | 1 free / 30 premium | 13 max | |||
| Original quality preserved | JPEG converted | Unknown | WebP converted | ||
| GIF export from photos | Pro | — | — | — | — |
| Audio transcription (local) | Whisper Pro | Cloud | — | — | — |
| Automated emotion detection | Pro | — | Manual mood | — | — |
| Mood trends over time | Pro | — | — | — | — |
| Writing coach | Pro | — | — | — | — |
| Life story prompts | Structured | Prompts | Suggestions | — | — |
| Auto backup to your own storage | — | — | Manual | — | |
| Multiple backup locations | Pro | — | — | Manual | 3rd party |
| Export format | JSON + originals* | JSON / PDF | HTML ZIP | Native .md | Lossy Markdown |
| Day One import | N/A | — | Community | — |
* Entries exported as human-readable JSON, photos and audio at original quality, with SHA-256 integrity verification.
Powerful AI, Complete Privacy
Historicle runs sophisticated AI models entirely on your device
Smart Search
7B-12B parameter models for intelligent conversations
Semantic Search
Embedding models for meaning-based search
Speech-to-Text
Whisper models from 75MB to 3GB
Face Recognition
Detection and recognition in ~30MB
Emotion Analysis
GoEmotions model for 27 emotion categories
Writing Coach
AI-powered feedback on your writing style
Privacy isn't a feature.
It's our foundation.
In a world where your thoughts are commodities, Historicle takes a different approach. Your journal is truly yours. No accounts, no tracking, and no subscription as a service fee, just you and your story.
Zero company servers
There is no Historicle server. Your data lives on your device, period. No servers means nothing to breach or shut down.
AI runs entirely on your hardware
Smart Search, emotion analysis, face recognition, and transcription all run locally. No cloud processing, no API calls, no data ever leaves your Mac.
No accounts, no tracking, no ads, no spam
Start journaling immediately. No sign-ups, no email verification, no analytics.
Access from authenticated devices (opt-in)
Optionally enable the local server to access your journal from devices on your network. Uses API key and session-based authentication following modern security practices. Your data stays on your Mac.
Download Historicle
Available now on macOS. More platforms coming soon.
macOS 14.0 or laterStart capturing your story today
Join thousands of people who are documenting their lives, understanding their emotions, and growing through reflection - all while keeping their privacy intact.