A journal app without an account
Updated: September 7, 2026. Current App Store version: 0.0.28.
Slate has no account. There is no sign-up screen, no email to enter, no password to invent, and no login to forget. You install it, press record, and the journal exists on your phone from that moment.
Why most journal apps need one
An account exists so a server can tell your data from everyone else’s. Apps that store your entries on their servers need one. Slate stores nothing on any server, so there is nobody to tell apart and no account to ask for.
What happens instead
Your entries live on your iPhone. If you turn on backup in Settings, your transcripts and reflections are copied to your own iCloud account, encrypted, using the same private iCloud storage your Notes and Photos use. We cannot read that either. Audio never goes anywhere.
A new phone with the same Apple ID gets your transcripts and reflections back on first open, without a button. That is what the account would have been for, done by Apple instead of by us.
Paying without an account
If you subscribe or buy lifetime, the purchase goes through your Apple account like any App Store purchase. Apple tells the app that a purchase exists. It does not tell the app who you are.
The one responsibility
No account means no recovery from us. If you delete the app with backup off, the journal is gone, and there is no server copy to ask for. Slate says this in plain words in Settings and on its privacy page, because it is the honest price of the rest.