Support

How it works

Every day the app gives you a few fresh prompts, poetry and short prose, each in a different mood. Seven by default; Settings lets you choose five or ten. A prompt does not come back for at least a month.

• Today shows one prompt chosen from the day's set. Tap Write to start, or Another for a different one.
• Prompts has four parts: Today (the day's set), Library (every prompt in the app; without the one-time unlock it shows the first 12 for the day), Kept, and Yours. Tap any prompt to write on it, and use Keep to save a prompt for another day.
• With the one-time unlock, you can search the Library or filter it by mood, kind of writing, length, weight and theme. It shows 60 prompts at a time, with Show 60 more at the bottom. Draw one opens a random prompt that matches your current search and filters.
• Search (the magnifying glass, or Cmd K on a keyboard) looks through today's prompts, your kept prompts, your pieces and your journal entries. With the unlock it looks through the whole Library too.
• In Settings, Moods in your daily set lets you leave a mood out of the daily prompts. Tap a mood to turn it off, for example grieving if you would rather not meet those prompts right now. At least one mood stays on. The Library is not changed by this setting.
• Add your own saves a prompt you wrote to Yours. If you switch on Offer it to everyone, that prompt and its mood are sent to us to read, and we may add it for all writers. Nothing else is sent.
• To change a prompt of your own, go to Prompts, Yours, open the row's more menu, and choose Edit. If you already wrote on it, the piece moves with it. A prompt you have already offered keeps the wording that was sent for review.
• Your words save automatically as you type. There's no save button and nothing to lose, just keep writing or close the app whenever you're done.
• Everything you write on a prompt lives in Pieces, grouped by the day you wrote it. Open a piece to keep working on it, or use Details while writing to mark how you felt, where the piece stands, and which collection it belongs to.
• The Journal tab is for a plain daily entry. It shows one question a day, such as What happened today?, and Write today's entry. Another question swaps it for another, and Just write skips the question. There is one entry a day, and opening today's again carries on from where you stopped. Add an entry for another day covers a day you missed, up to 30 days back. Entries count toward your days in a row, your ink and your buddy the same way pieces do, and nothing in the Journal needs the unlock.

Your buddy, streak and ink

Your buddy. Choose one of six ink creatures from Today: Blot (steady), Smudge (low and slow), Flicker (sparky and restless), Quill (a small steady flame), Burr (guarded) or Moth (hopeful). Rename it whenever you like. It grows at 7, 30 and 100 days written together. It never dies. After a couple of days without writing it goes quiet, after four it falls asleep, and it wakes when you write again. You can dress it from a wardrobe of six costumes bought with ink. To change it or put it away, open it and choose Change buddy or Put (its name) away. If you change to another buddy, your days together carry over. Putting it away hides it and deletes nothing. You still earn ink, and you can bring it back with Show your buddy in Settings. Buddies are free and are not part of the one-time unlock.

Your streak. Your streak is the number of days in a row that you wrote. If you would rather not see the number, turn off Show days in a row in Settings.

Streak freeze. A freeze covers one day you miss, so your streak carries on. It costs 50 ink, and you can hold two. A freeze is used automatically, and only when it actually saves your streak, so it is never wasted: if it could not save the streak, you keep it. Freezes cannot cover more than two days in a row without writing.

Mend a streak. A mend repairs a gap of up to three days after a streak of at least three written days. It costs 150 ink.

Earning ink. You earn ink by writing: 10 for the first piece or journal entry each day, a little more on a long streak, and extra at 7, 30, 100 and 365 days in a row and when you finish a series. You also earn 5 for winning the day's first round of Kin and 15 for completing a dare. New writers start with enough ink for one freeze. Ink pays for freezes, mends, costumes, Kin hints and extra Kin rounds. When you finish writing, anything you earned is shown in one message as you close the page.

Buying ink. Ink packs are sold in the iPhone app, in your buddy's sheet under More ink. Apple handles the payment. Ink you buy is not restored the way the one-time unlock is, but it is never lost: each purchase is recorded on your device, and it also syncs through iCloud if you have that turned on. If a purchase is waiting for approval, the ink arrives by itself once it is approved.

Sync with iCloud. In the iPhone app, with iCloud signed in, your buddy, ink, streak, word hoard and the dates you wrote can follow you to your other Apple devices. Your writing, your kept prompts and your settings stay on the device where you made them. You can turn this off in Settings.

Kin, the word game

Kin is a short word game, one round a day. The app picks a word that you use in your own writing (a starter word if you are new) and mixes 9 to 12 word tiles. Some mean nearly the same as that word, some rhyme with it, and some are neither.

• How a round works. Drag each word to the group it belongs to, or tap a word and then a group. Four mistakes end the round.
• What is free. One round a day is free. More rounds cost ink, and so does a hint, which reveals one word.
• The word hoard. Words you find in a round you win go into your word hoard.
• Dares. After a win you can take one found word as a dare: use it in a piece or a journal entry that day, in newly written text, and you earn ink.
• Rhymes and near words. In the Writer, the More menu has Rhymes and near words, which looks up any word. It is part of the one-time unlock.

Kin uses your own words and runs entirely on your device. The app reads your writing on the device to choose words and sends nothing anywhere.

Turning on the daily reminder

If you want a nudge to write, go to Settings and turn on the daily reminder. Pick a time that fits your day.

In the iPhone app you can also turn on Remind me a day after I write. Each time you finish writing, one reminder is set for the same time the next day, and never earlier than 6:00 in the morning. If you write again first, it moves and you never see it. If you are not sure reminders are reaching you, Check reminders in Settings says what your phone has scheduled and can send a test.

This is a plain local notification scheduled on your phone. There's no server sending it and no account attached to it.

Locking the app

Your writing is private, and you can add a lock so it stays that way even if someone else picks up your phone.

• In Settings, under Privacy, choose Set a passcode and pick 4 to 8 digits.
• If your device supports it, you can also turn on Face ID or Touch ID so unlocking the app is a glance or a touch instead of typing a code.

Like everything else in the app, this check happens entirely on your device.

The one-time unlock

The daily prompts, writing, your pieces, your daily journal, your own prompts, Markdown export and backups are free, and so is a look at the first 12 prompts in the Library each day. One purchase in the iPhone app adds the rest: the whole Library with search, filters and Draw one, every seven-day series after your first (there are ten), Word and Manuscript export, Insights (which includes a count of your pieces by the mood of the prompt you wrote on), and rhymes and near words while you write. Buddies and Kin are free. It is a single payment, with no subscription and no account.

To buy it: go to Settings, Unlock the rest. The price shown comes from the App Store for your country.

New phone, or reinstalled the app: go to Settings, Unlock the rest and choose Restore purchase. Use the same Apple ID you bought it with. You are not charged again. Family Sharing members can restore it the same way.

Refunds are handled by Apple at reportaproblem.apple.com.

Exporting and backing up your writing

Use Export at the top of Pieces to save everything, or one collection, in the format you need. The Journal tab has its own Export for your journal entries; each entry is headed by its day. To send a single piece, open its menu and choose Share this piece.

• Markdown or Word (an .rtf file): good for pulling a piece into another document, or sharing it with someone. Markdown is free. Word and Manuscript come with the one-time unlock.
• Manuscript export: turns a collection of pieces into something that reads like a small book, a title page followed by one piece per page. Nice for printing or for putting a body of work together.
• Any of these can go out through your phone's regular share sheet, so you can save to Files, email it to yourself, print it, whatever you'd normally do with a document.

Automatic backups. The iPhone app also keeps its own backup each day you write, in the app's storage on your phone, and holds on to about the last month of them. These protect you if something goes wrong inside the app. They do not protect you if the phone is lost, unless your phone is backed up or you turn on Also keep a copy in iCloud Drive in Settings. That copy is not locked by the app's passcode.

To restore a backup: go to Settings, Restore from a backup. In the iPhone app, pick one of the automatic backups from the list, or choose a saved file instead. On the website, choose your saved file. Then confirm. Anything missing is added back. A piece on this device is only replaced by the backup's copy if the backup's copy is newer.

Something looks wrong

Everything you write is stored right on your device, not on a server. That means reinstalling the app does not erase your writing.

Still, before you troubleshoot anything, whether that's reinstalling, restarting your phone, or just poking around in Settings, take thirty seconds and export a JSON backup first. It costs you nothing and it means whatever happens next, your writing is safe somewhere.

On the website, when a newer version has loaded in the background, a message that says A new version is ready. appears with a Reload button. It never reloads on its own, so tap Reload when you are at a good stopping point.

If something still looks off after that (a missing entry, a display glitch, the app not opening), try closing the app fully and reopening it. If the problem sticks around, reach out using the contact line below and describe what you're seeing.

Credits

Rhymes in Paper and Ink come from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (Carnegie Mellon University). Near words draw on Princeton WordNet 3.0 (Princeton University), along with near words written for this app. The full licence texts are in the app, under Settings, About, Word data credits.

Contact

If a prompt hits harder than expected

Some prompts touch grief, loss and hard days on purpose, because writing about them can be worth doing. But this app is a private notebook, not therapy or a treatment of any kind. If something you're carrying feels bigger than a page can hold, please reach out to a person, not an app.

• 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline Call or text 988, anytime, in the US.
• Samaritans 116 123, free, anytime, in the UK and Ireland.
• findahelpline.com A directory of crisis lines for other countries.