Daily Vibe
Private mood journal & voice diary
Write or speak your day, then use private on-device AI for mood and energy labels, themes, trends, and source-checked reflections. No Studio AM account or third-party analytics; entries stay on your device unless you enable optional private iCloud sync.
On the App Store this is listed as Mood Journal & Emotion Tracker.
The Challenge
Journaling helps, until your most private thoughts start to feel read. Most reflection apps send your entries to a server to “analyze” them, and most mood trackers flatten a whole day into a single tapped emoji. Neither earns the honesty that makes journaling work in the first place.
Our Approach
Daily Vibe gives you multiple named journals for typed entries, quick dictation, or spoken entries whose recordings stay available for playback. Active access adds word-synced read-along. A ready on-device model selects mood and energy labels, extracts themes, and chooses relevant excerpts. Nothing is sent to Studio AM: there is no account or analytics, and AI processing works offline after the model is ready. Optional private iCloud sync stays off unless you turn it on, and recordings never sync. Every displayed reflection excerpt is checked against the original entry, and trend numbers are calculated in code.
The free one-minute mood check-in is intentionally smaller: it repeats one mood and energy choice and offers a fixed reflection question in the browser. It does not analyze, diagnose, upload, or save a check-in. The app is where check-ins become a private, inspectable history.
Key Features
- Journal your way. Keep multiple named journals, type or dictate without retaining audio, or save a spoken entry for local playback and on-device transcription. Active access adds word-synced read-along.
- Mood, bounded honestly. The model selects mood and energy from fixed labels, while themes must be found in what you actually wrote.
- Source-checked reflections. Weekly reflections and qualitative Ask results show exact excerpts validated against your own entries; the model selects relevance but does not author the displayed evidence.
- Patterns you can inspect. Review 2-, 6-, and 12-week trends plus year patterns, ask plain-language questions about your data, inspect source passages, and pin useful charts.
- A safety net that never guesses. A deterministic crisis-safety layer handles heavy entries on-device and never hands them to the model.
- Private. No Studio AM login, no cloud AI processing, no tracking, no ads; optional private iCloud sync is controlled by you.
- Your journal stays yours. After a subscription ends, saved entries and recordings remain readable, searchable, playable, exportable, and deletable. Markdown and portable JSON exports are always available; a device’s JSON package can include its local recording files. Eligible new subscribers may receive a 3-day trial; current US prices are $4.99 a month or $29.99 a year.
Requirements
Requires iOS or iPadOS 26 or later. AI features use Apple Intelligence when it is available, enabled, and ready, or an optional one-time local-model download of about 0.9–2.6 GB. Devices with less than 3.5 GB of RAM cannot run AI features; the journal UI, check-ins, and model-free trend calculations do not need a model, although active access is still required for fresh use. Once a model is ready, AI processing runs entirely on-device and offline. Private iCloud sync is optional and off by default. Relevance selected by AI can be imperfect, so check reflections against the displayed source excerpts and never treat them as medical advice.
Results
A journal that reflects you back: private by construction and yours alone.
Common questions
Daily Vibe is an iPhone and iPad journal with multiple named journals, typed or spoken entries, and on-device AI for mood, energy, themes, trends, and source-checked reflections. Eligible new subscribers may receive a 3-day trial; current US prices are $4.99 a month or $29.99 a year. There is no free tier and no lifetime purchase for sale. Earlier lifetime purchases remain restorable. After a subscription ends, saved entries and recordings remain readable, searchable, playable, exportable, and deletable. Entries stay on the device by default and there is no Studio AM account.
Does my journal stay private, or does it use the cloud?
Entries stay on your device by default: no Studio AM account or third-party analytics, and AI processing works offline after its model is ready. Optional iCloud sync is off by default and uses your private iCloud database, which we can't read.
Can I journal by voice?
Yes, in two ways. The compose-bar microphone dictates text on-device and keeps no audio. A spoken entry saves its recording on the device and creates an on-device transcript. With active access, word-synced read-along highlights the transcript during playback; ordinary playback of saved audio remains available after access ends. Recordings are never uploaded or included in iCloud sync.
What does the AI do with my entry?
After each entry it selects mood and energy from fixed labels and extracts themes that the app checks against your text. Weekly reflections and qualitative Ask results display exact excerpts checked against your source entries; trend numbers are calculated in code. AI can still choose imperfectly, so treat its output as a reflection prompt, not a fact or diagnosis.
Is it free? How much does it cost?
There is no free tier. Eligible new subscribers may receive a 3-day trial; current US prices are $4.99 a month or $29.99 a year. There is no lifetime purchase for sale; people who bought the retired lifetime unlock can still restore it. After access ends, your saved entries and recordings remain readable, searchable, playable, exportable, and deletable. A subscription covers all new entries, recordings, check-ins, reflections, trends, widgets, and shortcuts.
What does the subscription include?
Multiple named journals; new typed and spoken entries; check-ins; on-device mood, energy, and theme tagging; weekly reflections; the themes browser; Ask Your Trends; 2-, 6-, and 12-week trends; widgets; and shortcuts. Without an active subscription, saved data remains available through the archive.
Can I export everything?
Yes. Markdown exports your readable journal, while the portable JSON package includes every persisted journal and entry field, pinned questions, spoken-entry metadata, and copies of recordings stored on that device. Audio never syncs, so a recording made on another device must be exported from that device.
Can it show trends over time?
Yes. It charts your mood and energy over time, with 2-, 6-, and 12-week trends and a short weekly reflection drawn from your own entries.
Do I need Apple Intelligence to use it?
No. On Apple Intelligence devices the app can use Apple’s built-in model; otherwise it offers an optional one-time local-model download of about 0.9–2.6 GB. Devices with less than 3.5 GB of RAM cannot run AI features, but journaling, check-ins, and model-free trends still work.