Leafday

Leafday is a diary you write on your phone and read on paper.

Write through the month in the app — photographs, a few lines, whatever the day was. Every day is laid out as a page made to be printed, and from January the finished month can arrive in the post: one sheet for every day, punched for an A5 six-ring binder.

WRITING TAKES A MINUTE

Six page formats, each a fixed set of frames rather than an endless list: one full-page photograph, a four-photo magazine spread, a nine-frame grid, a mood board, a calendar day, a day broken into times of day. Tap an empty frame to take a photograph, or choose one from that day's pictures. Zoom in on a photograph and draw on it, and the drawing stays on the part you drew it on. The time and a line of your own words sit on the photograph.

Every day also has a written side — a ruled page, laid out just like the printed back, that you can reach by scrolling down and add to at any time, years later if you like. Type, speak instead of typing, or draw with your finger. Four colour themes, including Black.

SHOW A PAGE TO FRIENDS, PRIVATELY

Friends is optional, and it is not a feed. You add a friend with a code you send them yourself: there is no search, no list of members, and Leafday never looks at your contacts. Post a day's page as a story and the people you choose can see it for 3 days, then it is gone. You choose who: all your friends, just your besties, or only the friends you tag. A friend you tag keeps a copy of the page in their own Friends book until they remove it, and if you showed the page to all your friends they can post it to their own story too. Friends cannot comment, react, or see who looked. You can report a story or block a person from inside the app.

YOU CHOOSE WHAT GETS PRINTED

Days you skip will arrive as ruled sheets — deliberately blank, yours to fill in by hand. A month is 31 sheets whatever happened in it.

THE PRINTED KIT STARTS IN JANUARY

Printing opens in January. Once a month has finished it will be printed and posted, promised by the last day of the month after it. The kit is 31 printed sheets, a prompt page or two to fill in by hand, one sticker, and everything needed to bind them into the month's volume. It is hand-packed.

There is nothing to buy in the app today. If you would like to hear before it opens, put your name down under Settings, Subscription — it costs nothing and nothing is charged.

ONE PERSON PRINTS THESE

Leafday is one person in Ontario with a printer. There are no employees and nothing goes to a print shop — the pages go from the app to that printer and into an envelope. That is also the honest limit of the privacy promise: it is not that nobody can see your pages, it is that the only person who does is the one printing them (and, if you use Friends, the people you choose to show a page to), and you decide which days are printed at all.

THE APP IS FREE

Writing, photographs, drawing, and saving a day, a week or the best days of your year as pictures — as a story or a feed post — free, and staying free. When the printed kit opens it will be a paid monthly subscription, announced in the app first; the subscription will be for the paper, not for the app.

Kits will ship within Canada only. Everywhere else, the app is free to use and there is nothing to buy.

YOUR DIARY IS YOURS

No advertising, no tracking, and nothing sold to anyone. Your diary is private: the only pages anyone else sees are the ones you choose to post to friends. Photographs have their location data stripped before they are uploaded. You can export everything you have written — every entry and every photograph — or delete the account and all of it, from inside the app. Leafday is for people aged 13 or over; under 18 only with a parent or guardian's permission.