Help
Support
innerstory is a small app with no account system, so most questions are about the two things that make it unusual: the lock, and the fact that nothing is backed up.
Contact
Email support@innerstory.app and a person will reply — usually within two business days.
Please do not send screenshots containing your journal entries. We do not want them, and we cannot read your data from here even if you asked us to.
Common questions
- The app will not open on my iPhone.
- innerstory requires Face ID, Touch ID or your device passcode every time it opens, and it refuses to open if none of those is available. If your iPhone has no passcode set, add one in Settings > Face ID & Passcode. This is deliberate: a journal that opens without authentication is not a private journal.
- How do I back up my journal?
- Settings > Export writes every entry to a plain text file you can save to Files, AirDrop to a Mac, or keep anywhere you like. This is the only backup that exists — nothing is uploaded, so nothing can be restored for you. Export regularly, and keep the file somewhere you trust.
- Can I read my journal on another device?
- No. The encryption key is generated on your iPhone and is excluded from backups, so it cannot move to another device. The export file is the way to take your writing with you.
- I got a new iPhone. Can I move my entries across?
- Export from the old phone before you wipe it, then keep that file. A device transfer or iCloud backup will not carry the journal across, because the encryption key is deliberately excluded from backups.
- An entry says it could not be opened.
- That means the stored data failed its integrity check, and innerstory will not overwrite a block it could not read — that is what protects you from silently losing the entry. Do not delete it. Email us with the date of the entry and what you were doing when it happened.
- Transcription is not working.
- The first voice note may need iOS to install its speech recognition assets, which is a system download managed by iOS, not by innerstory. It needs a network connection once, and after that transcription runs entirely offline. If it stays unavailable, check Settings > General > Keyboard > Enable Dictation.
- Does innerstory use my data to train anything?
- No. Your writing never leaves the device, so there is nothing to train on. There is no server, no account and no analytics.
- How do I delete everything?
- Delete the app. That removes every entry and the encryption key with it. There is no copy anywhere else, so it cannot be undone — export first if you want to keep anything.
For what is stored and where, see the Privacy Policy. For how the encryption and the lock actually work, see Security.