A private journal app, made like a notebook and private like one.
Some journals are built to be read by an algorithm. Innerholm is built to be read by you. No audience, no ads, no trackers, and a plain commitment about what is never done with your words. Private is not a setting here. It is the floor everything else stands on.
Innerholm is a private journal app. There is no feed and no sharing, no advertising and no third-party trackers, just one sign-in cookie. It commits explicitly to no content scanning, no AI training on your entries, and no behavioural profiling, and AI features are off by default. For a journal you want sealed even from Innerholm, you can turn on optional end-to-end encryption, so its key never leaves your device. It is free to start.
What "private" actually means here
Privacy is easy to claim and easy to water down. Here is what it means in practice, stated plainly:
- No audience, no feed, no sharing A journal, not a social network. Nothing you write is shown to anyone else.
- No ads and no third-party trackers One sign-in cookie. No advertising pixels, no analytics scripts, no fingerprinting.
- No content scanning, ever No automated system reads your entries for ads, training, or profiling. No human reads them either.
- No AI training on your writing Your words are never used to train machine-learning models, full stop.
- AI is off by default If you want it, you turn it on for one journal at a time, and it only responds when you ask.
- Your data stays yours Export is planned for Innerholm+, and deleting your account removes your entries, with backups rotated out within 30 days.
Privacy that goes as far as you want it to
For most journaling, the commitments above are the point: your writing is stored so that sync and search work, encrypted in transit and at rest, and never scanned. Innerholm states the trade-off plainly rather than hiding it: a regular journal is readable by the server so it can sync and search, paired with an explicit promise that it is never mined.
When you want to go further, you can. For a journal you want sealed even from Innerholm, turn on end-to-end encryption. Its title and content are encrypted on your device with a key derived from your passphrase, and that key never reaches the server. Innerholm stores only ciphertext, so that journal is for you alone. It lives quietly inside the journal, marked "Just for you", rather than as a setting you have to hunt for.
Private is the floor, not the feature
Plenty of apps treat privacy as a headline feature. Innerholm treats it as the baseline, so the rest of the app can be about your life rather than its settings. A journal for every chapter: purpose-built editions that give structure where structure is welcome, and a blank page everywhere else.
- Sobriety, one day at a time
- Pregnancy, letters before they arrive
- Stoic, morning and evening
- Dreams, caught before they fade
- For your kids, to read one day
- Memories, the ones worth keeping
Every one of them is private the same way, by default. You never choose privacy. You only choose what to write.
Frequently asked questions
What makes Innerholm a private journal app?
It is private the way a notebook is: no audience, no feed, no sharing, no ads, and no third-party trackers, just one sign-in cookie. On top of that, it commits explicitly to no content scanning, no AI training, and no behavioural profiling, with AI off by default. For a journal you want sealed even from Innerholm, you can turn on optional end-to-end encryption.
Does Innerholm read my journal entries?
No human at Innerholm reads your entries, and no automated system scans them for advertising, AI training, or profiling. Regular journals are stored on the server so sync and search work, which Innerholm states plainly. If you want a journal not even Innerholm can read, encrypt it end-to-end so the key never leaves your device.
Is Innerholm end-to-end encrypted?
End-to-end encryption is optional and per journal. Regular journals are encrypted in transit and at rest but readable by the server for sync and search, paired with an explicit no-scanning commitment. When you encrypt a specific journal, its content is encrypted on your device with a key derived from your passphrase that never reaches the server, so only ciphertext is stored.
Is the private journal free?
Yes. Innerholm is free during early access, with no credit card to start. A paid Innerholm+ tier is planned, but the core privacy commitments are not behind a paywall, and the hardest seasons of life, like grief and sobriety, are kept free on principle.
Can I export my journal and delete my account?
Yes. Data ownership is a core commitment. Full export is planned for Innerholm+, in a portable format other apps can read. Deleting your account removes your entries, with server backups rotated out within 30 days.
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