On-device · No account · No cloud
A spoken morning reflection that never leaves your iPhone. A few good questions, answered out loud — and never analyzed back.
Open beta on TestFlight. Works in airplane mode.
Why it exists
A clear morning helps you decide well and show up well. But a blank page at 7am asks too much, and most apps either pile on questions or start analyzing you — until reflection feels like a performance review.
Before the Day does the opposite. A few good questions, answered by voice, then it stops. It notices which questions land and which you skip, and adapts to you over time.
“What's the one decision today you don't want to make on autopilot?”
“Who will you see today — and how do you want them to feel afterward?”
“What's sitting heavy that you haven't named yet?”
The core experience
No forms, no typing, no end-of-session report. Just one question at a time, in the light of dawn.
Open the app, or tap the reminder — it is the first question. One at a time, never a wall of them.
Tap to start, speak, tap to stop. Your words transcribe on the phone as you talk, and a long silence stops it for you.
Your words settle on screen, confirming you were heard. Then the next question follows, drawn from what you just said.
Three questions, then done. The entry saves on your phone. No summary, no score. The day is the point.
A look inside
It reads your answers for one reason: to pick the next good question. It won't read them back, summarize them, score your mood, or surface “you keep mentioning…” patterns. No trends, no word clouds, no streak calendars. If a feature would mean the app commenting on what you said, it's out.
Grounded in research
Before the Day is a personal tool, not a clinical one. But each design choice rests on a well-studied idea from psychology.
Putting a feeling into words — “affect labeling” — measurably lowers activity in the amygdala, the brain's threat center. Saying it, not just thinking it, does real work.
Lieberman et al. (2007), Psychological Science. Putting Feelings Into WordsNaming how you'll act — an “implementation intention” — reliably improves follow-through, a medium-to-large effect across 94 studies. That's the morning's first question: the decision you won't make on autopilot.
Gollwitzer & Sheeran (2006), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology (d ≈ .65). Implementation Intentions & Goal AchievementThese studies describe reflection and intention-setting in general, not this app. Before the Day turns their findings into a daily practice; it makes no medical or therapeutic claims.
What's inside
Answer by speaking. Your voice becomes text on the phone's Neural Engine, and the audio is discarded.
Catch a thought during the day and it feeds tomorrow's reflection. It stays for two weeks, then it's gone — fuel, not an archive.
Every entry is a plain text file you own. Exporting is one step, because it's already just a folder. Nothing locked in a proprietary format.
A missed day is not a broken chain. No gamification, no guilt-tripping notifications — just one optional, gentle morning reminder.
Privacy
Your inner life is the most sensitive data you own, so none of it is uploaded. There's no server to breach, subpoena, or sell. Your voice becomes text on the phone and the audio is discarded. The app's small memory of you is visible and erasable in Settings, and it all works in airplane mode.
Questions
No. Transcription, question selection, and the app's memory all run on your phone. There's no server, and it works fully offline.
Never. It reads your answers only to choose the next question — never to tell you what they mean, detect your mood, or surface patterns.
Under two minutes. Three questions, answered by speaking, then a quiet close. No summary, no score.
Your morning entries are plain files you own and can search. Daytime thoughts are deliberately temporary and fade after about two weeks.
No account, no login, no cloud. Your data is a folder of files on your phone that you can export anytime.
A personal note
I built this for myself first. I wanted a calmer start to the day, but every journaling app I tried either asked too much of me at 7am or started reading meaning into what I'd written.
So I kept it small: a few questions, answered out loud, on a phone that keeps all of it to itself. It doesn't score you or read your words back. You answer, and you get on with your day.
Open beta on iPhone — on-device, no account.
Free while in beta. At launch: a 7-day free trial, then $19.99/year — or $39.99 once, no subscription.
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