Blog ·
Why Patterns has no account and no server
The things people track are often the most personal parts of their lives. So we built Patterns so that nobody else, including us, can read them.
When we started thinking about Patterns, we made a list of the kinds of things people might want to track: headaches, anxiety, periods, medication, sex, sleep, how much they scroll at night, how they feel about their family.
Looking at that list, one thing became clear. A journal like this only works if you can be completely honest in it. And it’s hard to be honest if some part of you wonders who else might be reading.
What we decided
- No account. You don’t sign up. There’s no email, no username, nothing to link your journal to you.
- No server. Patterns doesn’t send your journal anywhere. Every tracker, entry and attachment is encrypted on your iPhone with AES-256.
- Everything optional starts off. Health, Weather, Siri, Maps and Apple Intelligence can be useful, so they’re there. But each is off until you turn it on, and each has its own page explaining exactly what it shares and with whom.
- A record of every use. An activity log, kept inside your encrypted journal, shows every time a connection was used.
What that costs
Choosing privacy this way has trade-offs, and we’d rather be upfront about them.
If you set a password and forget it, we can’t help you get your journal back. We never had a copy of the key. That’s the point, but it’s also a real risk, so the app gently reminds you about it when you set one up.
It also means we can’t see how people use Patterns. We don’t know which features you like or what you track. So if something feels confusing or missing, please tell us. Your messages are the only way we learn.
Why it’s worth it
Patterns is a place to notice things you might not say out loud yet. We think that deserves the same care as a paper diary in a drawer, only with a better lock.