How to start

Journal with Marcus is not public yet. This page says what to expect when it is, so that nothing later comes as a surprise. Nothing here asks for your email address.

It is a web app

Journal with Marcus will open in the browser you are reading this in, on a phone or a desktop, from a link. There is no store to go through and nothing to install first. You can add it to your home screen if you want to, and that is explained below.

No account

There is nothing to sign up for: no email address, no password held on a server, no profile. You will choose a passphrase, and it stays with you. It is the only key to your journal and there is no reset. If you lose it, nobody can recover what it locked, and that is the point of it. You will be offered a recovery phrase at the start so that losing the passphrase need not mean losing the journal.

Nothing is sent

What you write will stay on this device. There is no account, and nothing is sent anywhere unless you turn a feature on. Where the writing goes, in sentences you can check.

Where your journal lives

Your journal will live in this browser, on this device, until there is a way to sync it. Clear the browser's data and the journal goes with it. So take a copy out from the first week: the export is a file, it is yours, and you can keep it anywhere you like.

Adding it to your home screen

Installing changes two things. It puts an icon where your other apps are, and it lets the once-a-day reminder work, which on an iPhone it cannot do from a browser tab. It does not move your journal anywhere and it does not send anything. It is optional.

• iPhone: in Safari, the Share button, then Add to Home Screen.
• Android: in Chrome, the menu, then Add to Home screen or Install app.
• Desktop: in Chrome or Edge, the install icon at the right of the address bar. In Safari on a Mac, File, then Add to Dock.

The first ninety seconds

Three screens, then the page you write on. The screens say plainly what the app is and is not, ask you for a passphrase, and show you the recovery phrase to keep. Then you write what is on your mind, and will be shown one passage from Meditations, with its book and section, and one question about what you wrote. Some days the app will have nothing close enough to show, and says so.

Journal with Marcus is not public yet. When it is, this line becomes the link that opens it.