Privacy & Security

A diary app with a lock that keeps your entries private

A diary is only worth keeping if you trust it. Purple Diary locks your journal behind a PIN and your phone's Face ID, Touch ID, or fingerprint, so the things you write stay between you and the page. It is free, has no ads, and works on every device you own.

Why a lock matters for a diary

Most note apps were built to be shared. A diary is the opposite. It holds the thoughts you would not say out loud, the worries you are still working through, and the small moments you want to remember exactly as they were. If anyone who picks up your phone can read all of that, you start writing for an audience instead of for yourself, and the honesty that makes journaling useful quietly disappears.

A lock fixes that. When your journal is protected, you can write freely again, because you know the page is private by default rather than private only when you remember to hide it.

How Purple Diary locks your journal

Purple Diary is built around a lock from the first screen. Setting it up takes a few seconds, and after that the app protects itself every time it opens.

• PIN code. Set a passcode that is required to open the app. Even an unlocked, borrowed phone cannot get into your entries without it.
• Biometric unlock. On devices that support it, unlock with Face ID, Touch ID, or a fingerprint so opening your diary is fast for you and closed to everyone else.
• Locks on every launch. The app re-locks when you leave it, so you never have to remember to sign out. Close it, hand the phone over, and your journal is already sealed.
• Private by default. Purple Diary shows no ads, does not sell your data, and does not read or reuse the content of your entries. What you write is there to serve you, and nothing else.

A real diary, not just a locked notepad

The lock is the front door, but a good journal needs to be worth opening. Purple Diary gives you a comfortable writing editor for daily entries, photo attachments and voice notes for the memories words cannot hold, mood tracking so you can look back and see patterns, and a tagging system that makes any past entry easy to find again.

You can shape the space to fit you, too, with ten light and dark theme colors, adjustable fonts and text sizes, and feed display options that control how your past entries appear. It is rated 4.5 stars by more than 500 people, which tells us the balance between privacy and a genuinely pleasant place to write is one people keep coming back to.

Locked, and with you everywhere

Privacy should not cost you convenience. Purple Diary runs on iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Mac, Android, Wear OS, Windows, and the web, and your locked journal stays in sync across all of them. Write a few lines on your phone during the day, and they are waiting for you on your laptop at night, still protected behind the same lock. You can read more on the cross-platform diary app page.

Frequently asked questions