A travel diary that stays private
No feed, no followers, no ads, no background location tracking. Journily keeps your trip journal on your phone by default — and is straight with you about the one feature that sends anything anywhere.
How it's stored
On your device first, by default
Journily is offline-first. When you write an entry or pin a photo it is written to local storage on the phone — not to a server that then decides what to do with it. You can use the entire app without ever creating an account.
- No account required. Skip sign-up entirely and the scrapbook never leaves the device.
- Cloud backup is opt-in and tied to your own account. It exists so you can restore onto a new phone, and you can delete the cloud copy from inside the app whenever you like.
- No feed, no followers, no profile. There is no mechanism by which another user could see your entries, because there are no other users to see them.
- No ads and no ad trackers, on any tier. Nothing about your trips is sold or used to target you.
- No background location tracking. Countries are marked by hand.
Being straight about AI
The one place your words leave the device
A privacy page that skipped this would be worth nothing.
Journily's AI features — trip recaps, memory highlights, journal prompts and voice transcription — work by sending the relevant text or audio to an AI provider for processing. That is unavoidable for AI written from your own words, and it means those specific entries do leave your phone when you press the button.
What that means in practice: the requests go through Journily's own authenticated server rather than straight from your phone, the provider does not use the content to train public models, and the feature is entirely optional. If you never generate a recap, your journal never leaves the device. The app also tells you when a recap was written on-device instead of by the AI, so you always know which one you are reading.
Why it matters here
A travel diary is not the same as a status update
People write things in a trip journal they would never post — an argument on day three, a place that disappointed them, a feeling about someone they were travelling with. That only works if the diary is genuinely private and stays that way by default rather than by configuration.
Questions
Before you download
Is Journily really private?
By default, yes. Your entries and photos are stored on your device and there is no social feed, no profile and no other users who could see them. Cloud backup is opt-in and tied to your own account. The exception is the optional AI features, which send the relevant text to an AI provider for processing.
Can I use Journily without an account?
Yes. You can skip sign-up entirely and use the app locally. An account is only needed for cloud backup and AI features.
Does Journily sell or share my data?
No. There are no ads, no ad trackers and no sale of personal data on any tier.
Does Journily track my location?
No. There is no background location tracking. You mark the countries you have visited manually.
Can I delete everything?
Yes. You can delete your cloud backup and account from inside the app, which removes the stored trips, media and account metadata. Deleting the app removes the local copy.
Start your first chapter
Free to download. No ads, ever.
Unlimited journal entries and photos on the free tier, with one AI recap for every trip.