Guide

1. Installing and starting out

Laana arrives on the App Store (iOS) and Google Play (Android) soon. There is no account and no sign-up: open the app and write your first note.

On first launch the app creates an encrypted database on your device. The key is stored in your operating system keychain (iOS Keychain / Android Keystore) and never leaves the device.

• iOS 16 or newer, Android 8 or newer.
• No network needed for the core features.
• The app is Dutch by default; English can be selected in settings.

2. Journal: writing

Tap the plus button on the timeline to start a new entry. There is no save button — your text is stored as you type.

Markdown works for headings, bold and lists. A word written with a hash, such as #work, automatically becomes a tag.

• Mood: pick one per entry. Moods carry names, not just emoji, so screen readers can announce them.
• Tags: type #tag inline, or manage them at the bottom of the entry.
• Favourites: mark an entry to keep it near the top.
• Deleting: gone is gone — there is no bin and no copy elsewhere.

3. Voice notes

On the voice screen, hold the record button to capture a note. Laana then transcribes it with Whisper, running entirely on your device.

The transcription model (around 60 MB) is never downloaded automatically. The first time you transcribe, the app asks — so it never spends your mobile data unasked.

Transcriptions run one at a time in a queue. Close the app mid-run and the queue resumes.

Speed and Dutch accuracy are still being measured on real hardware. If a result is poor, you can re-run the transcription.

4. Photos and attachments

Attach photos to an entry with the paperclip icon. Laana makes no second copy: the photo stays in your photo library and the entry points at it.

That is a deliberate trade. Your photos and voice recordings travel with your phone's backup this way — something the encrypted database cannot do. The price: they are not walled off the way your text is. Other apps with media access can see them, they show up in your gallery, and a photo library that syncs to iCloud or Google Photos takes them along.

• Only your text and transcripts sit in the app's encrypted database.
• Unlinking a photo removes it from the entry. You can separately choose to delete it from your photo library as well; by default it stays.
• On Android voice recordings go to your media too. On iOS they cannot — the photo library has no slot for audio — so they stay inside the app.
• The only limit is the free space on your phone.

5. Folders and filters

Folders are a loose organisation layer over your entries. Filter chips on the timeline switch to a single folder in one tap.

Deleting a folder only unfiles its entries — the entries themselves stay. That is deliberate: throwing away a folder should never be a surprising way to lose data.

6. Search

Search covers both your written entries and the transcripts of your voice notes. Hits from both sources are interleaved by recency, so a spoken note never gets stuck below the written ones.

Search uses SQLite's full-text index. On devices where it is unavailable the app falls back to a simpler query — you will not notice the difference.

7. Asking Laana

Still in development. Laana will have one mode: a language model running entirely on your device.

There will be no cloud variant. That costs some speed and power against a large model on a server, but it also means questions about your own journal go nowhere, it works offline, and no daily cap is needed.

• The model is downloaded once and then used locally.
• Older phone? Answers will be slower. There is no button that moves the work to a server.

8. Calendar, insights and more

Also in development. We build these in order of usefulness, not of how impressive they sound:

• Calendar (read-only), so a date carries context.
• Insights: mood patterns and writing rhythm, computed on your device.
• Knowledge graph: people, places and topics that connect themselves.
• Email: the most privacy-sensitive integration, and therefore explicitly after version 1.

9. Export, backup and deletion

Laana keeps no copy of your notes, so you make one yourself: the app writes an export. That is a single encrypted file with a passphrase only you choose. Keep it somewhere other than your phone — your own cloud, a laptop, a usb stick — and restore it whenever you need it.

Your phone's own backup is no substitute. The encrypted database file does come back, but its key stays behind on the device that made it, so a restore leaves you with something nobody can open. Your photos and voice recordings do come back with it, so switch that device backup on as well.

Deletion is just as direct: removing the app erases your notes. There is no account with us to close, because there is no account.

• New phone? Install Laana, open "A copy of your journal" and restore your export with your passphrase.
• Restoring merges: notes that are already there stay exactly as they are and are never overwritten.
• Photos and voice recordings are not in the export. They travel with your phone's own backup.
• Lose the passphrase and the export is lost with it. We cannot reset it and cannot open the file.
• Without an export, a lost or wiped phone means permanent loss. We cannot restore anything.

10. Troubleshooting

• Transcript stays empty? Check that the speech model is downloaded and that the recording contains audio.
• Notes gone after switching phones? A device backup does not bring them back; that is what the export is for. We hold no copy and cannot retrieve anything.
• Anything else: email us. Never include the content of a note you would rather not share — we do not need it to find a bug.