Lunar Log asks you a question the first time it opens: do you want an account, or not?
Most apps don’t offer the choice. This one does, because a dream journal is the most private thing you will ever write, and where it lives should be your call. But the choice has consequences in both directions, and they deserve to be spelled out plainly rather than buried in a settings screen.
The short version
| No account | Account | |
|---|---|---|
| Where the journal lives | Your phone, only | Your phone, plus a synced copy on our servers |
| What leaves your phone | Nothing you write | Your journal, encrypted in transit, to sync it |
| If your phone is lost or broken | The journal is gone, unless you exported it | Sign in on a new phone and it is all there |
| Other devices | No | Yes, including the web app when it ships |
| Voice recording | Yes | Yes |
| Search, insights, export, lock | Yes | Yes |
| AI (transcription, tagging, interpretation, Luna) | Not available | Seven-day Pro trial, then Pro |
| Cost | Free, forever | Free, forever; Pro is optional |
Everything below is the long version of that table.
No account: the journal that never leaves your phone
Without an account, Lunar Log is a complete dream journal that exists in exactly one place.
You can write, record your voice, search every dream, tag the people and places in them by typing @Anna or @the beach, see your recall rate and streak and the moon phase over every night, lock the app behind Face ID, and export the whole journal in one tap. All of it works with the wifi off. None of it needs a sign-up, an email address, or a name.
And nothing you write leaves the phone. Not a word, not a recording, not a photo. We hold no data about you, because there is no you on our side: no account row, no journal, no email. The only things the app ever sends are crash reports and anonymous usage counts, and neither contains a dream or identifies a person. The privacy policy says the same in full.
There is one honest trade. Your phone is the only copy.
If it is lost, stolen, broken, or wiped, the journal goes with it. If you delete the app, the journal is deleted. A backup of your phone through Apple or Google will usually carry the app’s data along, but that is their backup, on their terms, and it is not something we can see or restore for you. The safety net that is yours is the export: one tap gives you every dream as a Markdown file plus a complete structured copy, and you can keep that anywhere you like.
If you go this way, export now and then. A journal you have kept for a year should not depend on one device surviving.
Account: a copy that survives your phone
An account does two things, and only two.
It keeps a synced copy. Every dream, recording, image, person, and place is mirrored to our servers as you write. A phone that ends up at the bottom of a lake takes nothing with it: sign in on the new one and the journal picks up where the old one left off. This is the point of the account, and it is why we recommend one for anyone who intends to keep a journal for years.
It opens the same journal on other devices. A second phone, a tablet, and the web app when it ships, for the mornings when a phone keyboard isn’t enough.
That is what changes. Here is what doesn’t.
- The lock still works, on every device.
- Export still works, and still needs no permission from us.
- There is still no feed, no sharing prompt, no dream wall, and no advertising.
- Journaling is still free, forever. The account is free. Sync is free.
- Your journal is never sold, never used for advertising, and never used to train AI models.
Signing in takes an Apple ID, a Google account, or an email address with a code. No password to invent.
The Pro trial, and what it switches on
Creating an account also starts a seven-day trial of Lunar Log Pro, which is the AI layer. This is worth knowing about before you sign up, because Pro does one thing on its own.
With Pro, after you save a dream, the app reads it once: it links the people and places you mentioned in passing, names the emotions that ran through it, picks out the symbols, gives the dream a title, and paints a header image. That is the automatic tagging, and it runs without being asked.
Each part of it is a switch in Settings. Turn off automatic details, titles, or images and the app stops reading your dreams on its own. What remains, interpretations and Luna, happens only when you ask, dream by dream.
When the AI does run, the relevant dream text goes to the model that does the reading and comes back. It is not kept by the model, and it is never used to train one. AI and privacy goes through this step by step. When the trial ends and you don’t subscribe, the AI layer switches off and everything else stays exactly as it was, including the tags it already made.
Which should you choose?
No account if you want the strongest possible privacy guarantee, you are comfortable exporting now and then, and you would rather not have an AI read anything. This is the right answer for some people, and the app is built so that it is a full answer, not a demo.
An account if you intend to keep the journal for years and would be sick to lose it, if you want it on more than one device, or if you want to try the AI layer. This is the right answer for most people, and it costs nothing.
Changing your mind later
You can start without an account and add one any time. The journal already on your phone is claimed by the new account and uploaded; nothing is lost and nothing is duplicated.
You can also go the other way. Export the journal, then delete the account, which permanently removes every copy from our servers. The journal on your device stays yours until you remove the app.
Either way, the door swings both ways, and the export is always in your hands.
Lunar Log is a private, local-first dream journal for iOS and Android, with a web version on the way. Capture dreams by voice or text, connect recurring people, places and symbols, and build a searchable history that becomes more useful the longer you keep it. It’s free to journal, forever. Get the app.