Questions, answered plainly
What the app is, what it costs, and whose data it is. If a question isn't here, write to us: it reaches a person.
Getting started
- What is Lunar Log?
- A dream journal app for iOS and Android, with a web version on the way. You capture dreams by voice or keyboard the moment you wake, and it organizes them into a private, searchable journal of the people, places, and signs that come back.
- Which devices does it run on?
- iPhone and iPad, and Android phones. A web version is in the works, for the daytime editing and reading a phone keyboard isn't made for. With an account, every device shows the same journal.
- Do I need an account?
- No. The app works with nothing but your device: no sign-up, no email, no signal needed, and without an account nothing you write ever leaves your phone. An account is optional and does two things: it keeps a synced copy of the journal, so a lost or broken phone isn't a lost journal, and it opens the same journal on your other devices, including the web app when it ships. Account or no account spells out the whole difference.
- Is it free?
- Journaling is free, forever. Writing, reading, recording, organizing, searching, and exporting your own journal are never paywalled and never metered. The optional AI layer, the part that interprets and connects, is the one thing that is paid.
Catching a dream
- Can I record dreams by voice?
- Yes. Press once and talk, so you can log one with your eyes shut and no light on. The recording is always free and always kept. Writing it down for you, the transcript, is part of Pro, and even then the audio stays: half-asleep mumbling never transcribes perfectly, and hearing your own voice pulls the dream back in a way that reading it doesn't.
- What if I only have three words?
- Three words counts as an entry. Save it and finish it over coffee; the dream keeps its original time, and every keystroke is saved as you go, so nothing is lost if you drift off mid-sentence.
- What if I don't remember anything?
- There's a button for that. A blank night logs in one tap, it keeps your streak going because showing up is the habit, and it never counts as a dream in your stats. Your recall rate is measured against the mornings you actually logged.
- Can it remind me in the morning?
- Yes, optionally. A single gentle notification at a time you choose catches the dream before your day does. It is off until you turn it on, and there is no other notification in the app.
- How do I add the widget?
- There are two. Log a Dream opens a new entry; Quick Capture opens straight into recording, so a dream is one press away before the phone is even unlocked.
- iPhone Home Screen. Touch and hold an empty spot on the Home Screen, tap Edit, then Add Widget. Search for Lunar Log and choose Log a Dream or Quick Capture, in the small or medium size.
- iPhone Lock Screen. Touch and hold the Lock Screen, tap Customize, then Lock Screen. Tap the widget strip under the clock, search for Lunar Log, and add Log a Dream or Quick Capture. The same two are available for the two buttons at the bottom of the Lock Screen: tap one, remove its control, and pick Lunar Log from the list.
- Control Center. Open Control Center, touch and hold an empty spot, then tap Add a Control. Search for Lunar Log and add Log a Dream or Quick Capture. The Action button on recent iPhones can be set to either as well, under Settings, Action Button, Controls.
- Android. Touch and hold an empty spot on the home screen, tap Widgets, find Lunar Log, and drag Log a Dream or Quick Capture onto the screen.
- Can I write from a real keyboard?
- Soon. The web app is in the works: the same journal in a browser, for daytime editing, rereading, interpretations, and longer conversations with Luna, with everything you captured on your phone already there. The phone stays the tool for catching the dream at night. The web editor will be part of Pro.
What the journal does with it
- How does it organize dreams?
- Write @Anna or @the beach once and they become places of their own, each holding every dream they ever appeared in. People, places, and tags build themselves out of what you write; nothing has to be filed. Months later the thread is still there to pull.
- Can I search my dreams?
- The whole journal at once, by any word, person, place, tag, or feeling. Filters narrow it to lucid dreams, nightmares, a stretch of dates, or a phase of the moon.
- What is the symbols library?
- A library of 500+ dream symbols, each read through a Jungian, archetypal lens rather than a dictionary definition. The ones that appear in your own entries surface on their own. The most dreamed of them are published on the site: start with the dream symbols library.
- Does it track how a dream felt?
- Yes. The feeling of a dream is often a clearer clue than its plot, so emotions are their own layer: charted over time, and each one read on its own page. See emotions in dreams.
- Why the moon?
- Every dream is stamped with the phase of the moon it was dreamed under, and the insights chart your nights against it. Whether the moon changes how you dream is a question the journal lets you answer for yourself, with your own data.
- What do the insights show?
- Recall rate over time, your streak, a year of nights as a heatmap, dreams by moon phase, and how often each emotion, person, place, tag, and symbol returns. All of it is free, with no restrictions.
Pro and the AI layer
- What does Pro include?
- Voice transcription, automatic tagging of emotions, people, places, and symbols, dream interpretations, Luna, portraits of your dream characters, and the web editor once it ships. The journal itself, with capture, voice, organizing, search, and export, is not part of Pro and never will be.
- What does an interpretation look like?
- A second reading of the dream, grounded in your own journal instead of a dream dictionary: the symbols it contains, the feeling that ran through it, and the people and places that recur, considered together through a Jungian lens. It suggests; it never pronounces. Carl Jung and the art of dream analysis explains the method and why we chose it.
- Who is Luna?
- A companion that has actually read your journal. Ask what a symbol has meant across your dreams, what keeps returning with a certain person, or what a night might have been about, and the answer draws on your own entries.
- What are portraits?
- A painted likeness for the people and places in your dreams, made from how you describe them. Each profile gets one, so the recurring cast of your nights has faces.
- Is there a trial?
- Yes, seven days of Pro, free, with nothing to cancel if you decide the journal alone is enough. After that Pro is billed yearly or monthly through the App Store or Google Play, priced for your region.
- Does the AI read my journal without asking?
- Without an account, never: nothing leaves your phone. With an account, the seven-day Pro trial starts, and with Pro the app reads each dream once after you save it, to tag its people, places, emotions, and symbols, give it a title, and paint a header. Each of those is a switch in Settings. Interpretations and Luna are different: they happen only when you ask, dream by dream, and the journal works in full without them. AI and privacy explains exactly what is sent and why.
- What happens if I cancel?
- Your journal is untouched: every dream, recording, person, and place stays exactly where it was, and export still works. Only the AI layer switches off. Subscriptions are managed in the App Store or Google Play, like any other.
Your dreams, your data
- Could I lose my dreams?
- That is the thing this whole category has broken people's trust on, so it is where the app starts. Your journal is written to your own device and works with no signal and no account. Without an account, though, your phone is the only copy, so if it is lost, broken, or wiped the journal goes with it. An account keeps a synced copy that survives your phone, and either way one tap gives you a backup of your own to keep anywhere. More in account or no account.
- How do I get my dreams out?
- One tap, any time, free. You get every dream as a plain Markdown file, ready for Obsidian, Notes, or a printer, plus a complete structured copy of the whole journal. No lock-in, no hostage-taking, no account required to take it with you.
- Can I lock the journal?
- Yes. A lock of its own, separate from your phone's, using Face ID, Touch ID, or your device passcode, so a borrowed phone doesn't mean a read journal.
- Is it private?
- There is no social feed, no sharing prompt, and no dream wall. Your nights are not content. Sharing exists only as something you do on purpose, one dream at a time. The privacy policy says the rest in full.
- Are there ads?
- No. Not now, not ever, not in a dream journal.
- How do I delete my account?
- From inside the app, or by following the steps on the account deletion page. Deleting the account removes every copy held in the cloud; the journal on your device stays yours until you remove the app.
Lucid dreaming
- Is it good for lucid dreaming?
- Yes. Recurring dream signs surface from your own entries, the journal tracks recall and streaks over time, a gentle morning reminder catches the dream before your day does, and voice capture works with your eyes closed. Reality-check reminders are on the roadmap.
- Can I mark a dream as lucid?
- Yes, and as a nightmare, and as recurring. Each is a filter in the journal and a line in the insights, so you can see how often you become lucid and what the nights around it look like.
Who is behind it
- Who is building it?
- One developer, out in the open, still building. This corner of the App Store is full of journals whose makers walked away; this one is actively worked on, and a mail to hello@lunarlog.me reaches a person.
- Can I ask for a feature?
- Please do. Write to hello@lunarlog.me. The things people ask for most are what gets built next.