DailyVox: Private Voice Diary

Karthikeyan NG

About this app

Speak for forty-two seconds. That's the whole app.

DailyVox turns what you say into a private journal, and builds a Digital Twin
that learns who you are from your own words. All of it happens on this phone.

WHY YOU CAN BELIEVE THAT

Most journal apps promise privacy. This one can be checked in ten seconds,
without trusting a word of this page:

• Open Android Settings → Apps → DailyVox → Permissions.
• There is no internet permission there. Not "unused" — absent.
• An app cannot use a permission it does not hold. Not through a bug, not
through an update, not if someone forks it.

Then turn on airplane mode and record an entry. Everything still works, because
there is no server to be cut off from.

The complete list of what DailyVox asks for:
• Microphone — to hear you
• Notifications — the evening reminder, nothing else
• Vibration — haptics
• Biometrics — the optional app lock
• Health Connect — only if you switch on Body signals, read-only, four types

That's it. No analytics SDK. No crash reporter. No account. No sign-up. No ads.
No subscription. No "free trial" that becomes a bill.

Android's own cloud backup is switched OFF inside the app, on purpose. Left at
its default it would copy your journal and recordings to Google Drive — by the
system, without this app needing any permission. We turned it off so "nothing
leaves this phone" stays true rather than nearly true.

Transcription is the same trap, and it is why DailyVox needs Android 13 or
newer. The ordinary speech recogniser can send your audio to Google — again by
another app, needing no permission from this one. Android 13 added a recogniser
guaranteed to stay on the phone, and it is the only one DailyVox will use. With
no offline language pack installed it says so and stops, rather than
transcribing over a network.

YOUR DIGITAL TWIN

As you speak, the Twin quietly builds a picture of you:

• The people, places and things you mention, and how they connect
• How your mood moves across days, weeks and times of day
• How you sound — pace, pitch, and where you pause
• Patterns worth noticing, and only when there is enough evidence to say so

Every insight is computed from your own entries. If there isn't enough there
yet, DailyVox says so instead of inventing something.

ASK YOUR TWIN

Ask what it has actually read. Answers come from real numbers in your own
journal, and each one names the entries it drew from, so you can check it.

There is no free-form chatbot, and that is a decision rather than a missing
feature. A model small enough to run on every Android phone would guess, and a
Twin that guesses about your life is worse than one that stays quiet.

WHAT ELSE IS IN IT

• Search your journal by what you meant, or by voice
• Play back the original recording of any entry
• See exactly what the Twin filed from each entry, and correct it
• Tell it how the day actually felt — your word, not its guess
• Home screen widget and a Quick Settings tile for one-tap recording
• Optional evening reminder, with no streak guilt if you miss a night
• App lock with your fingerprint, face, or device PIN
• Photos attached to entries, kept on this phone
• Export as PDF or readable JSON, and an encrypted backup you control
• Your backup opens on an iPhone too — the format is identical on both

Body signals are optional. With your permission DailyVox reads sleep, morning
HRV, resting heart rate and steps from Health Connect, so the Twin can tell you
whether a rough night actually changes how YOU write — a question only your own
entries can answer.

FREE, AND OPEN

Free forever. No paid tier exists. The app's source code is public — how it
records, stores and exports your words can be read by anyone. The Twin's
analysis engine stays closed, but it runs inside an app that holds no internet
permission.

DailyVox is a twenty-year diary habit turned into software, by someone who
wanted to keep writing without handing it to anyone.

What’s new

New: type an entry any time.

Can't talk right now? Tap "I can't talk right now" under the record button and write your entry instead. It counts toward your streak, gets a mood, and adds the people you mention to your Twin, the same as a spoken entry.

Still no internet permission. Your words stay on this phone.