“Loved the minimalist design and the way it just gets out of the way. Trying to migrate a decade of paper notebooks into it.”
RS
Rami Sarieddine
@ramiesays
v0.23 · Now on web, desktop and phone
A quiet place
to keep the days
you don’t want to lose.
glimpses is a private journal for the small, particular things, a walk, a photo, a sentence you overheard. Write a line or a page. Pin it to a place. Find it again, years later.
Tue, 11:35 PM · Kilternan
4,218 entries · 7 years
Quietly, since 2016. Mentioned over the years by
Microsoft Tech Blog Zapier Make Tech Easier The Times News Product Hunt
One journal, every screen Write at your desk.
Write at your desk.
Finish on the train.
glimpses lives on the open web now. Install it to your laptop dock, add it to your iPhone home screen, pin it to your Android. Same writing, same entries, once you connect Dropbox.
iOS · PWA on the phone 
Android · PWA in the pocket 
Web · macOS · Windows at the desk 
Timeline
Every day, in its order.
Open glimpses and you land in your story so far, a vertical thread of entries, newest first, with the date set in the same warm slab the app has always used. Click any day. The right panel opens with the photo, the words, the place.
- Three-pane reading on desktop, single-thread on mobile.
- Quick capture from a floating composer with text, photo and place.
- Search across every word you’ve written.
Photos
The picture remembers what the words forgot.
Add a photo to a single entry, a coffee cup, a coastline, a sticker found in a drawer. glimpses keeps it with the words, the date and the place you saved, then turns the year into a gallery you can fall into.
- Date overlay matches the app’s editorial number style.
- One tap to the entry behind the image.
- Photos stay attached to the entry behind them.
Calendar
Find the Wednesday you keep meaning to re-read.
A month view that quietly dots the days you wrote on. Tap to jump. Starred days get the warmer mark.
Insights
A year of your own attention, laid out flat.
Journals, photos, places, favourites, your activity rendered as an isometric ribbon you can pan across.
Privacy by default
No journal server in the middle. No reading over your shoulder.
glimpses has had a single principle for the last decade: the journal is yours. We don’t host a copy. We don’t train on it. We don’t sell anyone a tile of it.
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Your Dropbox, not ours
Your journal syncs through your own Dropbox account. glimpses does not keep a copy of your entries on our servers.
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Works when you’re offline
Write without a connection. glimpses keeps your latest changes on this device, then syncs them to Dropbox when you’re back online.
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Export a clean copy
Save an entry as a PDF with its words and photo intact, whenever you need a copy outside the app.
From the readers
A decade of quiet writers.
glimpses started as a Windows app in 2016 and stayed small on purpose. These notes are from the journal apps’ long inbox.
“Stumbled into glimpses on a Tuesday. Clean UI, no nag screens, no plug for some other app. Exactly what I needed.”
JR
Joeylene Rivera
@jorenrui
“Best way to bring my thoughts to text. I keep two journals — physical for sketches, glimpses for everything that’s a sentence.”
A
Andreas Reuter
@dieserandreas
“Converted most of my paper journals into glimpses this autumn. Can’t wait for the iOS one — finally here.”
AB
Alden Brown
supporter, since 2019
“I wish I’d stumbled onto this before I spent money on the store app that crashes when I try to do the one thing I bought it for.”
WC
Wimpy Checkers
supporter
“Please know that your work is important for a lot of us. Keep up the journal app.”
MD
Martin Doležal
supporter, Prague
Honest answers
Things people ask before they sign up.
Still nothing answered? Write to support@getglimpses.com — a real person reads it.
Is the old Windows app gone?
The new web app is the focus going forward. It reads the same Dropbox entry files as the Windows app, so existing journals can come across without a conversion step.
How does sync work without a glimpses journal server?
Your entries sync through your own Dropbox account. When you open glimpses on another device, it pulls your journal from Dropbox. We do not store or read your entries.
What does it cost?
glimpses includes a 7-day free trial. After that, it asks for a one-time lifetime purchase. No subscription, no pro tier, no card needed to start.
Do you offer refunds?
Yes. You can refund your purchase within 30 days directly inside the app. No questions asked, no support email needed.
Will my old entries come across?
Yes. Sign in with the Dropbox account that holds your old glimpses files, and the web app can sync those entries into the new Timeline.
Can I export entries?
Yes. Open an entry and export it as a PDF with the writing and photo preserved.
Is there an iOS or Android app store version?
The web app is the version to use now. Open it in Safari or Chrome, then add it to your home screen so glimpses feels like an app and can still open when the connection is rough.
Begin
Ten years from now, you’ll be glad you started today.
Open the app, connect Dropbox, write one sentence. That’s the whole onboarding.
No card. No account juggling. Bring your own storage.