PaperThoughts - Journal

Handwritten, private journal

Free · In‑App Purchases · Designed for iPad. Not verified for macOS.

A quiet place to think. PaperThoughts is a private, handwriting-first journal for iPad. Write by hand with your Apple Pencil, sketch in the margins, and keep every entry to yourself. WRITE BY HAND • Natural Apple Pencil handwriting and drawing • Blank, lined, grid, or dotted paper in multiple sizes and colours • Journaling prompts when you don't know where to start drop a question onto the page and answer it in ink • Prefer to type? Typed entries are always a long-press away REMEMBER THE MOMENT • Tag entries, set a mood, and pin the place they happened drop the pin on a map yourself, wherever the entry belongs • Add photos alongside your handwriting or leave a placeholder slot on the page and fill it with the photo later • Find things again with filters by journal, place, tag, or date WORKS WHEREVER YOU DO • No connection needed write, sketch, and read your journals fully offline • At the cabin, on the trail, in the air: your journal lives on your device, and syncs through your own iCloud when you're back online • Day or night — a dark mode that keeps the page calm WATCH YOUR PRACTICE GROW • Streaks and gentle insights: how often you write, and the places your entries have taken you • Bookmark the pages you return to • Export entries or whole journals to PDF anytime your words are never locked in PRIVATE BY DESIGN • Your entries live on your device and in your own iCloud — nowhere else • No account, no sign-up, and nothing to log in to • No analytics, no tracking, no servers of ours: we have no way to read what you write • Moods are saved to Apple Health on your device; App Lock uses Face ID or Touch ID without biometric data ever leaving it ON IPHONE • A companion for reading your journals and capturing quick typed notes the Pencil stays the star on iPad PAPERTHOUGHTS PREMIUM The free app includes 3 journals with 5 entries each — enough to make it yours. Premium removes every limit, with a monthly or yearly subscription or a one-time lifetime purchase. Payment is charged to your Apple Account; subscriptions renew automatically unless cancelled at least 24 hours before the end of the period, and can be managed in your Apple Account settings. Privacy policy: https://paperthoughts.app/privacy Terms of use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/

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Typed entries can now be formatted as you write. Type **bold**, *italic*, or # for a heading and it takes shape as you go. Five heading sizes, bullet and numbered lists, strikethrough, links, and code. There's a formatting bar above the keyboard if you'd rather tap than type, with indent controls for nesting a list. Entries you've already written open clean. The formatting marks stay out of the way while you're reading — tap the page, or the pencil in the corner, when you want to change something. Feed cards and exported PDFs are clean too. On iPad, typed entries scroll as one continuous page instead of jumping page to page. And if you type more often than you draw, you can set the + button to open the keyboard by default. On iPhone, the writing on feed cards is readable again instead of shrunk to fit. A few smaller things: New entries are tagged with your location by default. You can turn that off in Settings. You can hide the photo thumbnails on one entry's card without changing it everywhere else — it's in the card's menu. If iCloud has trouble syncing, the app now tells you what actually went wrong instead of just saying you're offline.

The developer, Cody Nicoll, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .

  • Data Not Collected

    The developer does not collect any data from this app.

    Privacy practices may vary, for example, based on the features you use or your age. Learn More

    The developer has not yet indicated which accessibility features this app supports. Learn More

    Seller
    • Cody Nicoll
    Size
    • 4.1 MB
    Category
    • Lifestyle
    Compatibility
    Requires iOS 17.0 or later.
    • iPhone
      Requires iOS 17.0 or later.
    • iPad
      Requires iPadOS 17.0 or later.
    • Mac
      Requires macOS 14.0 or later and a Mac with Apple M1 chip or later.
    • Apple Vision
      Requires visionOS 1.0 or later.
    Languages
    • English
    Age Rating
    4+
    In-App Purchases
    Yes
    • Premium Lifetime $59.99
    • Premium Yearly $24.99
    • Premium Monthly $3.99
    Copyright
    • © 2026 Cody Nicoll (cdnicoll)