Private voice journal · iOS 26 · Nothing leaves the phone
retold
Speak. It writes it down.
A speech model that keeps up with real, unedited talking — and it lives inside the app, not on someone’s server.
I don’t know why I keep circling back to this.
so I think the thing about the the move is I keep saying it’s about the job but honestly it’s uh So I think the thing about the move is — I keep saying it’s about the job, but honestly, it isn’t.
iOS 26. The observer needs an iPhone with Apple Intelligence; recording, transcription, search and export do not.
Contents
- I Transcription that survives real speech. A dedicated best-in-class speech model (NVIDIA Parakeet TDT v3) ships inside the app and runs on the Neural Engine. Rambling, hesitant, half-finished sentences come back readable.
- II 25 languages. Not English and a promise.
- III Your data walks with you. Markdown and audio export, encrypted local backup. Nothing is held hostage.
- IV Pay once, keep it. Lifetime first. The core — record, transcribe, search, export — is free forever.
- V Private by architecture. The model lives on your phone. There is no network code in the binary to disable.
The model lives on your phone.
Nothing downloads, because it is already here.
Press one button and talk. Retold writes down what you say, on your phone, with no account and no network.
Most voice journals hand your audio to a general-purpose recognizer and hope. Retold ships its own: a dedicated speech model, running on the Neural Engine, tuned for the way people actually talk — mid-sentence turns, false starts, thinking out loud. It works in 25 languages.
The install is large, about 500 MB, because that model lives inside the app. Nothing downloads later. Nothing uploads, ever.
500 MB · Neural Engine · yours
Twenty-five languages.
Speak the one you think in.
Not English and a promise. The speech model transcribes all twenty-five on the device, with the same accuracy on the phone in your pocket as on any other.
- Englishen
- Españoles
- Françaisfr
- Deutschde
- Italianoit
- Portuguêspt
- Nederlandsnl
- Danskda
- Svenskasv
- Suomifi
- Eestiet
- Latviešulv
- Lietuviųlt
- Polskipl
- Češtinacs
- Slovenčinask
- Slovenščinasl
- Hrvatskihr
- Българскиbg
- Românăro
- Magyarhu
- Maltimt
- Ελληνικάel
- Русскийru
- Українськаuk
It listens back. It never talks back.
An observer notes patterns in your own words. No advice, no questions, no chat.
After you speak, a quiet observer writes down what it heard, in your own words. It runs on the device, on the Apple Intelligence model already in your phone. When an entry has nothing worth noting, it says nothing.
An example observation
The move came up three times this week. Each time you started with the job and ended somewhere else.
“It’s temporary. It’s a temporary thing until the summer.”— Tuesday, 3 days ago
On Sunday you called it the new place.
- No advice
- No questions
- No chat
- No streaks
- No scores
- No accounts
Your week, read back on your day.
Pick the day and the hour. Written on the device, while it charges. A week that kept circling back to one thing reads like a week that kept circling back to one thing.
Export everything. Owe nothing.
Markdown and audio, zipped. Encrypted backup with your own passphrase. No lock-in.
Everything you write is yours to take: Markdown and audio export, encrypted backup you hold the passphrase to, no lock-in and nothing to cancel.
The backup is a file you keep, not a service you trust. Retold encrypts it with the passphrase you choose and hands it to you. Nobody else holds a copy, and nobody else can open it — including us.
Free, forever. Or once, for good.
Recording, transcription, search and export are free, forever. One purchase — once, not monthly — unlocks the part that listens back.
Free
ForeverNo account, no trial
- Record & transcribe
- Twenty-five languages
- Typed entries
- Search & export
- Encrypted backup
Retold Forever
$29.99One purchase. Yours for good.
- The observer
- The weekly review
- The observation library
Monthly and yearly plans exist for anyone who wants them. Retold Forever is listed first, in the app and here, because it is the one we would pick.
There is no network code in the binary to disable.
The model lives on your phone. Every feature runs here, signal or no signal.
Privacy claims are cheap. The app’s privacy screen lists every framework in the binary and what each one is for, so the claim can be checked rather than believed. It is reproduced here in full.
What is not in this app
- No network code — zero uses of URLSession or sockets
- No network entitlements in the app’s signature
- No analytics or telemetry of any kind
- No account to create — and no backend for one to live on
- No advertising or attribution SDKs linked into the binary
- No silent cloud sync — backup is a button you press, encrypted with your passphrase
Every framework in the binary, and why
- SwiftUI / SwiftData
- Interface and the on-device database.
- AVFoundation
- Microphone capture and playback.
- Speech
- Live on-device transcription while you speak (SpeechAnalyzer). The language model is downloaded once by iOS itself and shared system-wide.
- FluidAudio
- Runs the bundled NVIDIA Parakeet speech-to-text model on the Neural Engine to sharpen each transcript after recording. Open-source (Apache-2.0). No network — the model ships inside the app.
- FoundationModels
- The on-device Apple Intelligence model that writes reflections and weekly reviews. Runs on the Neural Engine.
- ActivityKit / WidgetKit / AppIntents
- The recording timer on your Lock Screen and the one-tap record widget.
- BackgroundTasks
- The weekly review job, on the day you chose, only while charging.
- UserNotifications
- Optional, off by default: a reminder you set for yourself and ‘your review is ready’ notes. Scheduled on this device — no push server, nothing over the network.
- StoreKit
- Purchases go through the App Store. Retold runs no backend of its own.
- CryptoKit
- Encrypting the optional backup before it leaves the app, and opening it again when you restore one.
- UniformTypeIdentifiers
- Naming the kind of file the restore picker accepts. It describes files; it doesn’t move them.
- LocalAuthentication
- Face ID or your passcode standing in front of the journal, when you turn the app lock on. The check happens on the device; nothing about your face or code is ever readable by Retold.
Speech recognition by NVIDIA Parakeet TDT 0.6b v3 (CC-BY-4.0), CoreML conversion by FluidInference, integrated via FluidAudio (Apache-2.0). The model is bundled in the app — it never downloads and audio never leaves this device.
Audio, transcripts, reflections and reviews live in this app’s container on this device. Recordings are excluded from iCloud device backup; your written words travel only inside your own iPhone backup, which Retold neither sends nor can read. Deleting the app deletes everything.