Ownlight

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A private timeline with no audience.
Capture text, photos, audio, video, documents, and everyday check-ins without turning your life into a social feed.

App Store · Privacy & Support · Source Release

Why Ownlight

Ownlight sits between a social timeline and a traditional journal. Posting feels lightweight, but everything is for you: no followers, public comments, engagement counters, ads, or pressure to perform.

Local first	New moments are written to the iPhone's local SQLite archive first. Capture, browse, and search still work without a network connection.
Private by design	Ownlight has no developer-hosted account system or social graph. Optional iCloud sync uses the user's private CloudKit database.
Rich moments	Record text, photos, audio, video, PDFs, comments, favorites, pins, smart tags, check-ins, and Share Sheet imports.
Reflection, not gamification	Calendar review, weekly review, memories, search, topic areas, and Markdown help you revisit what mattered.
Bring your own AI	AI is optional and user-configured. Provider API keys stay in the iPhone Keychain and are excluded from iCloud sync and exports.
Open source	The public source is MIT licensed. GitHub releases are source-only; signed App Store builds are distributed by Apple.

Screenshots

Private timeline Capture everyday moments without an audience.	Optional AI summaries Turn long voice notes into structured reflections.	Markdown details Keep longer thoughts readable and expressive.
Calendar review Look back by day, week, and month.	Topic areas Browse AI-assisted topics without a tag wall.	Private iCloud sync Keep your own Apple devices in sync when enabled.

The screenshots use deterministic demo data and contain no private user content.

Get Ownlight

App Store

Download Ownlight on the App Store. The store build is free and contains no ads, subscription, or in-app purchase.

Build from source

Requirements:

• macOS with Xcode 16 or later.
• iOS 17 or later.
• Node.js 22 or later.
• XcodeGen.
• Your own Apple Developer signing identity for device builds, App Groups, and CloudKit.

git clone https://github.com/Popcornnnnnnnn/ownlight.git
cd ownlight
npm install
npm run verify:ios:low-impact

For machine-specific signing, device, bundle identifier, App Group, and CloudKit overrides:

cp .env.local.example .env.local

Install and launch on a paired iPhone:

npm run ios:device

No pre-signed IPA is published. GitHub releases contain source code only so each developer keeps control of their own signing and CloudKit identity.

Privacy Model

• On-device by default: moments, comments, tags, drafts, media, and generated artifacts live in the app's local archive first.
• Optional iCloud: enable Settings > Data Storage > iCloud > iCloud Sync to sync through the private CloudKit database of the signed-in Apple Account.
• Optional external AI: Ownlight sends the minimum required content only after the user configures a compatible provider and enables the relevant AI workflow.
• Local credentials: provider API keys stay in the iPhone Keychain. They are not included in iCloud sync, archive exports, or the legacy server workspace.
• Portable archive: Storage & Export can create a local archive and restore it into an empty Ownlight library.

See Security And Privacy for the public security boundary and responsible disclosure path.

Repository Map

Path	Purpose
ios/PrivateMoments	The SwiftUI iPhone/iPad app distributed as Ownlight.
ios/PrivateMoments/CloudKit	Optional private CloudKit cross-device sync.
ios/ShareExtension	Share Sheet capture into the main app composer.
docs/	Product, architecture, operations, privacy, and release documentation.
site/	Static Privacy Policy and Support pages.
server/, admin/	Legacy compatibility and maintenance workspaces; not required for normal Ownlight use.

Development

Low-impact iOS verification avoids launching Simulator and limits Xcode build parallelism:

npm run verify:ios:low-impact

Run Simulator only for visual UI review or screenshot work:

npm run ios:simulator:demo
npm run ios:simulator:cleanup

The demo fixture is opt-in and only runs with --private-moments-demo-data. It seeds deterministic local moments, tags, comments, AI-summary metadata, media placeholders, and check-ins. The normal app path never seeds demo data.

Legacy server and Admin workspace

The repository retains server/ and admin/ for historical compatibility, API reference, archive tooling, and maintenance experiments. They are not part of the ordinary iPhone-first product runtime and are not required for iCloud sync.

cp server/.env.example server/.env
npm run server:prisma:generate
npm run server:prisma:deploy
npm run admin:build
npm run server:build
npm run server:dev

The legacy server defaults to http://127.0.0.1:3210; after the Admin build, the maintenance UI is available at http://127.0.0.1:3210/admin/. See the Operator Runbook for archive, restic, launchd, and recovery details.

Documentation

• Product Requirements
• Technical Design
• Design Principles
• Operator Runbook
• Integration Guide
• Workflow
• Release Checklist
• Open Source Readiness
• Changelog

Contributing And Releases

Issues and focused pull requests are welcome; start with CONTRIBUTING.md. Before publishing a source tag or App Store build, run:

npm run doctor:release
npm run doctor:app-store
npm run verify:ios:low-impact
git diff --check

Ownlight is available under the MIT License.