Anew
A daily positive-thinking journal for Mac. One prompt each morning — an affirmation, a visualization, a memory worth keeping, a note to your future self — answered in a calm, fixed-size monospace card. Twenty words and the day is done.
Free. Requires macOS 15 or later; runs on Apple silicon and Intel. Signed and notarized by Apple; the app updates itself.
What it does
- One prompt a day. A curated bank of a hundred-plus prompts in a warm second person, rotating without repeats. Not the one you want? "Give me another."
- Write freely when a prompt isn't the point. Morning pages, no prompt attached.
- A streak that forgives. Twenty words completes a day; a 3 AM grace window covers late nights; the week view shows "n of 7 days" so one miss doesn't erase the month.
- A quiet archive. GitHub-style heatmap, chronological history, and a monthly look-back that resurfaces what you wrote a month and a year ago today.
- Reminders that know you already wrote. A daily nudge at a time you choose, an optional evening one, and neither fires on a day you've finished.
- Menu bar entry. Today's prompt one click from anywhere, sharing the same lock and the same journal.
Private by construction
Entries are encrypted on disk with a key that lives in your Mac's Keychain. The app is sandboxed with no network access of its own; the only thing that ever goes online is the update check. Touch ID gates every session, and the app re-locks after five idle minutes or when the Mac sleeps.
Install
- Download the DMG and open it.
- Drag Anew to Applications.
- On first launch, allow notifications if you want the daily reminder, and unlock with Touch ID.
Found a bug or want a prompt category that isn't there? Write to me.