A private memory journal

Each memory a tile. Together, a portrait of you.

A quiet place for the things worth remembering. Soft by design, stored only in your iCloud, opened with your face.

iOS 26+ macOS 26+ text-only, v1

Tessera is a small app for a long practice. Write freely, file later. Build a library of moments — exact-dated or just the feeling of a year — and let them gather quietly into the shape of a life. No scoring. No streaks. No cheering from the margins. Only the pages you choose to keep, and the slow, honest portrait they become.

from Little Lumen Labs

the chapters

What it does, quietly.

Four ideas, arranged like a table of contents. Nothing clever. Nothing loud.

I. the blank page

Write freely.
File later.

A single tap opens a blank page. No era, no tags, no mood required — just a cursor, waiting. When you're done, the memory drops into your inbox until you decide where it belongs.

The first tile.

9:06

title…

The morning she taught me to tell a green tomato from a red one, standing in the backyard in her blue cardigan

autosaving Save to Inbox

II. eras

Chapters of a life.

Eras are the autobiographical chapters only you can name. "Childhood" can hold "Pittsburgh years," which can hold "Before my parents divorced." Each era keeps its own count and a quiet mood distribution at a glance.

Therapy is era-oriented. So is the app.

eras

▾ Childhood 142
▾ Pittsburgh years 88
▾ Before my parents divorced 31
▾ College 67
▾ First marriage 94
▾ Now 21

III. tags, mood, flags

The quiet apparatus.

Tags are nested and cross-cutting — family/mom/advice is three linked threads. Mood is a single soft five-point scale. Two flags, no more: core for the ones that anchor you, in progress for the ones you want to return to.

Four ways to remember when.

Not every memory has a Wednesday attached. Choose exact, approximate, a whole era, or no date at all — your timeline respects the difference.

exact March 14, 2024 pinned to the day
approximate circa 2003 grouped by year
era-only sometime in childhood placed by chapter
undated — still remembered

the portrait tab

The shape of what you've kept.

Soft, quiet visualizations of the collection you are building. More like an infographic in a literary magazine than a dashboard.

memories

324

in sixteen months of writing

words written

41,208

about a short novel

oldest memory

1988

a summer on the porch

newest memory

today

six minutes ago

across your eras

Childhood 142
College 67
First marriage 94
Now 21

how it felt

324 in total

Warm38%
Joyful24%
Neutral18%
Heavy12%
Painful8%

when you wrote

less more

what comes up

mother kitchen home tomatoes light summer window afternoon letter porch snow rain cardigan

often together

family/mom + advice 4×
kitchen + tomatoes 3×
pittsburgh + summer 3×

When you open Portrait after three months of writing, the feeling is not "progress." The feeling is: huh. there's a shape here.

a look inside

The app, as it is.

Today on the Mac, and six more pages in your pocket. Soft on the eyes by default, comfortable in the dark when the hour calls for it.

Tessera on macOS — the Today page in a wide sidebar layout, the day's prompt front and centre. — Today, on your Mac *the day's page, with more room to read*

Portrait — soft statistics and a mood distribution across the collection. — Portraitthe shape of what you've kept

Eras — nested chapters of a life, each with its own count and mood bar. — Eraschapters of a life

A single memory, open for reading, in dark mode. — A memoryone tile, up close

Timeline — memories arranged by date with filtering. — Timelinearranged by when

Search — finding a memory by a word or a tag. — Searcha word, a thread, a name

Graph — memories shown as nodes connected by their shared tags and eras. — Graphthe threads between

Private by design.

No accounts, no servers, no analytics, no newsletters. Your memories live in your iCloud private database, opened with your face, your fingerprint, or your passcode. Nothing leaves your devices.

sync Your iCloud, your pace. Encrypted end-to-end — same as your health data.
lock Face ID on by default. Timeout the way you prefer, or set to Never.
export Every memory to a Markdown folder. Whenever you'd like. No questions.
ownership Your writing is yours. It is never read, indexed, or trained upon.

what it costs

One price, no asterisks.

Pick a plan that fits. Fourteen days free on the yearly. Your memories stay yours either way.

Yearly

$24.99 per year

14 days free for new subscribers.
- Unlimited memories, eras, tags, and moods.
- Graph & Portrait — your mosaic, rendered.
- Brain Dump, on-device AI titles, Markdown export.
Monthly

$3.99 per month

Cancel anytime. No trial.
- Same full access, billed monthly.
- Upgrade to yearly anytime from Settings.
Lifetime

$79 one time

Pay once. Yours forever.
- Full access for the lifetime of the app.
- No renewals, no reminders, no surprises.

Even if you stop, your memories remain yours.

Subscription lapses drop you into a read-only state — you can still read every memory and export the full library as Markdown. We don't hold your writing hostage.

billing Handled by Apple through your Apple ID. We never see your payment details. Cancel or manage anytime in Settings › Apple ID › Subscriptions.

soon