Keepnook

A scrapbook, journal and planner notebook, for iPhone and iPad. Paper you can draw on, photographs you can stick down, and notes in your own arrangement — kept on the device you make them on.

What it is

Keepnook opens on a shelf of notebooks. Each one turns a spread at a time, and every spread is a page you can put anything on.

• Draw. A pen, a pencil, a marker, a highlighter and an eraser, each with its own weight, colour and feel. Apple Pencil pressure is read where the device reports it.
• Photographs. Add one from your library, take one straight onto the page, or paste one in. Scale it, turn it, or let it fill the whole spread.
• Elements. Stickers, washi tape and illustrated artwork, placed and resized by hand.
• Text. Type onto the page in the typeface, size and colour you choose.
• Paper. Blank, lined, dotted or grid, in a tint you mix yourself, with a smooth or grained stock.
• A shelf you arrange. Covers you pick, folders to group notebooks by.

It stays on your device

There is no account and no sign-in. Nothing you make is uploaded, and there is no Keepnook server holding it — so nobody else can read it, including us. Two things ever leave the device: a crash report, if you leave those switched on, and the check that says whether you have bought Keepnook Plus. Neither carries anything you have written or made, and the privacy policy sets out exactly what each one contains.

That has an edge worth saying out loud: the only copy of your work that can outlive the device is a backup file you export yourself. Keepnook has no copy of it and cannot recover anything for anyone. Make one, and keep it somewhere you are happy with.

What it does not do

Said plainly, because it is easier to know now than to find out later.

• No sync. Two devices with Keepnook on them do not share notebooks. Moving work between them means exporting a backup and importing it.
• No sharing and no publishing. There is no link to send anyone and no way for one user of Keepnook to see or contact another.
• No PDF export. Keepnook writes a backup file, and saves a page as a picture; it does not write a document.
• No ads, no analytics, no tracking. None of it is in there.

What it costs

Keepnook is free to install, and what you make in it is yours whatever you pay. Writing, drawing, photographs, and exporting a backup and importing one back are not behind a price and will not be.

Keepnook Plus is a subscription, bought inside the app. It lifts the limit on how many notebooks you can make, opens every sticker set, washi tape, paper and illustrated pack, lets you save a page as a picture at print quality, and lets you take the Keepnook wordmark off a picture you save. The App Store shows you the price and the length before you confirm, in your own region and currency. If it lapses, everything you have already made stays exactly where it is.

Getting it

Questions, or something to report? The support page has the address to write to.