Glimmer — Support

No. Open Glimmer, skip the sign-in, and the whole journal is yours on this device — writing, sealing, reflections, the read-aloud voice, dictation, app lock and export all work without an account.

An account is only needed for two things: encrypted cloud sync, and buying Glimmer Plus. A purchase needs one so the subscription belongs to you rather than to the phone, which is what lets you restore it later.

On your phone, first and always. Nothing you write leaves the device unless you do one of two specific things.

Sealing a day with AI reflections on sends that day's text to our server, which passes it to a language-model provider and returns the reflection. Our server does not store the text, and it is never used to train models. The app asks before the first time, and you can switch reflections off in Settings.

Turning on cloud sync (part of Glimmer Plus) keeps a copy of your entries so they survive a lost phone. That copy is end-to-end encrypted on your device before it is sent, so we cannot read it. The privacy policy goes through all of this properly.

Settings → Export. Two options:

• Export as JSON — a complete, versioned backup of everything you wrote.
• Export as PDF — a printable keepsake with your reflections.

Both work on the free plan, without an account, and produce a file you can send or save wherever you like. If you only ever do one thing before changing phones, do this.

1. Sign in with the same account you used when you bought it (Settings → Account), and make sure the phone is signed into the same App Store or Google Play account.
2. Go to Settings → Glimmer Plus and tap Restore purchases.

If it still says Free after that, email us with the store receipt and we will look.

One catch worth knowing: a purchase made while signed out of Glimmer is attributed to the phone rather than to you, and cannot be restored. That is why the app asks you to sign in before it will sell you anything.

Glimmer Plus is billed by Apple or Google, so it is cancelled in their settings — not in Glimmer. Cancelling stops the next renewal; you keep Plus until the end of the period you have already paid for.

On iPhone or iPad: Settings app → tap your name at the top → Subscriptions → Glimmer → Cancel Subscription.

On Android: Play Store → tap your profile picture (top right) → Payments & subscriptions → Subscriptions → Glimmer → Cancel subscription.

Deleting the app does not cancel a subscription, and neither does deleting your Glimmer account. Refunds are handled by Apple or Google under their own policies — we never take the payment, so we cannot give it back.

Nothing happens to the journal on your phone. It is the original, it stays complete, and it stays readable — the free plan keeps your whole journal on the device, forever. What you lose is the Plus extras: sync, the extra writing room, editing a sealed day without an ad, and the ad-free app.

The synced copy is kept, so it is still there if you subscribe again.

The honest answer first: the synced copy cannot be recovered — not by us, not by anyone. The code is the only key to it, we never had a copy, and there is no reset. That is the price of a cloud copy we genuinely cannot read.

The journal on your phone is completely unaffected. It never needed the code. Open the app and it is all there.

So: if you still have the phone, export a JSON backup from Settings → Export right now, before anything else. Then you can set up encrypted sync again with a fresh code. Days that were synced under the old code stay unreadable and the app will say so plainly rather than pretending they are gone.

Keep the new code where you keep passwords.

Because the voice runs on your phone. Reading a day aloud never sends your writing anywhere — the speech model itself has to be on the device for that to be true, and a real one is large: the synthesiser, the duration predictor, the phonemiser and its lexicon come to roughly 350 MB for a language pack.

Glimmer asks before it downloads anything, it is a one-time download per language, and the app works fine if you never say yes.

No. The words land on the page as you say them, no audio file is written, and the microphone closes the moment you stop. The listening is your phone's own — on Android, Glimmer offers dictation only where the phone can transcribe offline.

No. A reflection is a piece of writing about your writing, produced by a language model. It can be wrong, and it is not therapy, diagnosis, or crisis care.

Glimmer does have a safety net: when a day shows signs of a crisis, it points to a helpline and shows ways to reach one, alongside the usual reflection. That is an automatic check inside the app, and it can miss things; it is not a monitored service — no one is reading your journal. If you are in danger, contact your local emergency services or a crisis line now. In the US you can call or text 988.

Yes. Settings → AI reflections. With them off, sealing a day still saves it, and nothing you write leaves the phone for a reflection. Turn them back on whenever you like.

If a reflection is wrong or upsetting, tap Report this reflection under it. The report sends us the reflection's words and the reason you picked, never your entry, so a person can look at it.

Yes. Settings → Share usage & crash data. It never includes anything you wrote, but it is yours to switch off, and nothing else in the app changes when you do.

In the app: Settings → Account → Delete account. It is immediate. If you cannot reach that, there is an out-of-app route on the delete account page.