If you've tried journaling apps in the past and quietly deleted them after a few days, you're not alone. On the surface, many of them promise clarity, calm, and insight. But under the hood, users often walk away feeling boxed in, talked down to, or unsure if their writing is truly private.
Before building Blanksheet, we took time to listen—really listen—to what people were saying about other journaling tools, especially the ones using AI. We read the reviews, the community threads, the comments from churned users. Patterns emerged quickly.
This post isn't about taking shots. It's about naming what hasn't worked—and showing how we're trying to do things differently.
"I felt like I was writing for the app, not for me."
Prompts, templates, emotion sliders—these features mean well, but they often start to shape the writing itself. When people journal, they're usually looking for clarity or expression, not a form to fill out. But when the app expects you to follow a structure every time, it starts to feel performative.
That's why Blanksheet begins with a blank page. You're free to start anywhere. If structure helps you later on, great. But it's never required. The journal should adapt to you, not the other way around.
"The insights felt shallow or off."
A lot of apps claim to provide "AI-powered insights," but what users often get is a canned summary or mood label. It can feel surface-level—like the app is guessing, not actually reading between the lines.
Blanksheet does things differently. Every entry generates immediate insights, using a lightweight AI model that reflects tone, emotional cues, and emerging themes. It's subtle, not scripted—and designed to help you notice what's happening beneath your words, not tell you how to feel.
Then, as your journal grows, a more advanced model quietly unlocks in the background. It begins to connect longer-term patterns across your entries—without interrupting your flow. The insights stay personal, optional, and rooted in your actual writing—not generic mood tags.
"They said it was encrypted—but I never got a recovery key."
This one comes up less often—but it matters more than most users realize.
Many apps say your data is "encrypted at rest and in transit." Sounds good, right? But here's a critical question: when you signed up, did they give you a personal recovery key?
If not, they control the keys. Which means they can access your entries. Reset your password? Restore your account? That's only possible if they can decrypt your journal. So even if the data is technically encrypted, the company still holds the master key.
We're building Blanksheet to shift that power. You'll hold the key. Not us. If you lose it, we can't recover your entries—and that's by design. Because real privacy isn't just about strong encryption. It's about control.
"It started feeling like a productivity app, not a personal space."
Journaling can quickly lose its meaning when it starts to feel like a task. Some apps lean heavily into goals, reminders, or streaks, and while those features may help with consistency, they can also make writing feel like something you're supposed to "keep up with"—instead of a space to slow down.
Blanksheet takes a quieter approach. There's no pressure to show up a certain way, no pop-ups telling you how often to write. The focus is on giving you space to reflect—when you're ready, how you want.
When enough context builds over time, we offer deeper insights. Our emotion graph doesn't track for the sake of tracking—it's there to help you notice patterns in tone and language that may not be obvious in the moment. And when our more advanced model unlocks, it does so with care: to support understanding, not drive behavior.
We're Still Listening
Blanksheet isn't trying to be everything. It's trying to be trustworthy. Quiet. Private. Useful. It exists to help you understand yourself better—not to manage you, shape your habits, or compete for your attention.
If other AI journals didn't quite work for you, there's probably a reason. We'd love for you to try something different—and help shape what comes next.