The first ten minutes
- Tick your first trackers. On first launch Longnote shows a grid of common trackers in four groups, Body & mind, Symptoms, Lifestyle and Cycle, with Overall mood and Energy already ticked. Tick what you want, untick what you do not, and tap Start tracking; a last, optional page lets you log your first mood with one tap on a face. Or skip the grid and browse the 98 presets later under Most used, Suggested and All. Two or three trackers you will actually log beat ten you will not.
- Log one entry now. Tap the + on a tracker card. Set the intensity on the 0–10 bar, pick the body area if it is a pain or skin tracker, save. That is the whole bad-day entry; everything else is optional.
- Set a reminder for an hour you are usually able, under Settings → Reminders.
- Check Settings → Privacy & data → Backup. Make sure Back up to iCloud Drive is on, or save a copy to Files. Reveal the backup passcode with Face ID and write it down somewhere safe.
The three tabs, and Settings
- Home is the state of you today: each tracker as a card, with a small body where the tracker has a location and a plus for a new entry. Tap the card itself to open the tracker’s overview: its chart over the last 30 or 90 days (a year with Pro) and its insight cards. Sections can be collapsed and reordered.
- Journal is one day at a time: key indicators at the top, then the day’s entries with notes and photos. Swipe between days.
- Patterns looks across everything you log: the Highlights the app is willing to stand behind, then the four analysis tools, Compare, Correlations, Heatmap and What moves it (Pro), over one shared time window.
Settings opens from your avatar at the top right. It holds appearance, reminders, Apple Health, weather, backup, privacy and data, the Summary for appointments, and Pro.
Good habits
Log in the moment rather than at bedtime. Keep the same anchors for the 0–10 scale. Record facts (short sleep, a skipped meal) as their own entries rather than as explanations. Leave gaps as gaps; a missing day means “not logged”, never “fine”. The guide to keeping a symptom diary explains why each of these matters.
Questions about getting started
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How do I set up my first trackers?
On first launch Longnote shows a grid of common trackers in four groups: Body & mind, Symptoms, Lifestyle and Cycle. Overall mood and Energy are already ticked; tick as many others as you like, each with sensible measures already attached, and tap Start tracking to set up a first week; an optional last page lets you log your first mood with a tap on a face. You can also skip the grid and browse the 98 presets under Most used, Suggested and All, or create a tracker of your own with the measures you choose.
Nothing is permanent. Rename a tracker, change its colour or icon, archive it, or remove a measure you never use. Start small: two or three trackers you will actually log beat ten you will not.
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How do I log an entry?
Tap the + on a tracker’s card on Home, or the large + at the bottom right of any tab. The logging sheet opens prefilled from your last entry for that tracker, so “the same as yesterday” is one tap and “a bit worse” is two.
Set the intensity on the 0–10 bar (the anchors mild, moderate and severe sit underneath), change the body area if it moved, add a photo if a dated picture will help, and save. Notes are optional and never required. Quick Log walks you through your trackers in Home order when you want to log several at once; you choose which trackers it includes in Settings.
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How does the body atlas work?
Open the atlas from the figure on Home, or from the Area row on a logging sheet. Tap an area to mark it, or paint a region with your finger; the brush follows your finger. You can mark several spots in one area and move or remove each one. There are 73 named areas, front and back, and you can choose the body model under Settings → Appearance.
Each spot is painted in the colour of the tracker it belongs to. How strong the colour is says how bad the entry was: faint for mild, near-solid for severe. Opening the atlas on its own shows every tracker’s most recent reading on the body, with the date, so “where, and since when?” is already answered.
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What is the Journal tab?
The Journal shows one day at a time. At the top sit the key indicators you choose, such as last night’s sleep, cups of coffee or a symptom’s intensity, each measured against a reference you choose: the top of its scale, its schedule, your usual day or a number you type. With Pro, a weather tile shows the day’s air pressure and how it moved since yesterday. Below runs a timeline of the day’s entries, with their measures, notes and photos. Swipe to move between days, or open the month grid to jump.
Today’s page also lists what you have not logged yet, so a quiet day can be finished in a few taps. Entries can be edited from the Journal, and photos open in a viewer with a filmstrip of that tracker’s photos over time.
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Can Longnote remind me to log?
Yes. Settings → Reminders holds the daily check-in, reminders for treatment doses and, with weather set up, a pressure-drop alert. A reminder for one tracker (Remind me to log) is set in that tracker’s own settings, at the time you are usually able to log. A switch decides whether notifications show tracker names or only that something is due, so nothing private shows on a locked iPhone. They are local notifications scheduled on your iPhone; there is no push server and nothing about them leaves the device. Tapping a reminder opens the right logging sheet directly.