What you want to know first, answered honestly.

Nothing. nexdiary is free software under the AGPL-3.0. There is no paid tier and no account with anyone. All you need is a machine that runs Docker.

No. nexdiary is for self-hosting only, at home or on a server you rent. There is no service where the diaries sit with a company, and that is on purpose.

For families, and for anyone who wants to write on one server together and trusts each other. Every person has a diary of their own. It works just as well on your own; sharing and the family question simply fall away.

Not one from a store. nexdiary is a web app that you add to your home screen from your browser's menu. It then opens without the browser bar and starts on the quick note on a phone. Everything can be done from there. On Android, pressing and holding the icon shows a shortcut straight to the quick note.

No. nexdiary needs a connection to your server, even for a short note. Nothing is cached on the device, and the draft of a page lives on the server too. It goes there while you type, so a brief drop in signal costs you very little.

English and German, completely. Each person picks their language under My account, Profile. The operator can upload further languages as JSON files; anything missing from them shows in English. Mails from nexdiary are always in English.

No. Out of the box no AI is set up at all, and without it you simply write your page yourself. The operator can add a service, such as a local model with Ollama or a service that speaks the OpenAI interface. Even then, each person can switch it off for themselves under My account, AI, with “AI for me”.

When you press “Write it up with AI”, the notes of that one day with their times and, where a note answers a question, the question. Without your name, without the date, without photos and without values. If the model runs on your own network, nothing leaves the house. Something goes out without a press of a button only if the operator and you have both switched on writing up automatically in the morning. More on the AI page.

No, nexdiary records no audio and does no dictation. Notes are text, and a photo can go with them.

No, only photos. From Immich, too, nexdiary takes still pictures only; with a live photo it takes the picture.

No to both. There is no export as text, Markdown or JSON, and no import either. What there is, is the year as a book, a PDF with all the pages of a year. The operator also backs up the whole server, but that backup is no export; the diaries in it are encrypted.

Yes. At the top of the journal each year stands as a volume on the shelf, and “As a book” turns it into a PDF in A5 or A4, with a title page, a chapter per month and a page per day with its cover and photos. Any printer that accepts PDF can bind it. It is not a print-ready file with bleed and crop marks, though.

No, only text and links. In Android browsers that know how to share to web apps, shared text lands in the quick note. Photos you take or choose with the camera button next to the text field, or fetch from Immich.

No. You can upload photos directly. Immich is closed by default; if the operator opens it, each person connects their own Immich, and nexdiary suggests on Today what arrived there lately. A photo is copied only when you take it.

Not in the app. The operator invites people, blocks and deletes accounts, but sees no page, no note and no time capsule. To be honest about it: whoever owns the whole server, with the database and the master key, can technically get in. nexdiary is made for people who trust each other.

No. Each person writes their own, one page per day. It becomes shared in three ways: you share single days with each other, answer the family question and write each other time capsules.

No. The only reply to a shared day is a heart, a quiet sign that it was read. A shared day is read-only, is not copied and cannot be passed on. You can take it back at any time. Sharing sends no message to anyone's phone, there is only a counter next to “Shared”.

Yes. Each child gets their own account with their own password, at least twelve characters, and sets up a second factor as long as the operator requires one. There are no parental controls and no sub-profiles. Parents, too, only see a child's diary when the child shares a day with them.

Your name and your profile picture, since both are visible to every account on the server, for example when sharing. Of your diary they see only the days you share with them, and your answer to the family question if you both take part and they have answered too.

No, the operator does that under Settings, Accounts, with everything that belongs to it. The operator cannot delete their own account there. Time capsules you sent to others stay with them even when your account is gone.

No. What you write is encrypted in the database and in the backups, each person with a key of their own. Whoever opens a copy sees only gibberish. But the server opens the texts itself, for search, statistics, the AI and the book, and the master key lies on the same machine. It does not protect against someone with full access to the running server.

Out of the box, only the question to GitHub whether there is a newer version, without names or content. It goes when someone opens the page “About nexdiary”, at most once a day, and the operator can switch it off there. If someone signs up their phone for reminders, encrypted messages go through their browser's push service, for example at Google, Apple or Mozilla; they never hold an entry. Mail, the sign-in provider, the AI and Immich are off by default. The whole list is on the Security page.

Ask the operator for a link, with which you choose a new password yourself. If a mail server is set up and your account has a mail address, the sign-in page also offers “Forgot your password?”. Your diary stays as it is. How the operator helps themselves is on Self-hosting.

Sign in with one of your recovery codes instead of the code. To get the app going on a new phone, the operator removes your second factor with “Remove second factor”, and does the same if you no longer have the codes. All your devices are then signed out, you are told, and you set it up again the next time you sign in. If you have a passkey, you can also turn the old code off yourself under My account, Security and set it up afresh.

Then no backup can be read any more, not even by the operator. If the file is missing on the server, nexdiary no longer starts. That is why the operator downloads it once under Settings, Backup with “Save master key” and keeps it apart from the backups.

One with Docker and Compose, on Linux with amd64 or arm64, and a local disk for the data folder. There is no measured minimum for memory. What takes a lot, such as unpacking a photo at about 150 MB, is on the Self-hosting page.

For Unraid, yes: nexdiary is in the Community Apps catalogue. For TrueNAS there is no catalogue entry yet. Wherever Docker Compose runs, the file from the Self-hosting page works.

Yes. Just bear in mind that without https, passwords cross the network in the clear, and reminders by push and passkeys do not work. If the server has no way to the internet at all, no push messages arrive either, because they travel through the browsers' services.

With docker compose pull and docker compose up -d. nexdiary adds whatever the database lacks on start and makes a backup by itself beforehand. It never updates on its own; “About nexdiary” only tells you a new version is out.

nexdiary redraws every photo as WebP with at most 2560 pixels on the long side, removing the place and camera data as it goes. By default each person may use 5 GB. The operator changes that under Settings, Accounts, where 0 means no limit.