Questions, answered.

A guided memoir app for iPhone, iPad, and Mac. You talk, it asks the right questions, and it turns your answers into a memoir in your own voice. It is made for people who want to leave their story behind for family but were never going to sit down and write a book. Often it is an adult child setting it up for a parent or grandparent.

Storyworth emails weekly questions and binds the typed answers into a hardcover, so the result reads like a questionnaire. Day One is a daily journal with no legacy structure. Narrative Arc sits in the gap: voice-first so a non-writer is never blocked, guided by prompts drawn from narrative therapy, and shaped into a timeline and chapters so a life finds its form.

You can start free: record and keep up to five stories on your own device, with no account needed. Premium, $9.99 a month or $99.99 a year, unlocks unlimited stories and every way to share, the web memoir, the printable book, and the narrated film.

A Family plan, $149.99 a year, lets up to three people write one memoir together. You can also give Narrative Arc as a gift. These are subscriptions, not a one-time unlock.

Not for the core experience. Recording, transcription, prompts, photos, the timeline, and the people map all work fully offline. You only need a connection when you choose to publish a web copy of your memoir for family.

It is not a daily journal and not a social network. It does not analyze, score, or rewrite your stories with AI, and it does not put your voice or your words on someone else's server. Your stories stay on your device unless you choose to publish them.

iOS 17 or later on iPhone and iPad. macOS 14 Sonoma or later on Mac. A single purchase covers all of your Apple devices.

Not to write a personal memoir. Tap Continue without an account at the start, and you can record, write, and keep your memoir signed out. It syncs across your own devices through your iCloud, never a Narrative Arc account.

You sign in with Apple only when you publish your memoir online, so the published version is tied to you and only you can change or take it down, and when you start or join a family memoir. It uses the Apple ID on your device. To use a different one, tap Use a different Apple ID.

So it can record your voice and turn it into text. The microphone records your stories; speech recognition writes the transcript, and it runs entirely on your device. Your voice is never uploaded. Narrative Arc asks for both right before your first recording, and only if you have not already granted them.

A single memoir is one author, you. That story can be your own life, the life of someone you love, whether they are still here or not, or simply one great story worth keeping.

A family memoir gives up to three people a full author seat each. Everyone records and writes their own stories and edits the same memoir together. Three siblings can tell their family's story; a couple can each tell their own childhood, then tell the rest as one.

Tap + New Story and choose Record a story. Grant microphone and speech permission the first time, then speak. Words appear as you go and a timer tracks the length. Tap Stop to save. The title is drawn from your first line, and you can rename it later.

Same + New Story menu, choose Write a story. A full-screen editor opens. On macOS, Cmd+Return saves and Esc cancels. The title is drawn from the first line, the same way voice stories work.

Tap Pause to stop and Resume to pick back up. Everything you said before the pause is kept, even for long pauses. If you simply stop talking, a quiet listening indicator appears, and after a stretch of continuous silence the recording finishes and saves on its own.

Yes. Open the story. The transcript is read-only by default so a stray keystroke can not change it. Tap Edit to make it live, and your edits auto-save. Done finishes; Cancel asks before discarding.

Open the story and find the When this happened card, then tap Add date. You can be as precise or as loose as the memory: an exact day, a month, a season and year (Summer 1987), a year, or a range of years. Undated stories still live in your Stories list and in the timeline's Undated section.

Open the story and tap Tag a person in the People in this story card. Toggle names from the list, or use Create new person to add someone on the spot. You can add freeform tags the same way from the Tags card, and filter your Stories list by either.

Yes. The story header has a Private toggle. Private stories are left out of every book, web memoir, and film by default. You can choose to include them for a specific share if you ever want to.

Open the story, tap Edit, and the Delete story button appears at the bottom with a confirmation. Tap Done to leave edit mode and the delete option tucks away again.

Yes. Every story can carry an optional city-level location. Add it from the Where this happened card and start typing a city. Narrative Arc stores the city and state only, never an address, and the picker is a map search, not a request for your device's location.

When you publish your memoir, located stories become pins on the Map view your family can explore. Private stories never appear on the map.

Yes. The search bar in Stories looks across titles, the text of your stories, the people you have tagged, and your tags. It runs on your device; nothing is sent anywhere. Narrow the results by person, tag, chapter, or era.

Yes. You can mark a story with a life-event glyph so the moments that matter most stand out across your timeline and map. You can also note a person's birth or passing from their profile, and set where and when you were born so your published map has a starting pin.

The Prompts tab has fifteen categories, from Childhood to Career to the people you love. Tap a prompt to see the question and a few optional starter sentences, then Record or Write with the prompt pinned at the top. Completed prompts are marked used, and the app suggests follow-ups in the same vein. Use Random Prompt to surface an unused one, and swipe to favorite the ones you want to come back to.

Yes. In Settings, turn on Daily prompt reminder and pick a time. Once a day at that time your device shows a gentle nudge with that day's prompt, and tapping it opens the prompt so you can answer right away. It is a local reminder, so nothing leaves your device, and it does not nudge you on a day you have already answered.

Yes, and it is one of the nicest things the app does. A single memory can hold several tellings, yours and other people's. From a story choose Tell your version or Ask someone to share their version, and the tellings group together as one story. You pick which telling is the canonical one shown first. On the published web memoir the canonical telling reads in full, with the other tellings gathered below it and a row of name chips to switch between them.

Yes. From the Prompts menu choose Create Custom Prompt, pick a category, and write your question. Your custom prompts sit in the library alongside the built-in ones.

From the Prompts menu choose Start from a Photo. Pick any photo and Narrative Arc reads its date and suggests prompts that fit the moment and the people in it. Pick Record or Write, and the photo and tagged people attach to the new story automatically.

Chapters are the parts of your life. Create one from the timeline's + menu with a title and a start year. Each story lives in exactly one chapter, and if a dated story has no chapter yet, the matching chapter offers to take it in.

Nothing is locked. Rename chapters, add your own, and move any story to any chapter anytime. Your chapters also shape which prompts the app suggests next, but they never limit what you can write about.

Dated reference points on the timeline that are not themselves stories, like "Moon landing" or "Moved to Colorado." Add one from the timeline + menu and it sits in chronological order alongside your stories to give them context.

The funnel icon filters by content type, person, chapter, or year range. The arrow icon switches between a horizontal decade view and a vertical one. Zoom with Cmd and the plus or minus keys, or pinch on iOS.

Add photos while you record or write, or later by opening the story. Tap Add photos to pick from your library, or Camera on iOS to take new ones. Up to twenty per story. Narrative Arc imports a resized copy; your originals are never moved or changed.

Right-click a thumbnail on macOS, or long-press on iOS, for Add caption, Move left or Move right, and Remove photo. iOS also lets you drag to reorder.

Tap any thumbnail to open it full screen. Swipe between photos on iOS, or use the arrow keys on macOS. Pinch or double-tap to zoom, and crop from the menu.

They are deleted with the story. Profile photos attached to a person are stored separately and stay, even after a story is gone.

A name, a category (Family, Friend, Colleague, Partner, Mentor, or your own label), email, phone, birthday, notes, and a profile photo. The photo picker combines your library with every photo from stories that person is already in.

Yes. In the People tab, choose Import from Contacts. Narrative Arc pulls the name, email, phone, birthday, and photo into the edit form so you can confirm before saving.

Three ways, switchable from the layout menu: List (searchable), Cards (a photo grid), and Family (just the people you tag as family). Tap anyone to open their page.

Open the person, tap Edit, then Delete person at the bottom. They are removed from every story they appeared in, but the stories themselves stay intact.

In a family memoir, yes. Each co-author appears as a person you can tag in your own stories. You never see yourself in your own People list, but the other authors can tag you in theirs.

A contributor records a single story that lands in your memoir, from any web browser, with no account and no app. A co-author shares the whole memoir with you: each of you writes on your own device and the stories sync into one shared memoir. Co-authoring needs the app and a sign-in; contributing does not. You can use both.

Yes. Send them a link. They open it in any browser, record their story in their own voice or write it, add a photo if they like, and it arrives in your memoir credited to who told it. No account, no app, no cost to them. If they do have Narrative Arc, the link opens the app straight into recording.

Up to three people can write one memoir together. You start a family memoir during setup, or turn your memoir into one from Settings, then Family Story, and share a six-character code. Whoever joins enters that code when they first set up the app. From then on everyone's stories sync into the one shared memoir.

No. You can invite a contributor before you publish anything. The first time you do, Narrative Arc quietly reserves a private link. None of your stories, photos, or audio are uploaded; your memoir stays on your device until you choose to publish. You will just be asked to name your memoir and enter your name first, since those appear on the page your contributor records from.

"Told by [Name]" marks a story someone contributed from a browser. "By [Name]" marks which author wrote a story in a family memoir, so you always know whose voice you are reading. Your own stories carry no badge.

Open the Legacy tab, your sharing hub. Three formats publish from there: Read (a web memoir, and a book you can print), Watch (a narrated film of your photos and voice), and Explore (your memoir as an interactive page in any browser). Publish each in a tap and you get a private link to send to family. Republishing reuses the same link, so a bookmark never breaks.

An author home page that introduces you first: your name, an optional photo, your dedication, and a short bio. From there they choose Read, Watch, or Explore. Only the formats you have actually published appear, and everything is linked together so they can move freely between them.

Yes. The Visibility card in Legacy has three settings: Off (every link shows a private page), Anyone with the link (the default, kept out of search engines), and Password protected. A change takes effect on the live pages right away, with no need to republish.

Yes. The full publishing hub runs on iPhone and iPad as well as Mac. Many authors still do the bulk of their editing on the Mac for the bigger screen, but you are not stuck waiting until you are at a computer to publish.

You pick from a handful of restrained cover templates and set the title, an optional subtitle, a cover photo, and the author line. Preview them in the book builder before you publish. Each one is intentionally quiet, so the book reads like a memoir rather than a design exercise.

Yes. Open your published memoir and you land in edit mode with a small Tweaks panel: switch cover and layout styles, adjust the text size and density, change the audio player, pick a different cover photo, and set narrator credits. Save commits it; visitors see whatever you saved.

Your published memoir opens on a page about you. Set your name, dedication, an optional photo of yourself, and a short bio in Memoir, then Edit memoir. The author photo fronts you on that page; the cover image fronts each format, the book cover, the film's title, and the archive. To share, copy the public link from any Legacy tile.

Yes. Open a person, tap Edit, and add a memoir or website URL in the Links section. It becomes a link beside their name on your published memoir. Narrative Arc never auto-detects whether someone has an account; a link only appears if you typed it yourself or the person chose to share it with you. You can also write a short public bio for anyone in your memoir.

Start with this FAQ, then use the contact form at narrativearc.app/contact. Pick a topic (Support, Feature Request, Press Inquiry, or General), tell us what happened, and include the device you are using and your iOS or macOS version. A person reads every message and replies by email.

Prefer plain email? Write to support@narrativearc.app. Never include the private text or audio of a story; we do not need it and will not ask for it.