DearMe

Letters to your future self. Sealed until the day comes.

Write now, read in a year, five or thirty. Photos, your voice, and random moments caught in two minutes, BeReal-style, but only for you. Free, no ads, no account, nothing leaves the phone.

English · Русский · Website · Changelog

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The idea

We remember what happened, but not how it felt: what we were afraid of, what the street looked like, how our voice sounded on an ordinary Tuesday.

DearMe keeps those things in envelopes. You write a letter, add a photo or a minute of your voice, pick a day, and seal it. Until that day it can't be opened, not even by you. And at a random moment each day it calls: two minutes, what's happening right now? Both cameras, one line, sealed. A week later, a month later, a year later, the envelopes start coming back.

What's inside

	Feature	How it works
✉️	Letters	Text, several photos (back camera, selfie, both at once, or from the gallery) and a voice note of up to a minute. Opens in a week, a month, 1, 5, 10 or 30 years, or on any date you pick.
🎲	Random moments	Every day at a surprise time inside your window, DearMe calls. You have two minutes for a dual shot (back camera, then a selfie a second later) and one line. Late answers get a stamp.
🕯️	Rituals	Your own rules for when to be called: a random or exact time, on chosen weekdays, once a month or once a year, with what goes in (photo mode, a line or a letter, voice, a question) and how long it stays sealed. Templates: Random moment, Sunday letter, First of the month, Birthday letter.
🪜	Step by step	Moments open after a week while the habit is new, after a month during the first year, after a year from then on, so there is something to open from the second week.
🔴	The seal	A sealed letter shows only its date, a countdown and what's inside (📷 2 · 🎙 0:42 · 340 words). When the day comes, you break the wax and the flap lifts.
🖼️	Then & now	After opening, stand where you stood and take the same shot today; the two go side by side.
↩️	Write back	Reply to your past self, and the answer is sealed for the next stretch: a correspondence with yourself across years.
💌	Share cards	Story-sized pictures: I sealed a letter to myself, it opens on 14 October 2056, an opened letter with its photo, then & now.
❓	40 questions	What are you most afraid of right now? Who do you miss? What will you laugh at when you read this? For when the page is blank.
🕰️	Clock check	Moving the phone's date forward doesn't open anything: DearMe compares the clock with time since boot and, when online, with the network.
📦	One-file backup	Every letter, photo and voice note in a single .dearme file to carry to the next phone. Inside, it's scrambled, so unzipping it doesn't spoil unopened letters.

English & Русский

Every screen and question is written natively in both languages. Switch in ⚙ → Language.

Download

Get the APK from Releases, or the debug APK attached to any CI run. DearMe needs Android 8.0 (API 26) or newer.

[!TIP] On Xiaomi (MIUI / HyperOS), Huawei and some other phones, allow Autostart for DearMe and remove battery limits, or random moments may not ring.

[!IMPORTANT] Letters live only on your phone. For a letter meant for 2056, save a backup in ⚙ → Backup now and then and keep the file somewhere safe.

Privacy

No accounts, no servers, no analytics, no ads. Letters, photos and voice notes stay in the app's private storage. The only network request is a quiet look at the network clock before a seal is broken. A backup file is made only when you ask for one.

Honest about the lock

There is no server, so the seal is a strong habit, not a vault: the clock check and the scrambled backup make peeking hard and deliberate, not impossible. It's a diary lock for the person you're going to be.

Under the hood

• Kotlin + Jetpack Compose, Material 3 with a paper, ink and wax palette; Lora for letters, Caveat for handwriting, Inter for the rest.
• CameraX (LifecycleCameraController): dual shots are taken back-then-front a second apart, normalised (rotated, selfies mirrored, ≤1920 px) and stored as JPEG. Coil shows them.
• AlarmManager with exact alarms when allowed. A random call time is rolled once and kept, so restarts don't re-roll it; calls missed by under ten minutes still ring; the two minutes count from when the call actually rang.
• Room keeps capsules, photos, rituals and calls; DataStore the settings and the last trusted clock reading. The envelope and seal are drawn on a Canvas, and the share cards with plain android.graphics.
• Backups are a zip (records + media) streamed through AES-CTR.

app/src/main/java/app/dearme/
├── content/     40 questions (EN + RU)
├── data/        Room, settings, media files, clock check, backup, demo seed
├── domain/      schedule (next call), lock (calendar years, the ladder), time guard
├── notify/      ritual calls and opening alarms
└── ui/          letters, write, moment, capsule (seal + ceremony), rituals, camera, share cards, settings

Build it with ./gradlew assembleDebug. ./gradlew installDebug -Pdemo installs app.dearme.demo with a year of made-up letters and moments (painted stand-ins for photos), the one used for these screenshots. In any build, a ritual's Try it now calls you right away.

License

MIT. Part of Stillcraft, small tools for a quieter mind.