Support

Human Memory for iPhone, version 1.0. Everything below describes behaviour that is deliberate and checked against the app's own source, so support never contradicts the app.

What Human Memory is

It reads data that is already yours — your photos, your contacts, your calendar, your workouts, and archives you export from other services — and builds a private map, a timeline, and a history of the people in it. All of that lives in an encrypted database on your iPhone.

There is no account and no login. Nothing is uploaded to us. There are no analytics, no telemetry and no crash reporting in the app at all — which is why a report from you is genuinely the only way we learn that something broke.

About the Interview in this version. Answering questions about your history costs money per question, because it runs a large language model. This version does not sell anything: there is no subscription and no in-app purchase. The Interview works only if you store your own Anthropic API key under Vault → Use your own API key, in which case your questions go straight from your iPhone to Anthropic on your own account and are billed to you directly. Clearing the key turns that feature off.

Everything else in the app — the map, the timeline, people, search, importing, the journal, the export, the erase — works with no key and no payment of any kind.

Getting started

Allow access to your photo library. Nothing else is required — and if you would rather not, Continue without photos is on that first screen. Contacts, calendar, workouts, your journal and five archive formats all work with no photo access at all.
The first index takes a few minutes on a large library. It resumes if you close the app.
Open Vault → Sources to connect Contacts, Calendar or Health, or to import an archive.

Taking your data out

Vault → Export → Export My Vault.

It writes your whole vault as Markdown and JSON you can read in any text editor, on any machine, with none of this app anywhere near it: your journal, every correction, tag and merge you made, your people, events, places and chat history — plus every table in the database, whether the exporter understands it or not. Then a share sheet appears and you put the archive wherever you like: Files, iCloud Drive, a Mac, a disk in a drawer.

Three things to know before you do it:

Your photos and videos are not copied. Each one is referenced by its Photos identifier, so the archive points into your library rather than duplicating it. Deleting a photo from Photos still loses the photo.
The archive is plain, unencrypted files. Wherever you put it is exactly as private as that place is, and this app can no longer protect it. That is the point of an export, and it is the one operation in the app where the responsibility moves to you.
Nothing is transmitted. The export is written on your device and goes nowhere until you share it.

This is the feature the whole app is built around: a record you cannot take out is a record you are renting.

Erasing your data

Everything at once

Vault → Erase Everything empties your journal, every correction and tag you made, your whole chat history, and every photo, message, contact, appointment, workout, imported health record and visit the app imported — in one step, with a receipt telling you how much went. It cannot be undone.

Three things it does not do, and it says so before you confirm: your actual photos, contacts and calendar are untouched; it does not un-send anything an Interview already sent to Anthropic; and it does not free space on your iPhone, because the space is reused for what you store next.

One source at a time

Use the remove button on that row in Vault → Sources. Where two services arrive in one archive — Facebook and Instagram, Tinder and Hinge — removing one takes the other, and the confirmation names both.

Just the chat history

Vault → Chat history, then delete one conversation or all of them. This removes them from your vault. It removes nothing at Anthropic.

The whole app

Deleting the app deletes the vault with it.

Common questions

The map shows dates instead of place names

Place names arrive as the app reads your library. On a large library that takes roughly an hour of the app being open, and it is paced deliberately so it doesn't drain your battery or hit Apple's rate limits. You can watch it under Vault → Understanding your library, and change how hard it works — or run a pass right now — with Work in the background. Your biggest events are named first, so your most memorable days improve before your ordinary ones.

It only works while the app is open

True, and deliberate. iOS gives apps no reliable guarantee of background time, so promising otherwise would be a lie. The honest version: everything is up to date every time you open the app, and new photos are picked up within seconds of opening.

It says "41 photos shared — not your whole library"

You gave Human Memory a hand-picked selection instead of the whole library. That is a supported choice, and it changes what everything in the app means: every count, the map and the timeline describe those photos, not your life. Two ways to widen it, both on Vault → Sources → Photo Access: Choose photos adds more to the selection, and Allow all photos opens Settings, which is the only route to full access.

My calendar only shows recent events

Your device syncs a rolling window of your calendar — usually weeks, not years. The app can only read what is on the device, so it cannot fill in your calendar history. This is a limit of iOS, not of the app.

Health shows no workouts

If you have never recorded a workout — most commonly, if you don't wear an Apple Watch — there is nothing to read. The app says "no workouts found" rather than appearing broken.

I imported an archive and it says "0 items"

The archive opened and was read; nothing in it was something the app knows how to store. The app explains which of four causes it was, right under the breadcrumb — most often a split Google Takeout, where Google divides the export by folder, so part -001 may contain only Drive or YouTube data. Import each zip one at a time; they add up in the vault rather than replacing each other.

I deleted a photo, but it's still in my timeline

Deliberate. Human Memory is a memoir, not a mirror of your camera roll. Deleting a blurry frame shouldn't erase the fact that you were at the beach that day, so the memory stays even when the photo is gone. Opening it shows a placeholder instead of the missing image.

Will my vault survive a new iPhone?

By default, no — not through a device restore. Your vault is deliberately kept out of your iPhone's iCloud backup, because HealthKit workouts live inside it and Apple's rule says health data can't ride in iCloud. A phone set up from that backup starts with an empty vault, unless you exported first (see above).

Vault → iCloud Backup changes that, if you turn it on. Your whole vault then rides inside your iPhone's own encrypted iCloud device backup — Apple's infrastructure, under your own Apple ID — the same way the rest of your phone's backup does, and a new phone restored from it gets the vault back. Photos and videos are referenced by identifier rather than copied, so the backup carries the reference, not the pixels. Nothing about it reaches us or Anthropic, and it is not a live sync between your devices — it is backup and restore, nothing more.

The cost is your health data: turning the switch on removes every health record already in your vault — workouts from the live Health connection and everything imported from an Apple Health export alike — and stops the live connection from reading new workouts for as long as it stays on, because Apple's rule doesn't bend for this feature. An Apple Health export file you import yourself is the one path not yet closed: importing one while the switch is on is not refused in this build, so those rows — heart rate, sleep, State of Mind and the rest — can enter a vault that is being backed up. The refusal is written and tested and ships in a coming build; until then, turn iCloud Backup off before importing a Health export. That removal has to succeed first — if it fails, the switch stays off and your vault stays out of the backup. Turn it back off and Health becomes available again, though nothing is re-imported automatically.

Someone I don't recognise appeared in People

If you imported a Facebook or Instagram archive, everyone who ever messaged you becomes a person. You will also appear yourself — the export contains no reliable marker for which participant is the account owner, and guessing wrong would silently delete a real person from your history, so we don't guess. You can merge duplicates, hide people, and mark one as "this is me" from the People tab.

Can I stop sending things to Claude after I've agreed?

Yes. Vault → Sending queries to Anthropic → Stop Sending to Anthropic. The Interview will ask again before the next send. It cannot recall what was already sent — Anthropic's own retention policy applies to that — and the app says so on the same screen rather than letting you assume otherwise.

I turned on Location Visits and want it off

Vault → Sources → Location Visits → Stop. New visits stop immediately and what was already recorded stays. Delete All Recorded Visits on the same row removes those permanently.

Reporting a problem

Write to support@human-memory.ai and please include:

your iOS version;
the app's version and build — Vault → About shows both;
roughly how large your photo library is;
and what you were doing.

If the app crashed, Settings → Privacy & Security → Analytics & Improvements → Analytics Data contains a log starting with "HumanMemory" that is very useful.

We don't collect crash reports automatically — the app contains no analytics or telemetry at all — so a report from you is genuinely the only way we learn that something broke. That is a trade we made on purpose, and this paragraph is our half of it.