Why I built Tackbok

A gratitude journal should be a small, quiet space. Somewhere to notice a good thing, put it into words, and keep it close.

That is the idea behind Tackbok, the free, open-source gratitude journal I built for iOS and Android. The name comes from the Swedish words tack, for thanks, and bok, for book.

A simple practice, with room to grow

Tackbok is inspired by Presently, and by the simplicity of a private, distraction-free daily practice. I wanted to carry those principles forward: no required account, no ads, and a journal that works offline.

I also wanted to give a memory a little more room. Sometimes a few sentences are enough. Sometimes it is a photo, a voice note, or a small detail you want to come back to. Tackbok supports those alongside text, with moods and tags to help organize entries.

The intention is to make room for your own way of reflecting. Prompts and optional reminders are there when they help. They do not have to dictate the practice.

Your journal should feel like yours

Privacy is part of the product, rather than an extra feature to unlock. Entries are stored locally on your device. You can use optional personal-cloud backups, and bring an existing journal along through import tools, including support for Presently backups.

There is no required account standing between you and an entry. There is also no advertising business built around the moments you write down.

Tackbok does offer optional, opt-in analytics, disabled by default. Journal content is not collected through those analytics. I think it is worth being specific about what privacy means rather than leaving it as a slogan.

Why free and open source?

I built Tackbok because journaling should not be paywalled or ad-driven. It is my free, open-source gift back to society.

That choice shapes how the app works. Features are not held behind a purchase. The code is available under the Apache 2.0 license, so other people can inspect it, learn from it, and contribute.

Building in the open also makes the project part of a wider conversation. It leaves room for someone else to notice a problem, offer an improvement, or take an idea in a direction I would not have thought of.

From an idea to an app

I built the app with React Native and Expo, and the website with Astro. That gave me a way to bring the same core experience to both iOS and Android, with a separate place to explain the project and answer questions.

The technical choices serve a fairly ordinary ambition: make a useful thing that is easy to return to. A little place for the good things, without adding much noise of its own.

If that sounds like something you would enjoy, you can explore Tackbok or look through the code on GitHub.