Dayleaf vs Brain Dump
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Dayleaf
This app offers a digital journaling experience that mimics a physical paper planner. It features multiple calendar views, customizable planners for different life areas, and quick entry options. Cloud backup and export capabilities ensure your notes are safe and accessible.
- Monthly, Weekly, and Day calendar views
- Multiple color-coded planners
- Quick entry and editing
- Instant search functionality
- Cloud backup and restore
- Printable calendar views
- Email export of entries
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The warmth of a paper planner, the power of your iPhone. Write your days, stick stickers on your dates, and watch your life fill a beautiful calendar: journal, diary, goals, and planner in one quiet, ad-free app. Free to start; Pro is a one-time purchase or a subscription, your choice. Open it to a calendar, not a blank page: your entries, photos, and stickers live right inside the month, week, and day views, so every glance tells the story of your life. **New: Your Second Brain in an Agentic World** Switch on Headless Dayleaf and Meta Muse, Claude, Gemini or your own scripts can write the day's weather, your steps and sleep, or a summary of what you shipped into the right planner, labelled "via muse" so your words and theirs never blur, and read back what you wrote. Your whole journal also exports as Markdown files, one note per day, ready for Obsidian and any AI tool. Off by default; text only, never your photos or audio. **Switching from Day One?** Bring your entire journal home in minutes: every entry, photo, and voice recording. Choose your export in Settings → Import and Dayleaf does the rest, even for journals with a decade of memories. Free, forever. **Photos & Voice Notes** Attach photos to any entry and see them right on your calendar. Tap the mic to capture a voice note on the spot. Some days deserve to be heard, not typed. **Planner Stickers** Birthday, Pay day, Trip, Deadline, Date night… stick them on any date like a real paper planner, or design your own with your choice of icon and color. **Twenty Hand-Crafted Themes** Paper, Forest, Ocean, Lavender, Rosé, Ink & Gold, Sunset, Olive, Retro, Clay, Frost, Linen, Kraft, Pop: each tuned by hand with a light and a dark face, several with their own page construction. Your journal, your mood. **Set Goals. Reflect. Grow.** Daily, weekly, and monthly goals with a Notes & Reflection space to look back and write how it really went, just like the review pages of a great paper planner. **Private Diary with Lock. Your Year in Review.** App Lock (Pro) guards your diary with a 4-digit passcode; forgot it? A code sent to your email resets it. Year in Review (Pro) shows streaks, words written, busiest days and a globe lit by every city you've written from. Tag entries with your location, write your own reminder messages, and switch on a persistent reminder that nudges until you open the app. **Private. Backed Up. Always Yours.** One-tap backups to your own iCloud: entries, photos, voice notes, stickers, everything. No account required, no tracking, and your journal stays in your own Apple account. Restore anywhere, anytime. Key Features: - Day One import: entries, photos & audio, free forever - App Lock passcode, Year in Review, places globe, blog-post entries (Pro) - Headless Dayleaf: local API, `dayleaf` command line and MCP server (Mac); cloud access for Meta Muse and other agents - Markdown export: one note per day, ready for Obsidian and AI tools - Photo attachments with calendar thumbnails - On-the-spot voice notes - 20 planner stickers + design your own - 20 hand-crafted themes, each with light & dark - Per-planner icons, fonts, and text sizes - Daily, weekly, and monthly goals with reflection - Monthly, Weekly, and Day calendar views with zoom - Daily reminder at your chosen time - Instant search and a fast, beautiful Timeline - iCloud backup and restore: no account needed - Print your calendar; export by email (text/CSV) DAYLEAF EVERYWHERE Capture on Apple Watch: dictate an entry, record voice memos with automatic transcripts, tick off goals from your wrist, and add the watch-face complication. And with the Mac app, your whole journal is at home on your desktop too. Perfect for daily journaling, gratitude and mood tracking, habit reflection, work notes, reading lists, travel plans, and memory keeping. Your memories deserve a beautiful home. Start today. Terms of Use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/
Brain Dump
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Start before you're ready. That's the whole idea. FocusTimer is a Pomodoro-style focus timer built for the part everyone else skips: actually starting. Write down what's pulling at your attention, pick the one thing you're doing next, and go. No rigid 25-minute lock-in, no to-do list to organize first, no tree that dies if you look away. WHAT'S PULLING AT YOU? Brain Dump gets everything out of your head in one pass: one line, one thing, no pressure to sort it. Stamp the one you're taking, and the room goes dark around it. Everything else is still there when you come back to it. A TIMER THAT BENDS, NOT BREAKS Every session is adjustable: pause without penalty, add time mid-session, finish early and it still counts. Rigid 25/5 lock-in is the thing every other Pomodoro app charges you to escape. Here it's just how the timer works, free, always. STREAKS, NOT GUILT TRIPS FocusTimer tracks what you actually did. No cartoon pet to starve, no tree to kill, no streak-loss shame for a bad day. A missed day costs you nothing but a missed day. FOCUSTIMER PRO Three things, all built, all real: • Presence: your session on the Lock Screen and Home Screen. Live Activity, Dynamic Island, and widgets, no need to open the app. • Patterns: where your focus actually goes. By task, by time of day, and week over week. • Sound: room tones (rain, café, white noise) and a choice of end chime, on top of the one you already get free. The timer, the brain dump, your streaks, and your full session history are free, always, with no limit and no account. Pro is never a wall on what you've already built, only the tools around it. FocusTimer Pro is a one-time purchase. Buy it once and it's yours on this Apple ID, forever. No subscription, no renewal, no recurring charge. Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ Privacy Policy: https://digitaldoctorltd.com/privacy.html
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is update cadence: Dayleaf at weekly against Brain Dump's fortnightly. Dayleaf also leads on device support (4 vs 1) and iOS requirement (17.0 vs 26.0). On price, ads and in-app purchases there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Dayleaf sells 3 in-app purchases, starting at $2.99 per month and Brain Dump sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
Dayleaf ships an update weekly, Brain Dump fortnightly. Both last shipped on October 31, 2026.
| Parameter | Dayleaf | Brain Dump |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.8 (12 ratings) — better | — |
| Positive reviews | 100.0% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 12 — better | — |
| Update frequency | Weekly — better | Fortnightly |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | Free | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch — better | iPhone |
| Requires iOS | 17.0 — better | 26.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 13 MB | 19 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | iMobiApp | Digital Doctor LTD |
In-app purchases
Dayleaf
- Dayleaf Pro Monthly$2.991 Month
- Dayleaf Pro Yearly7 Days trial$9.991 Year
- Dayleaf Pro$19.99
Brain Dump
- Pro Lifetime$4.99









