The printed 'moments of happiness' photo book resting on a woven mat beside a cup of coffee
Freude

What made you happy today?

A small daily ritual for noticing the moments that bring you joy. After forty of them, a printed book of your own happiness.

At a glance

App
Freude - a daily-joy journal for iOS
What it does
Asks once a day “what made you happy today?” and saves the moment
Privacy
Every moment stays on your phone, just for you
The keepsake
40 moments → a printed photo book, to your door
My role
Designed & built the app with a friend - end to end with AI
Status
Live on the App Store
A person at the beach photographing their dog with a phone, catching a happy moment

The ritual

Once a day, save one small moment.

Freude asks one question: what made you happy today? Then it invites you to keep the answer. A photo, a line, a small good thing. That's the whole ritual.

Just for you

It never leaves your phone.

No feed, no followers, no cloud. Every moment stays on your device. It's a journal, not a social network: reflection for an audience of one.

The pointNot performing happiness. Noticing it.

Someone filming friends laughing and dancing in bright daylight on a phone

Why it matters

The good ones are easy to miss.

Most small joys go unrecorded, then forgotten. Freude turns catching them into a light daily habit: a nudge to look for the good, and keep it.

Calm by design

A quiet app, on purpose.

No streaks to break, no notifications, nothing to optimise. Open it briefly, close it again a little happier. The opposite of an app fighting for your attention.

The disciplineEvery feature we left out was a choice.

An open printed photo book showing family snapshots with captions and dates on each page

The keepsake

Forty moments become a book you can hold.

Collect forty moments and Freude turns them into a printed photo book, delivered to your door. A real, physical record of a good stretch of life.

How I built it

Designed and shipped with AI, by two people.

I built Freude end to end with AI, from idea to a polished iOS app, alongside a friend. It's live on the App Store today.

Why it mattersA real, downloadable product, shipped fast by a tiny team.

Looking back

Why I built it

Freude started as something I wanted for myself: a quiet way to notice good days. The hardest part wasn't the code. It was keeping it small, resisting every streak, reminder and share that would have turned a quiet ritual into one more thing demanding attention. AI is what let two people ship something this finished without a team.

Now on the App Store Download Freude Free · iPhone