Every way to reach it at 3am, and everything it does once you’re awake. Look things up here rather than read it through.
The app is quickest when you never open it. Pick one of these in daylight; at 3am it’s a press and a sentence. Every one of them stops by itself about eight seconds after you go quiet. The ones marked Recommended are the ones to start with.
On a locked iPhone, iOS asks for Face ID before any app can start the microphone, so each of these begins as you look at the phone. Turning off Require Attention for Face ID (Settings → Face ID & Passcode) lets Face ID work with your eyes barely open. On an iPhone with a Home button, Touch ID does the same with a finger.
Press, talk, done. iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max, and every iPhone 16 and 17, have one, on the left edge where the mute switch used to be.
At 3am Press it and lift the phone. Face ID unlocks as you look at it, and it’s listening. Talk, then stop; it saves itself. Press again to stop early.
The torch and camera buttons at the bottom of the Lock Screen can be swapped for ’Til Morning. iOS 18 or later.
At 3am Wake the phone and press and hold the button. Face ID unlocks as you look at it, and it’s listening. Press it again to stop early.
The mark, under the clock. Tap it and the app opens listening. Works on every iPhone this app runs on.
At 3am Wake the phone and tap the mark. Face ID unlocks as you look at it, and the app opens listening.
For phones without an Action Button. iOS 18 or later.
At 3am Swipe down and press and hold the control. Face ID unlocks as you look at it, and it’s listening. Press again to stop early.
Two of them: a small Capture widget that opens straight to listening, and a wide Last night one that shows what’s waiting.
At 3am Unlock, tap the widget, talk. The wide one shows last night’s notes without opening the app.
Say “capture a thought in ’Til Morning”. Apple requires the app’s name in the phrase, so the short version doesn’t work.
At 3am Press and hold the side button and say it. Face ID unlocks as you look at the phone, and the app opens listening.
Two taps on the back of the phone run the capture shortcut. It works best without a thick case, and because it’s a tap it can fire in a pocket. Face ID unlocks the phone, and the app opens.
At 3am Tap the back twice and look at the phone. Face ID unlocks, and the app opens listening.
During your night hours a quiet notification sits on the lock screen; tap it and you’re recording, no PIN. It’s on by default, makes no sound, and is gone by day. Android has no Lock Screen widgets; this is the Lock Screen way in.
At 3am Wake the phone, tap the notification itself, talk. The card is drawn by Android, so it’s light or dark to match your phone. After a restart it comes back once you’ve unlocked once.
A tile called Capture a thought in the pull-down shade. Android 7 or later.
At 3am Wake, pull down, tap the tile, talk. No unlocking.
A small square one for capture, and a wide one that shows last night’s notes.
At 3am Unlock, tap the widget, talk. The wide one shows last night’s notes.
Hold the app icon and Capture a thought is right there.
At 3am Unlock, hold the icon, tap, talk.
Two faces. A near-black one at night that only listens, and a cream one in the morning that holds what you said. The same on iPhone and Android, with the differences marked.
Between the hours you set, 9pm to 6am to begin with, the app opens to the night face: one button, no clock, nothing to read. The rest of the day it opens to the morning face. ⋯ → Night hours on the morning face is the app’s only settings screen; set it to whatever your nights look like.
The night face doesn’t show your notes, on purpose: reading is what wakes you up properly. If you need the morning face at 2am, hold “hold for morning” at the bottom of the night face for half a second. It lasts until you leave the app, and the morning face shows “it’s still night — back to capture” so you can get back.
Each night’s notes, transcribed on the phone while you slept and given a title. Four things to do with each one: Keep it, Expand it (share it on to wherever it belongs: Notes, Reminders, Notion, Todoist, mail), Snooze it to another morning, or Delete it. Kept notes move to their own list.
If a note has no words, the recording is still there; tap it to hear what you said. A morning notification, if you want one, says only how many are waiting, never what they say.
listen · 2 on the Last night row plays the night’s voice notes in order, oldest first, a second apart, through the speaker. Lock the phone and it carries on; the lock screen shows only “Last night” and “2 of 3”, never your words. Pull out your headphones and it pauses rather than carrying on aloud; a call pauses it, and it picks up again afterwards.
Each note also has its own listen button, with the recording’s length.
Your notes are never locked in. Every one can leave as a file, and all of them can leave at once.
.md per note and the recordings beside them, or everything in one combined document.What a file looks like: it’s named by date and time, like 2026-07-24-0247-onboarding-as-a-bedtime.md. At the top is a short block of facts: when it was captured, whether it was spoken or typed, its title and label, and the recording’s filename. Then your words. Any Markdown app reads it, and that block is what Import uses to put it back exactly.
Free for seven nights: nights you actually use it, not calendar days. The morning after the night that goes past seven, the inbox asks once. Keep is $9.99, paid once; there’s no subscription. Everything you already have stays readable, playable and exportable whether you buy or not. Keep is for capturing more nights.
Deleting and reinstalling the app doesn’t restart the seven nights; they’re remembered.
No account. No network: the Android app doesn’t even have permission to use the internet, and the iPhone app has no networking code in it. Recording and transcription happen on the phone, so what you say at 3am stays there. No analytics, no crash reporting.
The full policy: How it’s handled. Anything not covered here: Support.
