Your life story

Your life story, written as you live it.

Most of a life is ordinary days, and they’re the first thing we forget. One Question asks you one question a day and keeps your answer. In time, it reads your days back to you as the chapters of your life: the towns, the people and the seasons they were about.

Free on iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and Apple Vision Pro.

How the story builds

1. One question, every day. Answer it in a sentence or a page. Once you save it, it’s sealed, kept the way you wrote it that day.
2. Chapters appear. As the days add up, One Question finds the stretches your life fell into: a town you lived in, a summer away, a person who filled your days. Each becomes a chapter, named and dated, opening with your own first line.
3. Each chapter, read back. With One Question Pro, a chapter opens: how it felt, the moments worth finding again, what changed, then and now. With Apple Intelligence, it tells you in a few paragraphs what the whole stretch meant, written privately on your iPhone.
4. The years you’ve already written. Bring in your entries from Day One, Apple Journal, Journey or Daylio, or from your own files, and your chapters reach back to the first of them.

What it won’t do

Better to know before you start.

• It asks about today, not about your childhood. The day’s question is about the day you’re living. You can answer with a memory whenever one comes back, but One Question won’t walk you through your past, decade by decade.
• There’s no printed book. You can export everything you’ve written as a plain text file whenever you like, but One Question doesn’t make a book or a PDF.
• Entries can’t be rewritten. You can delete one, but not edit it. To draft and polish a memoir, a writing app suits you better.
• It’s yours alone. Nobody else reads your journal, your family included, unless you send it to them.

If what you’re after is a parent’s memories in a printed book, a life-story service is built for that. How One Question compares with Storyworth, Remento and StoryCorps

Private, start to finish

• Your entries live on your device and sync only through your own iCloud account.
• Chapters, reflections and covers are made on your device. Your writing is never sent anywhere to be read.
• The app’s analytics count things like how long an answer is and which mood you picked. Never what you wrote.

The privacy policy has the details.

For a parent or grandparent

One Question suits anyone with an iPhone who’d like to keep their days. A reminder comes once a day at the time they choose. They can speak an answer with the keyboard’s microphone instead of typing it, or answer from an Apple Watch. Setting it up for a parent, and twelve questions to ask them

What it costs

Writing is free, and so are your list of chapters, the map, On This Day and Memories. One Question Pro opens what’s inside each chapter: $1.99 a month or $14.99 a year in the US. Prices vary by country, and the app shows yours before you buy. More in the FAQ

Start with today.

The best time to write your life story is while you’re living it.

Free on iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and Apple Vision Pro.