no help desk

Below are the things that actually go wrong, and what to do about them. If yours is not here, write to peace@discise.com anyway. An unanswered question is our fault, not yours.

Check the number first — it is 6–8 digits and there is no search, so a wrong digit reaches nobody rather than reaching the wrong person. If the number is right and the app still will not send, close it completely and open it again: the app publishes the keys that let someone write to you on launch, and a bad network moment at the wrong second can leave that undone. If it still refuses, write to us with the number you were trying to reach and we will look.

The circle only ever holds the last 3 days, and only from people you have added by number. If you have added someone and still see nothing, they may simply not have written — there is no way to tell, and no notification when they do, because a diary that notifies is a diary written at an audience. If a page you sent never arrived on their phone, tell us.

This used to be the hard one. It is softer than it was: two of the three things come back, and the third does not, on purpose.

Your diary comes back if the new phone is set up from an iPhone backup rather than as new. The sealed book travels in that backup, and the key that opens it arrives by itself through iCloud Keychain — so the writing is simply there.

Your number comes back if you kept it with Apple. In the app: hold your name at the head of your diary, choose account, then keep your number with Apple. It takes a moment, and it is the whole difference between walking back into your own number with your circle intact and starting again as a stranger. Without it we cannot restore your account and neither can Apple — there is no password to reset, because we never hold your key.

Your letters do not come back, and that is deliberate. The keys that open them never leave the phone that made them, which is exactly what stops anyone — us included — from reading a letter after the fact. Keep the ones that matter and they are folded into your diary, where they travel with the book.

Because we never hold your key, nobody can compel us to hand over your account — not an attacker, not a court, not us on a bad day. If a phone is stolen, the Face ID lock and your phone’s own passcode are what stand between someone and your diary. And export is always there: hold your name, choose export, and your whole book comes out as a document you can keep wherever you keep things.

Hold their name in your letters. You can block — which severs contact in both directions, so a number you block cannot add you back — and you can report, which sends us the letters that person sent you so we can read what happened and act. There is no tolerance for abuse here, and reports reach a person, not a queue. If someone is in danger, contact your local emergency services first; we are one person and cannot be that.

Hold your name at the head of your diary, then choose export. You get your whole book, oldest first, along with your number and the letters you kept, as a plain readable document you can send wherever you like. It is always available and it always will be.

Hold your name at the head of your diary, then choose account, then delete. It is immediate and complete: your number, your connections and anything still waiting to be delivered are erased, and the app wipes its own keys from your phone. Nothing is kept for thirty days “in case you change your mind”. Export first if you want your writing, because afterwards nobody can get it back for you — including us.

Hold your name at the head of your diary, then choose account, then the lock. Your phone checks your face or your fingerprint; we never see either, and never could. Your diary is encrypted on the device whether the lock is on or off — the lock is for the person who picks up your phone, not for us.

When a letter arrives your phone knocks once. There is no count, no badge, and no preview of the words — the notification is written on your phone, by your phone, because our server does not know your name for anyone. Your circle never knocks at all. You can turn the whole thing off in your phone’s settings and nothing else changes.

The app is paid for by the people who use it — that is what buys the freedom from ads, investors and data collection. Billing runs through Apple, so subscriptions are managed and cancelled in your Apple account settings, and refunds are Apple’s to give. We never see your card, and we never see your name. The terms say the rest of it.

Write to peace@discise.com. Tell us what happened and what you expected instead. If something in the app feels loud, or asks too much of you, that is worth writing about too — it is a bug here even when the code is right.

The privacy policy and the terms of use are both short.