🚀 Beginner

Getting Started

Welcome to Eristotle. This guide will walk you through your first steps toward better emotional self-awareness using our AI-powered journaling tools.

📖 5 min read 🌟 Setup Guide

📲

Download & Setup

Install Eristotle from the App Store and complete the initial onboarding to customize your experience.

📝

Create First Entry

Use a Quick Entry prompt or record a Voice Memo to start your emotional wellness journey.

🤖

Choose Your AI

Decide between Apple Intelligence for privacy or advanced Cloud AI for deeper conversations.

📊

Discover Insights

Check your Home View for Smart Reflections that reveal patterns in your emotional history.

Your First Visit

When you first open Eristotle, you'll be greeted by a beautiful welcome screen. Our onboarding is designed to be supportive and informative, ensuring you understand how we protect your privacy and how the AI works.

Legal & Privacy: We start by securing your agreement to our Terms and Privacy Policy. Your trust is our foundation.

Feature Tour: A quick walkthrough of voice chat, smart search, and emotional analytics.

Permissions: We'll ask for Microphone access (for voice journaling) and Notifications (to remind you to reflect).

✍️

Express Yourself Your Way

Eristotle adapts to how you want to reflect. Whether you want to write deep thoughts or record a quick memo on the go, Eristotle provides a beautiful, focused space for your journey.

Manual Entries: Write freely without prompts. A blank canvas for your thoughts, feelings, and experiences.
Quick Entries: Use AI-powered prompts to start writing instantly. Perfect for when you're stuck or just need a check-in.
Scribbles: Handwrite your entries with Apple Pencil on iPad. Your handwriting is preserved and transcribed for searchability.
Voice Memos: Speak naturally. Eristotle records your audio and provides an automatic transcription that's fully searchable.
Voice / Text Chat Entries: Turn your AI conversations into journal entries. Create entries directly from your chat transcripts.
Reflections: Created from AI Recommendations in the Trends tab. Deep-dive prompts based on your detected patterns.

💬

AI Text Chat & Smart Follow-Ups

Have a natural, supportive text conversation with your AI companion to explore specific problems. Using your chosen AI provider, Eristotle's AI listens for important events in your life and schedules intelligent follow-ups.

🔔

How Follow-Ups Work: If you tell the AI you have a "job interview tomorrow," it will automatically schedule a check-in. When the time comes, you'll receive a notification. Tapping it opens the chat where the AI's message is read aloud via TTS, using your previous conversation context to continue the support.

🤖

Choose Your AI Provider

Eristotle is unique because it gives you choice over your AI experience. You can switch providers in More → Settings → AI Services.

🍎 Apple Intelligence 100% on-device. Maximum privacy. Included for Free.

☁️ Cloud AI Plug & Play access to advanced language models for better conversations. Uses Open AI's GPT-5 mini, GPT-5 nano, and Whisper (for voice memo transcription). Requires Premium.

🔑 BYOK Use your own API keys for unlimited access and model choice. Requires BYOK tier.

💡

Flexible Plans: Start with our Free Forever tier using Apple's on-device Foundation model, or explore Premium for advanced features like Voice Chat and Voice Responses in Text Chat.

🏠

The Home View: Your Dashboard

Your Home View is where everything comes together. When you first start, you'll be greeted by a minimal, beautiful "Welcome" screen featuring floating aurora orbs. This is your space to begin your journey.

✨

The First Step: Simply tap the "+" button in the bottom right corner to create your very first entry. As you add more thoughts, the Home View will evolve to show your progress.

📞

Real-Time Voice Chats

The most advanced way to use Eristotle is through real-time AI Voice Chats. This feature (available in Premium) allows you to speak naturally with an AI that understands your emotional tone. It's a completely separate experience from text chat, designed for hands-free, deep reflection. During the call, you can mute your mic and text the AI or view your chat transcript in real time.

Voice conversations are fully transcribed and can be saved to your journal, allowing you to review insights from your verbal reflections later. You can access your text chat and voice chat history from the Ellipses icon on the main text Chat view or from Data Management in More / Settings.

🎨

Personalize Your Space

Your journal should feel like you. Eristotle offers multiple ways to customize your experience to match your mood and style.

Beautiful Themes: Choose from 6 stunning themes like Aurora, Beach Day, Midnights, and more. Each theme changes the colors and background effects of the entire app.
Interactive Orbs: The floating aurora orbs on your Home View's floating orbs react to your touches and provide a calming, interactive backdrop to your reflection.
Contextual Prompts: Eristotle's AI will use context from your journal entries to ensure your writing prompts are always relevant.

📈

Tracking Your Growth

Eristotle isn't just for today—it's for your future self. Over time, the app builds a comprehensive map of your emotional wellbeing.

Annual Insights: At the end of the year, get a comprehensive report on your emotional journey, including breakthroughs and milestones.
Data Ownership: You own your data. Export your entire journal in PDF, Markdown, or JSON format anytime—perfect for printing and sharing.

Your journey starts here.

Ready to create your first entry?

Download Eristotle