The creatures

You read a face before you read a word.

Every friend gets one, picked from fifteen animals. It is bright the week after you speak, and it slowly stops looking at you if you don’t. Nothing turns red, nothing counts down. It just gets quieter, the way the friendship did.

Every review it has, so far

The rhythm

A couple of weeks after the last time we talked.

Say that sentence to a calendar and it has no idea what you mean. A calendar fires on a date whether or not you already spoke. Reminders cannot count from a conversation.

Ciao! counts up from the last time you actually spoke, and the app never says it in numbers. It says it the way you would.

The note

“You and Marc haven’t talked.”

Not “you have 1 reminder”. It uses their name, and it sounds like something a person would say out loud. Fifteen friends buzzing at random times means notifications off, which means a dead app.

Birthdays get their own. Christmas Eve and New Year too, once a year each.

The widget

Faces on your home screen.

Two sizes. Who is missing you, whose birthday is coming up, and nothing else. You see it on the way to somewhere else, which is exactly when you remember to write.

The timeline

“How did the scan go?”

Write one line after you hang up. It goes on that friend’s rail, newest at the top, next to every other time you two spoke.

Open them before you write and you are six weeks caught up in four seconds. This is the part people keep the app for.

The price

Room for more.

Three friends are free, for good. After that it is one payment, and it is not a subscription.