Four Dials

Most mood apps ask one question. Four Dials asks four, because a low day with the engine racing is its own kind of day, and a single "how's your mood, 1 to 10?" flattens it into "fine, I guess."

Mood and energy each get a ten-rung dial, from the floor to Manic. Anxiety and irritability get five rungs each. Sleep is asked three ways: how it felt, from Didn't sleep to Good, how long it ran, and any nap. Twenty-three feelings and forty triggers are one tap each, and you can add your own. If the day turns, tap a second rung: both answers are kept, never averaged. Nothing is required, nothing nags, and a skipped day is just a skipped day.

Then the days add up. History opens with every dial, day by day: six rows of squares on the same dates, so a mixed day is one column. Each dial then gets a row: its counts, one bar sorted by answer, and its longest run on each side. Your feelings and what was around get a row each, the most-marked first. Open a row for a calendar of its days in their colors, a day answered twice split corner to corner, and every answer counted. Compare answers one question at a time: two things on the same days, what was around on your low and high days, one thing with and without a mark, your weekdays, the days since a cycle start, and the two or four weeks before and after a medication change. The Journal keeps your daily notes, your gratitude lines and your Relationship Mode entries. Until you have logged a week, Stats can show example data, so you can see it all first.

When an appointment comes around, the Report is the paper a psychiatrist can hold. The Short PDF opens with one page for the appointment: mood and energy counted below, at and above their middle, anxiety and irritability from none to high, each dial's days in a row, sleep in three numbers, your medication, and the days that pulled two ways at once, like low mood with high energy. A page around your latest medication change follows, the two weeks before beside the two weeks after. The Full PDF adds every change, every answer four weeks at a time, and what was around on low and high days. The counts are honest: "4 of 26" always means 26 days that answered, so a skipped day never reads as a zero. Preview every page, then save it, in color or black and white.

Medications follow your prescriptions: daily, weekly, monthly or as needed, so a week without your as-needed one never reads as seven skipped doses. Every dose change prints on the day it happened.

Dark midnight blue or light cream, text up to half again as large, a four-digit passcode, and a color-blind aid that marks the hottest colors.

Three optional extras, off until you turn them on. Hormonal adds acne, bloating, cramps, period, PMS, tenderness and cycle starts to what was around. The gratitude journal adds two lines to each day. And Relationship Mode, a part of each day about you and your partner. Tap how their day seemed to you on your own dials, their work, what was around them, whether there was a fight, and up to four things you choose to ask about, like drinks. Then write out how the two of you were, in boxes that grow as you type: what a fight was about, a good thing, a hard thing, what frustrated you, anything hurtful, and how you repaired it. On a joint therapy day, two more boxes hold what came up and the homework for the week. History counts the days, the Full PDF can end with one page of counts, the boxes never print, and Relationship Mode can sit behind its own code.

PRIVATE BY DESIGN

Four Dials has no internet permission, so the app cannot open a network connection at all, and Android's cloud backup is off for it. No account, no analytics, no ads. Backups are files on your phone, in a folder you can see. Nothing leaves your phone unless you share it.

Four Dials counts what happened together. It never names causes, predicts or diagnoses: it is a log, not a clinician. The home screen links crisis lines, including 988, every day.

Recent changes:
History opens with Every dial, day by day: six rows of day squares, four weeks at a time, and each dial's longest run on each side.
Compare adds a gray bar for a trigger on all your days, and an opened feeling or trigger in History leads straight to Mood with and without it.
The report's first page shows each dial's days in a row, and the Short PDF is two or three pages.
Buttons a touch lighter, and forty-two small fixes from a full code review.