Sown: Keep Your People

Sown keeps the people you would otherwise only think about.

Not a contact book. A short record of the people you mean to keep up with: what you know about them, what you last did together, and who has gone quiet, with nothing in it that tells you off.

YOUR PEOPLE

Everyone you keep, with one line about each: when you last spoke, and what it was about. Every name carries a colour, and the colour is the whole status system: In touch, Steady, Quiet, Resting. There is no red anywhere in this app, and nothing in it is ever called late.

Three counts sit at the top, and all three point at what you have rather than what you owe: notes, years kept, conversations. Under them is the one sentence the app exists to say, which is that some of your people have gone quiet, and not one of them is a task.

WHAT YOU KNOW

Open a person and the top half is facts in your own words: a birthday, what they cannot eat, which door sticks, the radio that is on all day. These are the things you would otherwise forget and then feel bad about, written down once.

THE THREAD

The bottom half is what actually happened: "took her to the garden centre", "the van is fixed", "she asked after Rosie". Newest first, each with its date. A note is one line and takes five seconds, which is the only reason it gets written at all.

WHO HAS GONE QUIET

The screen the whole thing is built around. It shows you the people time has passed for, and then it offers you one of them, never a queue. Anyone can be put Resting instead, and Sown stops counting them entirely, because resting is a choice and not a lapse.

ON YOUR HOME SCREEN

A widget with three names and when you last spoke to each. No badge, no counter that climbs, no red dot.

EIGHT LANGUAGES

English, Deutsch, Español, Français, Italiano, Nederlands, Polski and Português, each named in its own language, with its dates, plurals and word order written properly rather than pasted in. Or let it follow your phone.

YOURS, AND ONLY ON THIS PHONE

There is no account to create and nothing to sign in to. Sown has no use of the internet, holds no network permission at all, and carries no analytics of any kind, so there is nowhere for your list to go. Back up to a file you choose, as often as you like, free, forever: backups and restore are never part of what you pay for.

FREE FOR 25 PEOPLE

Everything works at 25: every note, the widget, the backup, the eight languages. If you keep more than that, one payment lifts the ceiling for good: in one payment, or in three, after which it is yours for good either way. Not a subscription, nothing renews, and there is nothing to cancel. Every payment is handled by Google Play.

Nothing you write is ever taken away or hidden, whatever you decide.