Vesper

Getting started ​

Sign in ​

Open Vesper and continue with GitHub or Google. Signing in only tells us who you are; it does not open your content.

To use both, link the second one in Settings → Account → Sign-in methods. If you sign in with the other one first and its email already has an account, Vesper asks you to sign in the usual way and then links the two. Accounts are never merged by email alone.

Create your workspace ​

The first time you sign in, Vesper asks for a nickname and a passkey. The nickname is also the address of your public page ({nickname}.noted-this.date) and cannot change later. The passkey is the key to your workspace: we cannot read your content without it, and neither can anyone else. Keep it somewhere that syncs, such as iCloud Keychain, Google Password Manager or 1Password. You tick a box to confirm this before the workspace is created; Passkeys and privacy explains what happens if you lose it.

When Vesper is full, new accounts wait in line. Sign in again later to check.

Write ​

  • Type in the note at the top of the timeline and press Save, or ⌘/Ctrl + Enter.
  • Add tags in the line below the text, separated by spaces.
  • Add up to four photos with the image button, by pasting or by dropping them on the note. Camera, exposure, time and place are read from the photo and written on its print; several photos sit in a stack: click it for the next one, or the corner button to see it full size with every detail. The place name comes from the map service, which sees the map area of the photo but never the photo itself.

Find ​

The header shows your entries four ways: Timeline, Photos, Calendar and Map. What you narrow them to stays as you switch:

  • On the timeline, the round Favorites and Archive buttons in the corner. Press one again to go back to everything. Photos, calendar and map always show everything that is not archived.
  • A tag from the tag bar, a search from the box on the right, or a day picked from the heatmap or the calendar. Each shows above the tags; click it to clear. The timeline and calendar list the tags of text entries; photos and the map list the tags of entries with photos.

In the calendar, click a day to read it on the timeline, or its pin to see it on the map. On the map, each photo is a thumbnail at the place it was taken; nearby photos stack into one, and clicking a stack zooms in. The buttons at the bottom right turn the globe flat and show where you are.

Organise ​

  • Hover an entry for its actions: pin, favorite, edit, make public, copy the link, post, archive or delete. Archived entries leave the timeline and come back with Restore in Archive. Deleting is permanent and asks once more.
  • The pencil at the end of the tag bar lets you rename a tag or remove it from every entry.

Name and icon ​

The header shows Vesper until you make the workspace yours: in Settings → Workspace, type a name or click the icon to pick an image. Both are encrypted like your entries, so they appear only after you unlock.

Theme ​

Pick a theme, a font (system, PingFang/SF on Apple devices, Inter, Noto Sans SC, Noto Serif SC, Source Serif or LXGW WenKai), the text size of entries and an accent colour in Settings → Appearance; on Pro you can also write your own CSS. See Themes.

Lock, theme and language ​

The header has a lock button, a theme switch (system, light, dark) and a language switch. Vesper also locks itself after 12 hours; touch your passkey to unlock.

Install ​

Vesper has no app store app; install the site instead and it opens in its own window. In Chrome or Edge, use the install button in the address bar. In Safari on a Mac, choose File → Add to Dock. On iPhone and iPad, tap Share → Add to Home Screen. On Android, choose Add to Home screen from the browser menu.

Post to X, Threads, Bluesky and Telegram experimental ​

On Pro, connect accounts in Settings → Connections, then post an entry with the platform icons next to its date. The post carries the text, up to four photos and the tags as hashtags; a long entry is shortened, never its hashtags. Each entry goes to each place once, and a mark under it links to the post and shows when it went out.

  • Threads connects by signing in. Posting to X is paused for now.
  • Bluesky uses an app password (Bluesky → Settings → Privacy and security → App passwords).
  • Telegram posts to a channel as your own account (sign in with an app from my.telegram.org); if you would rather not trust Vesper with your account, connect a bot instead.

Posting copies the entry out of your encrypted workspace onto that service, where it is public.

Feedback ​

Send problems and ideas as a direct message to @yiming9876 on X.