Flare: Symptom Diary

About Flare

Flare is a diary for a condition that arrives in episodes. Migraine, IBS, chronic pain, eczema, endometriosis, asthma — the app does not assume which, because the app that assumes is the app that makes you describe your own body in somebody else’s words. You name your symptoms. You name the things you keep an eye on. Flare ships nine deletable suggestions and a text field, and no opinion about what matters.

Flare is a diary, not medical advice. Talk to your doctor.

One tap, because onset is the worst possible moment to ask for anything

The home screen is a status line, one enormous control in the middle of empty space, and the last few weeks drawn as a shape along the bottom. Pressing the control starts an episode. That is the whole interaction.

This is not minimalism for its own sake. Anyone who has tried to complete a five-field form in the middle of a migraine already knows how that goes: the entry never gets made, and a diary with holes in it is worth less than the effort it cost. So severity, symptoms, notes and the end time all live one screen deeper, and every one of them is optional. Fill them in that evening, or next week, or never — the row is already saved.

Between episodes there is a quick-log sheet for the things you track, ordered by what you logged most recently, because what you logged yesterday is overwhelmingly what you are about to log today.

What the patterns screen will say, and what it will never say

Flare counts. It does not measure, diagnose, predict or advise, and the distinction is the whole design rather than a disclaimer bolted on afterwards.

Every line the patterns screen produces is an observation about your own log — “you logged poor sleep within 12 hours before 7 of 9 episodes, more often than it appears across your log generally”. It will not tell you that poor sleep causes your migraines. It is not qualified to, and neither is any app; the report template is unit-tested to make sure the words trigger, cause and diagnos- cannot appear in it at all.

Three pieces of restraint are worth naming, because they are what makes the rest credible:

• It compares against your own baseline. “You logged coffee before seven of nine episodes” is meaningless for somebody who drinks coffee every morning — they log coffee before everything. So the comparison is against how much of the observed period already sits inside that factor’s look-back shadow, with overlapping logs counted once.
• Something you log constantly is reported as uninformative, not as the strongest signal. “You logged water before 9 of 9 episodes” is the single most misleading sentence this screen could produce, so ubiquity overrides a high score outright.
• Below six analysable episodes, or three logs of a factor, no number appears at all. With four episodes, one coincidence is a quarter of the evidence. The thin-data state is a designed screen that names what it still needs, because we do not know yet is the honest answer for most people in their first month.

The report is the reason to pay

Ten minutes in a consulting room is not long enough to reconstruct four months from memory, and “it’s been bad lately” is not something a clinician can act on. Flare Pro renders a printable PDF over a date range you choose: how often episodes happened, how long they lasted, how severe you rated them, what your diary contained nearby, and every episode in a table with your own notes.

Logging itself is free, unlimited, and always will be — a symptom diary that stops recording your health when you will not pay would deserve the reviews it got. The full CSV export of your diary is free for the same reason. com.grisu.flare.pro is one payment, no subscription, and it buys depth: the PDF, the patterns screen and unlimited custom factors.

Privacy, plainly

• No ads, and no advertising SDK in the binary. The AdMob dependency, the Android advertising-ID permission and Apple’s tracking prompt were all removed from this app deliberately. A banner beside somebody’s medical diary is a poor trade at any price, and it means there is no advertising identifier, no consent form and no tracking prompt to explain.
• No account, no cloud, no sync, no analytics, no crash reporting, no server. Your health data never leaves the device — which is also the direction App Store Guideline 5.1.3 pushes, and it means no copy of your record exists anywhere for anyone to lose.
• Exports leave only when you send them. The PDF and the CSV are built on the device and handed to the system share sheet; where they go is your decision, in a screen the app cannot see.

Full detail is in the privacy policy.

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About Flare

Flare is a diary for a condition that arrives in episodes. Migraine, IBS, chronic pain, eczema, endometriosis, asthma — the app does not assume which, because the app that assumes is the one that makes you describe your own body in somebody else’s words. You name your symptoms, and you name the things you keep an eye on. Flare ships nine deletable suggestions and a text field, and no opinion about what matters.

Flare is a diary, not medical advice. Talk to your doctor.

One tap, because onset is the worst moment to ask for anything

The home screen is a status line, one enormous control in the middle of empty space, and the last few weeks drawn as a shape along the bottom. Pressing the control starts an episode. That is the whole interaction.

Anyone who has tried to fill in a five-field form mid-migraine knows how it goes: the entry never gets made, and a diary with holes in it is worth less than the effort it cost. So severity, symptoms, notes and the end time live one screen deeper and are all optional — add them that evening, next week, or never. The row is already saved.

What the patterns screen will say, and what it never will

Flare counts. It does not measure, diagnose, predict or advise, and that distinction is the design rather than a disclaimer bolted on afterwards.

Every line it produces is an observation about your own log — “you logged poor sleep within 12 hours before 7 of 9 episodes, more often than it appears across your log generally”. It will not tell you that poor sleep causes your migraines; it is not qualified to, and neither is any app. The report template is unit-tested to make sure the words trigger, cause and diagnos- cannot appear in it at all.

Three pieces of restraint are what make the rest credible:

• It compares against your own baseline. “Coffee before seven of nine episodes” means nothing for somebody who drinks coffee every morning — they log coffee before everything. The comparison is against how much of the observed period already sits inside that factor’s look-back shadow.
• Something you log constantly is reported as uninformative, not as the strongest signal. “You logged water before 9 of 9 episodes” is the most misleading sentence this screen could produce, so ubiquity overrides a high score outright.
• Below six analysable episodes, or three logs of a factor, no number appears at all. With four episodes, one coincidence is a quarter of the evidence. The thin-data state is a designed screen that names what it still needs, because we do not know yet is the honest answer in most people’s first month.

The report is the reason to pay

Ten minutes in a consulting room is not long enough to reconstruct four months from memory. Flare Pro renders a printable PDF over a date range you choose: how often episodes happened, how long they lasted, how severe you rated them, what the diary held nearby, and every episode in a table with your own notes.

Logging is free, unlimited and always will be — a symptom diary that stops recording your health when you will not pay would deserve the reviews it got. The CSV export of your whole diary is free for the same reason. com.grisu.flare.pro is one payment, no subscription, and it buys depth: the PDF report, the patterns screen and unlimited custom factors.

Privacy, plainly

• No ads, and no advertising SDK in the binary. The AdMob dependency, the Android advertising-ID permission and Apple’s tracking prompt were removed from this app deliberately. A banner beside somebody’s medical diary is a poor trade at any price — and it leaves no advertising identifier, no consent form and no tracking prompt to explain away.
• No account, no cloud, no sync, no analytics, no crash reporting, no server. Your health data never leaves the device, which is also where App Store Guideline 5.1.3 points, and it means no copy of your record exists anywhere for anyone to lose.
• Exports leave only when you send them. The PDF and the CSV are generated on the device and handed to the system share sheet.

Full detail is in the privacy policy.

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Flare is a diary, not medical advice. It records what you tell it and counts what you have recorded — it cannot tell you what is causing your symptoms, and it is not a substitute for care.