Note: This was our introductory post on Tumblr. We’re reposting this for archival reasons.

After being advertised by another blog in two occasions, we felt it was time to appear on Tumblr at an official capacity. So, hey, we’re the Ampersand team, bringing y’all the Ampersand tracking application!

For those who’re still out of the loop, ours is yet another take at plural journaling, and it works fully offline - no synchronization problems, no internet connection needed.

We’re offering much of the same stuff you’re probably already familiar with by using other tracking methods, but we’re heavily concentrating on how it feels rather than just implementing stuff so that it just works. To make a loose comparation, we’re trying to be the Apple of tracking apps - but without the costs and fees!

Our application’s source code is hosted at Codeberg - we’re open to collaboration and also we’re open to scrutiny from fellow developers.

Okay, but, how does it look like?

It looks like this:

So, where can I download it?

If you’re on Android you can download the app to your phone by searching for it on the Play Store, or grabbing the APK on GitHub Releases here.

Why isn’t it on the App Store?

We don’t own any Apple hardware. You might not know it, but developing for iPhone means you need to have a Mac - and a Mac is costly, and so is the iPhone. We cannot afford those items as of now - and even if someone were to throw them our way, Apple still wants 99 euros/dollars per year to be able to publish to the App Store - that, too, we cannot afford right now.

Can I move my data to Ampersand?

Of course! We support importing your old data from PluralKit, Tupperbox and - you name it - Simply Plural**! And no, we don’t just import your members, we import almost everything.

Can I move my data from Ampersand back to other stuff?

Ampersand gives you the option to export your data, but currently no other app that we know of has an “Import from Ampersand” option. This is not directly our fault, as our archive format is kept quite simple, but we hope to work with other apps to that effort.

I’ve seen that it’s laggy - bugged - it crashes! Or it just doesn’t seem to work well for me!

Ampersand is quite in its infancy! While it gets better over time, we do feel sorry that it’s not still ready for your use case.

I want to help!

That’s awesome! You can help us in many ways indeed:

• App translations, we’re looking for translators!
• QA, help us get as much of the app “just right”!
• Develop with us, we’re in dire need of code contributions!
• Share the app with your friends, so that we get more feedback and users!
• And lastly, we do accept donations (more info in the Codeberg page.)

I have some criticism to share

And please do! Tag us, even! Do anything in your power to make us see where we fall short and how. The developers are quite new to the whole plurality ordeal, so it’s just understandable that we’d make debatable assumptions on how the app gets shaped going forwards.

**= Simply Plural importing is a new, and still considered experimental, feature.