Most mental-health apps tell you how much they care about your wellbeing while tracking your behavior for ad networks in the same breath. I wanted to build the opposite: a tool you can trust because the trust lives in the architecture, not in a privacy policy.
It started with a spreadsheet
Mental health has been part of my life and my circle of friends for years. At some point I started recording my mood and a few questionnaires systematically, by hand, in an Excel spreadsheet. It was tedious, but it helped: for the first time I could see patterns that had slipped past me in daily life.
What bothered me when I went looking for a proper app was something else. Almost every mental-wellbeing app wanted an account, uploaded my data to a cloud, and embedded analytics SDKs. That of all things mental-health apps treat the most sensitive data there is so carelessly made me skeptical. Before typing more values into spreadsheets, I figured I'd rather solve the problem at the root.
What mattered to me
My standard was clear from the start: mental health is the last place for subscription traps, data trading, or engagement tricks. That turned into three principles I won't move on:
- Everything stays on your device. No cloud, no account, no ads, no tracking. You can verify it in minutes with standard tools like Little Snitch, the promise doesn't depend on taking my word for it.
- Pay once instead of a subscription. €4.99, one time. No pressure, no recurring bill, no artificial gating of features.
- The app leaves you alone. A check-in takes seconds, and then InnerPulse stays quiet. No streak to make you feel guilty, least of all on the bad days.
Clinically grounded, explicitly not a diagnosis
InnerPulse brings recognized self-assessments like PHQ-9 and GAD-7 to the iPhone, the same instruments used in clinical practice. They give you objective scores for self-reflection, explicitly not a diagnosis. If a result indicates acute distress, the app surfaces relevant crisis contacts for the DACH region. Keeping that line clean matters to me: InnerPulse is a companion, not a replacement for professional help.
Small, but the idea holds
That my spreadsheet frustration would turn into an app with a real user base is something I never expected back then. After a feature on 9to5Mac and appgefahren, InnerPulse was briefly in the top 10 of the Health & Fitness category. Everything is still very small, but the core idea seems to hold: structured reflection without surveillance, built by a person you can actually reach.
If you have questions or want to give me honest feedback, just write to me: marvin.blome@gmail.com. You can read how InnerPulse handles your data anytime in the privacy policy.
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