# What a memory holds

A memory can be one picture, and it can stay one picture.

## How it works

Ember reads what the camera already wrote into the file: the day it was taken and, if the phone recorded one, the coordinates. The photo lands on the right day without you choosing a date, and on the map without you naming a place.

When the file carries no location, the memory has none until you add one. When it carries the wrong one, you can change it. A memory with no place is a normal memory.

Photos, video, and voice notes sit in the same memory, so a day is not split across three apps. There is no per-memory limit on how many.

## The story, and replies

**The story.** What happened, written whenever you get to it. One level of replies.

The story is the main body of a memory. There is no length it is supposed to be, and no window it has to be written in. A paragraph that night, or one line in four years.

A reply hangs off a story or an aside when someone wants to answer it. Replies stop at one level, so a reply to a reply becomes a sibling rather than a deeper branch.

## Asides

**Asides.** The line that does not belong in the story, kept anyway.

An aside is its own kind of entry, not a footnote to the story. A joke, a price, the name of the dog: the things that would ruin the paragraph.

They sit under the day in their own place, so the story stays the story and the aside is still there when you go looking for it.

## Voice notes, transcribed

**Voice notes.** Recorded on the day, transcribed, and searchable.

A voice note records onto the day. It plays back where it was left.

Ember transcribes it. The transcript is searchable and you can correct it.

On a two-person mantel, a day where you both left one plays them back in sequence.

## Tags

**Tags.** Your own words on a day.

A tag is a word you put on a day so days that share nothing else can be found together. Search reads them.

Ember doesn't suggest tags. There is no list to pick from, and no tag you are expected to use.

## One pick, several days

**One per day.** Photos from different days as one memory, or one each.

Choose photos taken across several days and Ember asks which you meant: one memory holding all of them, or one memory per day, each photo on the day it was taken.

That is the difference between a weekend and three days. Ember asks rather than guessing.

## Copying a day

**Copy memory.** A new day from one you already set up.

Copying a memory brings the places, the tags, and how it was set to be seen. The photos and the writing stay with the original.

It is for the thing you do again. The same walk next Sunday, or the same week next year.

## What it doesn't do

Ember never marks a memory incomplete, and there is no progress bar toward a finished one.

It doesn't write your story for you, and it won't caption a photo you never asked it to.

Nothing is required except the day it happened.