Presently: A Gratitude Journal

A journal to write what you're thankful for. Contributions welcome!

Google Play Posting

Philosophy

Presently is built on the idea that gratitude journaling should be free, private, and available to all. It will never have ads, never have a premium version, and will always be open source. Entries are kept on device and can be exported to CSV.

Presently is also built with the best Android practices in mind. It follows MVVM to separate concerns and ensure we write testable code. We require 80%+ code coverage and rely on both unit tests and instrumented tests (with a heavier weight towards unit tests). Instrumented tests are run on Firebase Test Lab, crashes are reported through Crashlytics, and analytics are reported with Firebase Analytics.

We support several languages currently and are always looking for translators to help us! We support French, Spanish, Italian, German, Finnish, Arabic, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese, Slovakian, Croatian, Romanian, Turkish, Russian, Afrikaans.

Tech Stack [So far...]

• MVVM with architecture components
  • ViewModel
  • Room (with FTS and Paging v3)
• Mavericks
• CircleCI
• Jacoco coverage reports (integrated with CI)
• Firebase Crashlytics Crash Reporting
• Dagger + Hilt
• Espresso
• Firebase Test Lab
• WorkManager
• Dropbox Java SDK

Design

The app currently has over 40 themes to choose from! Here's a few:

Contributions

Contributions are welcome! Please fork the repo and make a PR. Forked PRs will build the app and run unit tests but will not run instrumented tests. A repo owner will run those tests as they require secret keys. You can set DROPBOX_KEY in local.properties if you want to test Dropbox features locally.

Translation Guide

Presently is translated by volunteers. All translatable app copy now lives under app/src/main/res, so translators only need to work in that tree.

Translate via GitHub

1. Fork this repository.
2. In your fork, create a new directory in app/src/main/res/ named values-XX, where XX is your language locale code. For locale codes and special variants such as Brazilian Portuguese, refer to the IANA language subtag registry.
3. Create app/src/main/res/values-XX/presently_strings.xml and copy the contents of app/src/main/res/values/presently_strings.xml into it.
4. Translate every string except the ones marked translatable="false".
5. Create app/src/main/res/values-XX/presently_prompts.xml and copy the contents of app/src/main/res/values/presently_prompts.xml into it.
6. Translate every item in that file.
7. Add your Play Store listing translation to the end of StoreListing.md. Please keep the first line under 50 characters and the second under 80:

[NOTE TO TRANSLATORS: please keep the following line under 50 characters long]

Presently: A gratitude journal

[NOTE TO TRANSLATORS: please keep the following line under 80 characters long]

Celebrate your daily life with Presently, a free & private gratitude journal

[NOTE TO TRANSLATORS: no length limits below this point, translate however you like!]

Practice gratitude with this simple, always free, and private gratitude journaling app.

Presently lets you: ⁕ Record daily entries of gratitude ⁕ Reflect back on your past moments of gratitude ⁕ Find motivation through quotes and prompts ⁕ Set daily reminders to continue your gratitude practice ⁕ Lock your entries with fingerprint or face id ⁕ Automatically back up your entries to Dropbox ⁕ Search your old entries ⁕ Share your entries with family and friends ⁕ Export/import your entries ⁕ Switch to your favorite color scheme

Presently is 100% free and ad free. All of your entries stay on your device and in your control.

8. Optional: create app/src/main/res/values-XX/presently_inspirations.xml from app/src/main/res/values/presently_inspirations.xml and translate it. This file contains gratitude quotes, so it is appreciated but not required.
9. Add your language label to app/src/main/res/values/strings.xml:

<string name="language_XX" translatable="false">LANGUAGE</string>

Replace XX with your locale code and LANGUAGE with the language name written in that language such as Français, English, or русский.

10. Add your language to the AppLanguage and AppLanguageValues arrays in app/src/main/res/values/array.xml.
11. Open a pull request with a short description of the translation.
12. Respond to review comments if needed. Once approved, the translation will ship in a future release.

Translate Without GitHub

If you do not want to use GitHub, email your translated files to [email protected].

Send:

• presently_strings.xml
• presently_prompts.xml
• your translated Play Store listing text
• optional presently_inspirations.xml

Use these source files as the starting point:

• app/src/main/res/values/presently_strings.xml
• app/src/main/res/values/presently_prompts.xml
• app/src/main/res/values/presently_inspirations.xml

Translating XML

String resources look like this:

<string name="key_name">Translate me!</string>

Only translate the text between the tags. Some characters such as ' must be escaped in Android XML. See the Android docs on string resource escaping.

String arrays look like this:

<resources>
    <string-array name="prompts">
        <item>What is something that made you smile?</item>
    </string-array>
</resources>

Only translate the text inside each <item>...</item>.

Local coverage

Use the local coverage helper script:

• Unit tests only: ./scripts/local_coverage.sh
• Unit tests + connected Android tests for app: ./scripts/local_coverage.sh --connected

Reports are written to:

• HTML: build/reports/jacoco/html/index.html
• XML: build/reports/jacoco/jacocoFullReport/jacocoFullReport.xml

Release automation

The repo now includes local release helpers:

./scripts/release_job.sh ./scripts/promote_release.sh

It handles the release-only steps that should not live in git:

• stages app/google-services.json
• loads Dropbox + signing secrets from a local release.properties
• optionally overlays paid fonts for the release source set only
• optionally bumps versionName / versionCode
• runs unit tests
• runs connected Android tests or Firebase Test Lab tests
• builds a signed release bundle, plus an APK if requested
• optionally uploads the built AAB to a Play track

Create a local release-secrets/ directory like this:

release-secrets/
  google-services.json
  gcloud-service-key.json        # only if using --instrumented firebase
  release.properties
  fonts/
    larsseit_medium.ttf
    value_serif.ttf

Start from scripts/release.properties.example and copy it to release-secrets/release.properties.

Examples:

• ./scripts/release_job.sh --bump patch
• ./scripts/release_job.sh --version-name 1.22.3 --version-code 91 --instrumented connected
• ./scripts/release_job.sh --bump minor --instrumented firebase --build-apk
• ./scripts/release_job.sh --bump patch --instrumented firebase --play-track internal

To promote an existing Play release:

• ./scripts/promote_release.sh --from-track internal --to-track production

The script cleans up staged secret files when it exits, so you do not need to stash or swap tracked files for a release build.

CircleCI release job

CircleCI is set up so you can trigger a release pipeline manually.

The release workflow is intended to run with a restricted CircleCI context named presently-release.

In CircleCI, use Trigger Pipeline and pass:

• run_release: true
• optional release_bump: patch|minor|major|none
• optional release_version_name: X.Y.Z
• optional release_version_code: N
• optional release_instrumented: firebase|connected|skip
• optional release_build_apk: true|false
• optional release_play_track: internal|production|...
• optional release_play_release_name: your label
• optional release_commit_version: true|false

To promote an existing uploaded release, trigger a pipeline with:

• run_promote_release: true
• optional promote_from_track: internal|beta|...
• optional promote_to_track: production|beta|...
• optional promote_release_status: completed|draft|halted|inProgress
• optional promote_user_fraction: 0.1

Required CircleCI environment variables:

• GOOGLE_SERVICES_JSON_B64 or GOOGLE_SERVICES_JSON
• DROPBOX_APP_KEY
• ANDROID_KEYSTORE_B64
• RELEASE_STORE_PASSWORD
• RELEASE_KEY_ALIAS
• RELEASE_KEY_PASSWORD
• GITHUB_BOT_TOKEN if you use release_commit_version: true

Optional CircleCI environment variables:

• GCLOUD_SERVICE_KEY for release_instrumented=firebase or for GCS-hosted fonts
• GOOGLE_PLAY_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_B64 for Play upload/promotion. If absent, the workflow falls back to GCLOUD_SERVICE_KEY
• LARSSEIT_MEDIUM_TTF_GCS_URI and VALUE_SERIF_TTF_GCS_URI if you want CI to swap in paid fonts from private Cloud Storage objects

The CircleCI release job will:

• materialize the release-only files into release-secrets/
• run ./scripts/release_job.sh
• store the generated AAB and optional APK as CircleCI artifacts
• optionally upload the AAB to Google Play

Important: version bumping in CI changes the workspace used for that build unless you also enable release_commit_version. With release_commit_version: true, the job will push the bumped version file back to the triggering branch after the release succeeds.

Recommended production flow:

• run_release: true with release_bump: patch, release_play_track: internal, and release_commit_version: true
• verify the internal release in Play
• run_promote_release: true to move the existing artifact from internal to production

When release_commit_version is enabled, the release job will:

• commit the bumped version in buildSrc/src/main/java/Dependencies.kt
• push that commit back to the triggering branch

This requires a GITHUB_BOT_TOKEN with push access to the repository. If the branch is protected against direct pushes from that token, the release job will fail at the final push step.

To host paid fonts privately for CircleCI:

• upload each font to a private GCS bucket
• grant the CircleCI service account roles/storage.objectViewer on that bucket
• set LARSSEIT_MEDIUM_TTF_GCS_URI and VALUE_SERIF_TTF_GCS_URI to the gs://... object URIs

To restrict who can run releases:

• create a CircleCI context named presently-release
• move the release-only secrets into that context instead of plain project env vars
• restrict that context to the GitHub team or project that should be allowed to run releases

If a user triggers the release pipeline without access to that context, the release_build job will fail with Unauthorized.