LifeWyns
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Welcome to LifeWyns

A private, newspaper-style journal for your family — capture life's moments, share with the people who matter, without the algorithms.

The big idea

A LifeWyns journal is a collection of stories. A story can be as small as a photo with a one-line caption, or as full as a multi-paragraph essay with photos, captions, and Info Boxes. You decide who can see each story by setting an audience — everyone in the journal, a specific group, a specific co-author, or no one (drafts).

How LifeWyns is organized

  • Account — that's you. One sign-in, multiple journals.
  • Journal — a self-contained collection of stories with its own members and groups. A family might have one journal per branch, or per generation, or just one for the whole clan.
  • Members — people you've invited into a journal. They can be Admins, Co-Authors, or Readers.
  • Groups — bundles of members within a journal. Everyone always exists; you can add custom groups like Family or Close friends.
  • Stories — what you write. Each story has an audience that controls who sees it.

Where to look

The main app screen has three areas: a left sidebar listing your stories, a center pane showing the selected story (or the Newspaper), and a top header bar packed with shortcuts. The header is your control center — see Top header bar for an inventory of every button.

Stories list

The sidebar on the left shows every story you have access to in this journal.

Reading what's there

Each row shows the date, the title (or a snippet of the body if there's no title), and the author. Stories are sorted newest-first by date.

Filters

The buttons above the list filter the visible stories: All, plus any custom Events you've tagged stories with. (An Event might be a trip, a season, or a milestone — anything you'd group several stories under.)

"New" highlights

A story you haven't read yet is highlighted with a left-edge accent stripe. Stories dated within the last 14 days that you haven't read also get a small NEW tag. Once you've opened a story, both indicators clear automatically.

Creating a story

Click + New Story at the top of the list, or use the menu (☰). See Writing & editing for what happens next.

Reading a story

Click any story to open it. The view shows you the title, hero photo, body text, photos, and any Info Boxes the author included.

Photos in a story

Photos appear inline as you scroll. Click any photo to open the lightbox; click again to zoom to true size. See Photos & lightbox for the full lightbox controls.

The toolbar

Above the story you'll see action buttons. Which ones appear depends on your role and whether the story is yours:

  • Edit — open this story in the editor (your own stories or any if you're an Admin).
  • 📣 Alert Audience / Update Audience — email everyone in the audience that this story is published or has been updated. See New-story alerts.
  • 🔗 Share (your own stories only) — copies a public share link to your clipboard. Optionally add a passphrase to keep the link private; recipients enter it before they can read the story. Use this for one-off shares with people who aren't members of the journal.
  • 🔗 Copy Link — copies a permalink for this story to your clipboard. Permalinks only work for people already signed in and in the audience — there's no separate access. Best for sending a teammate to a specific story they already have rights to.
  • Audience pill — shows who can see this story. Click to change.

Comments

Scroll to the bottom of any story to see the comment thread. Anyone in the audience can read and post; see Comments for the rules and tools.

Read tracking

LifeWyns quietly tracks which stories you've opened so the sidebar can highlight the ones you haven't seen yet. Read state syncs across your devices when you're signed in.

Comments

Each story has its own comment thread — a low-key way for family members to react without it turning into social media.

Posting a comment

Open a story, scroll to the bottom, type into the Add a comment… box, and click Post. Pressing Enter submits; Shift+Enter inserts a line break for a multi-paragraph comment.

Who can comment

Anyone with access to the story (i.e. anyone in its audience) can post. If a member can read the story, they can comment on it. Comments aren't visible to people outside the audience — they live with the story.

Deleting

You can delete your own comments any time using the ✕ button on the comment. Admins can delete any comment in the journal. Once deleted, a comment is gone — there's no soft-delete or undo, so think before you click.

Comment counts

In Newspaper view, stories with comments show a small 💬 N badge so you can see at a glance which threads are active. The list view doesn't badge comments today, but that's a likely future addition.

No notifications (yet)

LifeWyns doesn't currently email you when someone comments on your story. Check back occasionally on stories you wrote if you want to see reactions. Comment notifications may land in a future release.

Writing & editing

The story editor has the headline, optional subhead, body text with rich formatting, and tools for adding photos and Info Boxes.

Title and subhead

The Title is the headline of your story — short, punchy. The Subhead is an optional second-line summary that appears under the title in the Newspaper view. Leave it blank if the title speaks for itself.

Body text

The body uses a rich editor: bold, italic, lists, and so on are in the toolbar. Paste from Word or a webpage and LifeWyns will sanitize the formatting so it doesn't carry weird styling into your journal.

Photos

Drag photos onto the editor, or click + Photo in the toolbar. Each photo can have a caption, a date, a location, and a credit. See Photos & lightbox for the full photo workflow.

Info Boxes

An Info Box is a side card with extra context — a recipe, a map, a related event, a portrait of someone mentioned in the story. Insert one with the ℹ Box button. See Info Boxes.

Date and event

Every story needs a Date — when it happened, not when you wrote it. The optional Event field tags the story with a trip name or season; stories sharing an Event can be filtered together in the sidebar.

Saving

Click Save to commit. LifeWyns confirms with a brief banner. Until you save, your text is held in memory only — closing the tab loses unsaved changes.

Tip

If you abandon an edit by accident, the original is still safe on the server. Only the unsaved changes are lost.

Info Boxes

A small side card you can drop into a story for extra context — a portrait, a map, a recipe, a related event.

Inserting an Info Box

Click ℹ Box in the editor toolbar. The Info Box editor opens with three tabs:

  • Text — title + rich body. Best for sidebars, definitions, quotes.
  • Photo — a photo with optional caption. Pick the size, alignment, border, and whether the photo opens a popup when clicked.
  • Video — paste a YouTube URL and an optional caption.

Photo Info Boxes

Choose the photo's size (small / medium / large / full-width), alignment (left / center / right), and border (none / thin / medium / thick). Toggle wrap text to let the body text flow around the photo. Choose Fit (show the whole photo) or Fill (crop to a tidy aspect ratio).

Suppress popups

By default a photo Info Box's image is clickable — it opens a popup with the full caption and details. Toggle Don't show details popup if you'd rather the image just sit there silently.

Last-used defaults

LifeWyns remembers the size, alignment, border, and other visual settings from the last new Info Box you created on this device. The next time you click ℹ Box, those become the defaults — so if you always use Large/Right/Border-2, you only have to set it once.

Editing or deleting

Click any Info Box in the story to reopen the editor. Use Update to save changes or Delete to remove it.

Photos & lightbox

LifeWyns is photo-first. Add as many photos as you like; they're resized on import and stored privately to your journal.

Adding photos

  • From a story — drag photos onto the editor or click + Photo in the toolbar.
  • Bulk import — open the menu (☰) → Import Photos to bring in a folder at once.

Photos are resized to a sensible journal size (no full-megapixel originals stored on our servers). The original folder path is recorded as a Source so you can always find the original on your computer.

Captions, dates, places

Click ⓘ Info on a photo to set or edit its caption, date taken, lat/long, and source folder. EXIF data (date, GPS) is read automatically when you import.

The lightbox

Click any photo to open the lightbox. From there:

  • ‹ › arrows — flip through other photos in the same story.
  • ⓘ Info — open a panel with caption, date, place, source, and credits.
  • ↓ Save — download just this photo.
  • Click the photo — zoom to true size (full resolution as stored). Use the ✕ Close pill at the bottom or the corner X to exit.

Editing a caption from the lightbox

Click the caption text in the lightbox to edit it inline; click Save to commit. No need to bounce back to the story editor.

Audience & sharing

The audience controls who can see a story. You set it per-story; people not in the audience can't see the story at all.

Who can be in an audience

An audience is a list of groups and specific members:

  • Everyone — every member of the journal, current and future. The simplest option.
  • Custom groups — like Family or Close friends. Whoever you've added to that group sees the story.
  • Specific members — pick individual people. Useful when something is just for one person, or for a co-author.
  • Co-authors — a special case: a member added with edit permission. They can edit the story, not just read it.

Empty audience = nobody can see it

If a story's audience is empty, no one (other than admins of the journal) can see it. That's how drafts work — leave the audience empty until you're ready to publish, then add Everyone or your chosen group.

Admins always see everything

Admins of a journal see every story regardless of audience. That includes the journal owner. If someone in your family needs to see all stories no matter what, make them an Admin.

Bulk editing audiences

If you have many stories and want to fix audiences across all of them, use the Audience Manager in the menu (☰). It lets you replace audiences on N stories at once — useful when you create a new group and want to retro-share existing stories with it.

Newspaper view

A different way to read your journal — a multi-column newspaper layout with masthead, hero, and arranged stories. This is the default view when you sign in.

Getting in and out

Newspaper view is implicit, not toggled. You're in it when you sign in. You leave it when you click a story to read (drops you into the regular reading view), or when you create a new story. Once you finish reading or saving, you'll naturally end up back in Newspaper view.

Filtering what you see

The Filter button (three short stacked horizontal lines, like a funnel) in the top header bar appears only in Newspaper view. Click it to narrow stories by date range, event, or location. A small badge dot shows on the icon when a filter is active. See Top header bar for the full inventory of header buttons.

The masthead

Shows the journal name (or a custom tagline set in journal-admin), a date strip with the latest story dates, and optionally the journal owner's avatar (Show owner on Newspaper in the journal Overview).

Cover and hero stories

Each story can be promoted to the Newspaper layout in two ways:

  • Cover — picks the most prominent slot at the top. Use it for the most important story of the moment.
  • Hero photo — uses the story's hero photo as the giant top image. Toggle Hero is also cover when those should be the same.

You can also Hide cover on a story so it doesn't appear in the Newspaper at all (e.g. for a quick admin note).

Old Ads

An optional touch — vintage-style ad blocks that fill empty columns. Toggle in Options → Old Ads. They're decorative, never serve real ads.

New-story alerts

When you publish (or update) a story, you can email the audience to let them know it's there.

How alerts work

Alerts are manual — they only fire when you click 📣 Alert Audience on a story. The first click sends "New in <journal>: <title>"; subsequent clicks send "Updated in <journal>: <title>" so people know it's a re-send rather than a new piece.

Who gets alerted

Only members who have Email me on new stories turned on, AND are in the story's audience, AND haven't already opted out of this journal. Admins of the journal get alerted regardless of audience (they can see every story anyway).

The author always gets a copy

Whoever clicks Alert Audience receives a copy of the email — even if they've turned alerts off. Lets you self-validate the email looks right before more people see it.

Opting in or out

As a recipient, you can turn alerts off for any journal in two places:

  • Profile → Followed Journals — small envelope icon on each card; click to toggle.
  • This journal's menu (☰) → Options — Email me on new stories checkbox.

Both controls write to the same setting; toggling one updates the other.

Don't overuse it

If you Alert Audience on every minor edit, members may turn alerts off (or worse, mark your emails as spam). Save it for genuine "this is new" or "this is meaningfully updated" moments.

Backup & export

Your stories and photos are yours. Download them whenever you want.

Where the tools live

All export tools live in the Journal Admin page (open from the menu ☰ → Manage Journals…) under the Backup & Export tab. They're not in the main app menu because they're admin-only.

Export Stories

Downloads a single .lwst file with every story and Info Box in the journal — text only, no photos. Small, fast, perfect for archiving the words.

Full Backup

Downloads stories plus every photo as a single archive. Best safety net before big edits. Subject to a 250-photo limit per file (see the in-app warning) — for larger journals, use Export Stories + Export Photos separately.

Import Backup

Restore from a .lwst file. New entries and photos are added; entries that match existing IDs (or look like duplicates by date+title+author) are skipped automatically.

Export Photos

Bulk-download every photo as individual files into a folder you pick. Optionally filter by Event so you only export, say, "Italy 2024." Desktop-only — phones can't pick a folder.

Clean up orphaned photos

Photos that aren't attached to any story still take up storage. Click Scan in Backup & Export to find them and reclaim credits.

Profile & account

Your name, password, devices, and which journals you follow.

Your profile

Click your avatar in the top-right of any page → Profile. Set your display name, bio, and profile photo. These show up next to your name in journals you contribute to.

Password

Change your password from Profile. If you've forgotten it, use Forgot password? on the sign-in screen — LifeWyns will email a reset link.

Active devices

Profile lists every device currently signed into your account. If you see one you don't recognize, click Sign out next to it. Signing out from one device doesn't affect your sessions on others.

Followed journals

Journals you've been invited to (other people's journals) appear in Profile → Followed Journals. From here you can:

  • Toggle email alerts per-journal (envelope icon).
  • Hide a journal from your list without leaving it.
  • Leave a journal entirely (the owner can re-invite you later if you change your mind).

Managing your own journals

From the menu (☰) → Manage Journals…. That opens Journal Admin where you set the journal's name, slug, photo, members, audiences, and run backups.

LifeWyns Help & Reference · For more, ping us at hello@lifewyns.com