How to keep a skin diary
Write down what your skin looks and feels like, in the same few plain words, at the same moment each day, and leave the interpretation out of it. A record of what you saw stays true whatever the explanation turns out to be; a grade for the day does not.
Record what you see, not what you think it means
There are two kinds of sentence you can write in a skin diary. One says what you see: dry around the nose, a breakout on the chin, skin that feels tight after washing. The other says what you think it means: the new serum did this, I must have reacted to something. The first kind is yours to write. The second kind is a guess wearing the clothes of a fact.
A diary can show you that two things happened in the same week. It cannot show you that one caused the other, and writing the guess down as if it were an observation turns a hunch into a record you will later believe. Keep the guesses out, or keep them in a separate line that is plainly marked as a guess.
That rule is what makes the diary worth reading months later. Explanations change as you learn more; what you saw on a given evening does not.
Pick one moment of the day and keep it
Write at the same moment every day. The easiest moment is one where you are already looking in the mirror, such as the start of your evening routine. You do not have to find a time for the diary; you attach it to a time you already have.
A diary written whenever you remember mixes mornings with nights and fresh faces with tired ones, and entries made at different moments are hard to read side by side. One moment a day keeps every entry the same kind of entry.
Use the same few words every time
A short, fixed set of words beats a fresh description each day. Fresh descriptions drift: last Tuesday was a little dry, today is parched, and you cannot tell whether those are the same thing written by two different moods.
Keep a free note for whatever the fixed words do not cover. The note is where the unusual goes; the fixed words are where the ordinary goes, and the ordinary is most of a diary.
Let the words combine. A day can be dry and oily in different places, or calm except for one spot, and a diary that allows one word per day makes you leave something out.
Leave the score out
Many diary templates ask you to rate your skin from one to ten. The trouble with a number is that it invites a verdict. A four sounds like a bad day, and a bad day sounds like something you did wrong.
A dry day is not a failed day. It is a dry day, and writing it down as one keeps it that way. Glossa's diary has no rating, no better-or-worse arrow and no comparison with last time, and that is a design rule rather than a missing feature.
When the diary is for someone else
If you ever take the diary to a doctor, the plain record is the part they can use. They will do the interpreting, and that is their work, not the diary's. Notes in the same words at the same moment of the day are easy to hand over; a page of conclusions is not.
How Glossa's diary works
Glossa keeps one diary entry per day. You mark how your skin feels from eight labels: Calm, Glowing, Dry, Oily, Redness, Breakout, Tightness and Itchy. Pick as many as apply, and add a note in your own words if you want one.
Every label is drawn in the same ink. Glowing is not green and Breakout is not red, because colour would turn the diary into a grade for the day.
The invitation to write is a small card in the scene, next to your routine. It is not a pop-up, you can leave it alone, and declining it records only that it was offered today.
Past entries sit in a history you can scroll. The diary draws no line between your routine and your skin, and it does not tell you whether a day was a good one.
The diary works without the subscription, and your entries stay on your iPhone.
What Glossa does not do
Glossa is not a health product. It does not look at your skin, and it does not tell you what to put on it.
The diary keeps what you write down, in your words and its eight labels. What a pattern in it means is for you, or for a doctor, to decide.
iPhone only, and Android is not planned.
Glossa at a glance
- Platform: iPhone, iOS 17 or later
- Android: no, and not planned
- Price: $6.99 per month, or $39.99 per year
- Free trial: 3 days, on both plans
- Skin diary: eight labels, any number at once, plus a free note
- Diary and subscription: the diary works without one
- Products in the catalog: 19,550 from 6,006 brands
- Accounts: none, nothing to sign up for
- Analytics: none, on the site or in the app
- On the App Store: not yet
Coming soon to iPhone