Your First Five Minutes with Sundown

Sundown is designed to fade into the background after setup. Once permissions are in place, capture takes one action to start and one action to stop.

On iPhone, onboarding is now a short device setup flow. The sign-in screen stands alone, and the visible progress indicator starts on the next screen. Sundown only asks about things that matter on this phone: signing in if you want cloud access, notifications for Daily View, and Apple Watch setup if you use one. It no longer asks you to pick a cloud-storage or sync option during onboarding.

1. Sign in or continue on this device

You can sign in right away or continue without signing in. Signing in is the best path if you already use Sundown Cloud on another device.

If Sundown recognizes your account, the next screen becomes a sync step so the app can load your settings, journal days, recordings, and Daily View data before you enter the main app.

If that first sync actually fails because the server is unavailable or returns an error, the screen shows a skip option so you can continue into the app and retry cloud sync later. Your local captures still work, and Sundown will try the cloud connection again when the app comes back to the foreground.

If you are starting fresh, staying offline, or skipping sign-in for now, onboarding continues straight to the device setup steps below.

After you enter the app in that signed-out state, Sundown still shows the cloud icon in the top-right toolbar. The icon uses a "not syncing yet" state, and tapping it explains that your captures are staying on the device until you log in. The action on that sheet takes you straight to the sign-in flow so you can turn on Sundown Cloud later without hunting through settings.

2. Decide on Daily View notifications

Sundown now asks about notifications during onboarding, after the welcome screen. The prompt stays focused on one concrete use: a notification around sundown so opening Daily View later feels natural.

This permission step is still useful even if you continue without signing in. It does not mean Sundown is setting up account-backed reminders or that Daily View summaries are available while signed out. Signed-out users can still allow notifications here, then Daily View explains that summary generation unlocks after they sign in.

If you do not want those reminders yet, you can skip this step and change it later in Settings.

3. Add the watch surface if you use one

If your iPhone is paired with an Apple Watch, Sundown will show the Watch setup step here and explain the value directly: one-tap capture from your wrist when your phone is not in hand.

If you do not have a paired watch, this step is just an informational page and you can continue without doing anything. Watch setup is optional.

4. Capture something simple

Try a short thought first. Speak a sentence, stop the recording, and wait for the background processing to finish. You then see the capture in your timeline or daily view.