Recently, a friend of mine, who had briefly visited me, ended up testing positive for Covid-19. While that was a shock, I was immediately able to pinpoint the day we had met.

This was important in case I needed to self-isolate and not expose anyone else. Not having been out all these months, beyond once or twice, I wasn’t using the Aarogya Setu app and nor was my visitor. But what I have been using all this time is a little app called Daybook available for both Android and iOS.

Daybook is a passcode-protected personal diary, journal and notes app designed to record activities, experiences, thoughts and ideas throughout a day. It lets you organise your created diary, journal entries or notes from the past in the easiest way and search them real quick. I used it to record whoever I met during the course of a day, everyday, purely for contact tracing.

More suited to those who go out of their homes minimally but who still have some contacts from outside, Daybook just needs you to open the app (you can even avoid the pin if no one touches your phone) and press the + sign.

Then, just write the person’s name or log the contact. Exit. That’s all.

The entry will be on whatever day and time it is when you log. You can go to the calendar tab to choose another date if you missed out something.

Simple, easy

Why don’t I just use the calendar app to begin with? Well, that just happens to feel less easy and uses more clicks, plus has more information fields, which, of course, you can ignore, but which complicate the interface. To avoid all that, I just found Daybook simpler and easier as well as convenient to search by keyword.

I tended to just enter a few words, but made sure the entry was meaningful enough to bring back the meeting to mind. “Chatted with neighbours on the landing” tells me that we were not as socially distanced as would have been good. “Driver came in to bring down boxes” reminds me that my driver had to come into the house. This way, I’ve made it easier for myself to contact trace, should the need arise.

One can, of course, switch to a full-fledged diary in this app and take up the premium version to use themes and so on.

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