A quiet app for a loud world
One Taoist audio
for every day.
Taoist Diary opens with a single passage, read aloud. A written meditation to sit with, and 10 classics of the Tao, the Stoics and the Buddha — in public-domain translations, with no ads and nothing to scroll.
The whole library, free to read Reading works with no signal No ads, no streaks
The daily audio
Press play. That is the whole practice.
Every day the app chooses one chapter and reads it to you. 57h 24min of narration in all — 365 daily audios, 58 parables and 9 books read end to end.
- A narrated chapter each morning5 to 6 minutes, ready before you wake. 365 of them, across 24 themes.
- The same chapter for everyoneIt changes at midnight. No feed, no queue to manage, no decision to make before your first breath of the morning.
- Nothing chases youNo streaks, no badges, no red dots. Miss a day and nothing is lost — yesterday stays open.
A parable a week
58 tales, one at a time.
The cook and the ox. Eighty years of buckles. Short stories from the taoist, buddhist, greek and indian traditions, narrated the same way — one arrives each week, so there is never a backlog waiting for you.
- 58
- parables
- 365
- daily audios
- 9
- books narrated
- 57h 24min
- of narration
The library
10 books. 367 chapters. Free to read.
The Taoist canon beside the Stoics, the early Buddhist verses and the Confucian classics — all in respected public-domain translations, so the words are the words and nothing was rewritten to sell you a course.
Reading is free and always will be. The subscription buys listening.
Browse all 10 books
Taoism
Stoicism
Buddhism
The player
Built for the dark, and for the morning.
One player for everything — the daily audio, the parables and the books. It remembers the second you stopped at, survives the screen going dark, and shows up on the lock screen like any other audio.
- Sleep timerSet it and let the chapter finish without you.
- Background musicA bed of sound under the voice, or none.
- Your own paceSlow it down or speed it up; it keeps your place either way.
“He who is satisfied with his lot is rich.”
The translations
Whose words you are actually reading
Every text comes from a translation whose copyright expired worldwide — the translator died before 1925 and the work was published before 1930. Nothing was paraphrased, modernised or trimmed to fit an app.
- F. Max Müller
- The Dhammapada
- 26 chapters
- George Long
- Meditations, The Discourses of Epictetus, The Encheiridion
- 132 chapters
- James Legge
- Tao Te Ching, Zhuangzi, The Classic of Filial Piety, The Four Lesser Classics, Actions and their Retributions
- 137 chapters
- V. Fausbøll
- The Sutta-Nipata
- 72 chapters
What it costs
Reading is free. Listening is $1.99 a month.
Free, forever
$0
- The entire library — 10 books, 367 chapters
- Every page, every day, with no account required to read
- No ads, anywhere, ever
Listening
$1.99per month
or $19.99 a year · 7 days free
- 365 daily audios, one each morning
- 58 narrated parables, one arriving each week
- 9 books read end to end — 57h 24min in all
Questions before the first morning
- Do I need to know anything about Taoism?
- No. Each day gives you one passage and a short plain-language reflection. Beginning is the practice.
- Where can I get the app?
- On the App Store and on Google Play. Installing is free, and the whole library is free to read without an account — the subscription only buys the listening.
- What is free and what do I pay for?
- Reading is free: the entire library, all 10 books and 367 chapters, with no account required. The subscription buys listening — the daily audio, the 365 daily meditations and the narrated books — at $1.99 a month or $19.99 a year, with 7 days free.
- Whose translations are these?
- Public-domain translations by F. Max Müller, George Long, James Legge, V. Fausbøll — read aloud without rewriting. Each translator died before 1925 and each work was published before 1930, so the texts are free of copyright worldwide.
- Does it work without internet?
- Reading does. The books travel inside the app, so you can read on a plane or a trail with no signal. Listening streams, so the audio needs a connection.
- Are there streaks or reminders?
- None. No streaks, no badges, no notifications chasing you. Miss a day and nothing is lost — yesterday's audio stays open.
Tomorrow morning, one chapter.
Install Taoist Diary tonight and it will be waiting — a single audio, a single page, and the rest of the day left alone.