Most dreams are gone by breakfast. A journal is how you keep the ones you want. Paper works if the notebook is already in your hand. A phone is usually closer, and you can search it later. Dreamala keeps the note and develops a photograph of the scene from what you wrote. The app is free on iPhone and Android.
Write it down before it goes
The useful window is short. Write before you check anything else, even if you only have a sentence. A color, a name, or the sense that you were late is enough to start. You can add to it once you're properly awake.
Search is the other reason to keep the journal on a phone. "The one with the station" is hard to find in a notebook and easy to find in a list. After a few weeks, repeats show up, often the same street or the same person. You notice them because the earlier dreams are still there.
Dreamala is free to download. A free account can develop 3 photographs every four weeks.
What matters in the app
It has to be writable when you're half asleep. Search has to work on your own words. Dreams should stay private unless you decide to share a photograph. It has to live on your phone, because you won't get up and walk to a computer.
A photograph helps when you want to look at the scene, not only read the note. How a written dream becomes a photograph goes into that.
On the paid plan you can lock and hide individual dreams behind a passcode. You pick the dreams one at a time.
A morning habit
Write immediately. Add a tag if you already know what the dream was about. If yesterday explains it, say so in a line. Keep the strange detail. Read back over the last few weeks when you have a quiet minute. The notes on remembering dreams cover the part that happens before you write. The morning page is one sheet you can print and keep by the bed.
The first morning
Download Dreamala, make a free account, and write the dream while it's still close. Answer the questions you can. The photograph develops from what you wrote. The next morning, do it again.
A photograph is an interpretation of what you wrote. On the free plan it carries a small Dreamala watermark. On Dreamala Pro you can hide that watermark, and it stays until you do.