About Umbra

Made by Luka

Umbra is made by one person. This page says who, what the app promises, and what it will never do.

Hi, I'm Luka

I make Umbra. It is just me: no team, no investors, no company behind it. I have a full-time job and a small son, so the app gets built in the evenings and at weekends.

I am not a doctor, and Umbra does not try to be one. It records what you tell it, counts it, and hands it back in a form the person treating you can read. Everything beyond that belongs to them.

Why Umbra exists

Read the reviews of any migraine app and the same complaint comes back in different words. It started simple and now takes too long to record an episode. The type is too small to read. There is no way to enter a day of symptoms without pain. The report you paid for never arrived. And one line from a three-star review that I could not put down: especially when my head already hurts.

That is the moment a migraine app is for, and the moment most of them are worst at. So Umbra is built around one question, and every screen has to answer it: does this still work when your head hurts and the screen is too bright?

The answers became the app. Logging without opening it, with Siri, the Action button, a widget or Control Center. A crisis mode that dims itself and grows the type. Symptom days without pain, phases with their own times, a notes field on everything. And a report that is generated on your phone and handed to you, so the thing you paid for cannot depend on a server.

What Umbra promises

These are rules, not preferences, and I would rather write them down where you can hold me to them.

• Nothing sells you anything in crisis mode. No paywall, no banner, no "upgrade" button while an attack is on.
• No notification ever mentions Pro. The two Umbra can send, a MIDAS reminder and a medication notice, exist only if you ask for them.
• Nothing interrupts logging. No screen between the symptoms step and the medication step.
• Your history is never locked. Everything you have logged stays yours, whatever you pay or do not pay.
• No account, ever. Umbra does not know who you are and has no way to find out.

How Umbra pays for itself

Logging is free and stays free: attacks, symptoms, medication, crisis mode, history, MIDAS, sync, export. What you pay for is Umbra Pro: the PDF report you take to your appointment, and the medication windows that warn you before you cross a limit you set yourself.

Pro is a monthly or yearly subscription, or a one-time purchase. A health app has to keep working through every iOS release and every new device, for as long as you keep your history in it, and a subscription is what funds that. The one-time purchase exists for people who would rather not subscribe: it is exactly what it says, pay once, keep it.

And if you would rather help another way: a review on the App Store makes a real difference. It is the thing that gets Umbra in front of more people, and it costs nothing.

Where your data lives

On your phone, first and foremost. Your attacks, medication and MIDAS answers are stored on the device, and the app, its widgets and Siri share them locally. I have no server, so there is nowhere else for them to go.

If iCloud sync is on, and it is on by default because losing years of migraine history when you change phones is the one mistake nobody forgives, the same data also lives in your own iCloud: Apple's private database, tied to your Apple Account, still yours. It goes to Apple, not to me, and I cannot read it.

There is one third-party service in the app, and I would rather name it than let you find it: RevenueCat, which keeps track of whether you bought Pro. It receives an anonymous ID and Apple's transaction data, and nothing you log. That is the whole list. The details are in the privacy policy.

What Umbra does not do

It does not diagnose, predict or recommend treatment. Where the app quotes a threshold, like the definition of chronic migraine or the point at which guidelines suggest discussing prevention, it names the source (ICHD-3, the American Headache Society, the MIDAS paper) in Settings → About → References, and it says on screen that a number is not a diagnosis.

It does not fetch the weather, run a community, publish articles or send you anything to read. Those are the things that made the big apps big, and the things their own users say they would switch to escape.

Say hi

If something in the app is wrong, a mistake, a number that does not add up, an odd translation, or if something got in your way during an attack, please tell me and I will fix it. I am at support@umbradiary.app and @lukahristic. I read everything, even if it takes me a few days to reply. I also make Lunera, a pregnancy tracker with the same rules.

Umbra is for keeping a record and is not medical advice. It is not a medical device. Always consult your doctor or another qualified healthcare professional about your symptoms, your medication and anything you notice in your history.