Welcome.

Hello and welcome to Encounter, the guided nature journal that lives on your phone. It’s lovely to have you!

Encounter isn’t a social platform, it’s a personal nature connection tool. Instead of focusing on likes and follows, it’s designed to help you tune into the living world around you. Go out for a walk, or just look out of the window, then record the things you see, hear and experience in your own, private journal – a proven way to boost your nature connectedness and improve your wellbeing.

Here you’ll find a quick introduction to Encounter’s main features; when you’ve read this, close the page and you’ll find yourself back in the app. Don’t worry, you can always access more support information by tapping the menu icon in the app and choosing ‘Help’.

When you’re back within the app itself, tap the menu icon at the top right and select ‘My profile’. Add a photo and username. Save, then choose ‘Set location’ from the menu and select where you live from the drop-down list. Now, seasonal ideas and nature inspiration relevant to your area will appear in your home feed: these short posts are a way to help you notice nature, deepen your connection to the seasons, and support your journaling. Don’t forget to change your location if you travel somewhere else!

The filter icon brings up four buttons at the top of the home feed. Toggle these on and off to show your preferred mix of content: ‘My Journal’ is home to your own, private diary entries; ‘Inspire Me’ contains seasonal nature tips and inspiration from me (Melissa Harrison) and Encounter; ‘Learn More’ gives you longer articles from Encounter’s friends and partners; and finally, there’s a place for your bookmarks. When you’re in the Inspire Me and Learn More views you can toggle your location off using the checkbox if you want to see posts relevant to you, or all the posts going out to all areas of Britain and Ireland. NB: This is a Beta feature, which means we’re still working on it.

Press the big ‘plus’ button at the foot of the screen when you’re ready to write in your journal: you can attach up to five photos to each entry. Encounter will ask you to turn on location settings in your phone so it can make a note of where you were and what the weather was like. Then, when you tag the wild species or natural phenomena you’ve seen or heard, that information will help Encounter build a vital picture of how the natural world is faring, improving the tips and information in your home feed and making the app smarter over time. However, your journal entries and photos themselves are private: they’re not shared with us, or with other Encounter users. You can read our Privacy Policy here.

You can edit the text and photos in your journal by opening an entry up again from the ‘My Journal’ feed and tapping the pencil icon at the top right. You can change the date and location for up to a week, and the weather and moon phase will automatically update. You can’t date journal entries more than seven days in the past.

This is the very first version of Encounter and we have exciting plans for features we want to add, including support for video and audio, and searching for your tags, which is at the very top of our ‘to do’ list. Over time we’ll be adding more content from partners and expanding our network of featured experts, and as your tags come in they’ll help to make the tips and information in the ‘Inspire Me’ feed more and more locally relevant. Thank you for your willingness to set out with us as we begin this journey, and for your continued support as we build an app we hope you’ll love.