About Yarn Diary

Last updated 18 August 2026

Yarn Diary is a free crochet tracker that reads written patterns. It checks every round against the stitch count printed in the pattern, so misreads are caught before you crochet them. Free, no account, no subscription. It runs entirely in your browser — patterns and photos never leave your device, and sync goes to your own Google Drive; we never hold your projects.

What it is

Scan a printed pattern with your camera, drop in a PDF, or paste the text. Yarn Diary parses it into parts and rounds, re-derives each round's stitch count from the instructions, and compares it with the count the pattern prints — typos surface at the sofa, not at round 40. Then it tracks your progress: rounds ticked off, stitches counted within a round, separate progress for each copy of a "make 2" part, photos and notes along the way. It installs from the browser and works fully offline.

Who makes it

One person, not a company. There is no office, no staff, no investors expecting a return — which is a large part of why the app can stay free. It also means support is one inbox read by a human: support.yarndiary@gmail.com. Bug reports, confusing patterns the parser mangled, and plain opinions are all welcome there.

The principles

Your data is yours, physically. Projects, patterns and photos live in your browser's storage on your device. They are never sent to us. If you sync, the files sit in your own Google Drive, readable, in your own account. The privacy page is short because there is little to disclose.
Every claim is literally true of the code. Nothing on this site says "private" as a vibe — when a page says recognition runs in your browser, that is where it runs. If you ever catch a claim the app doesn't honour, that's a bug; write in.
Honesty about limits. Yarn Diary is not a pattern marketplace, not a community, and has no colourwork chart grids. The "what you give up" section is part of every comparison it makes.
No lock-in. Backups export to an ordinary file. The app keeps working offline whatever happens to this website. Leaving is as easy as arriving.

Why it's free

The app is a set of static files, so it costs almost nothing to run. The expensive part of most tracker apps — the cloud your projects live in — simply doesn't exist here, because your projects live with you. The longer answer covers what that architecture means in practice.

Contact

support.yarndiary@gmail.com — for questions, bugs, patterns that parsed strangely, or anything else.