Hearthbook

The life of your character, written as a journal.

Hearthbook quietly follows one character from the first step to level 60 and beyond, and writes it all down the way a person would: as dated entries in the character's own voice, with pictures from the moments worth keeping. Years from now you open it and read how it went — which zone you walked into at first light, what killed you for the third time, who came along to Ragefire Chasm, and what you were thinking at 14:31 on a Tuesday.

It's built for WoW Forever and it looks like a journal app, not a spreadsheet: a feed of your days, each one a card with that day's photos, a short summary, and the moments that mattered. Nothing leaves your computer. The journal lives in your saved variables and the pictures are the game's own screenshots.

What it writes down

Hearthbook listens to the game and turns what happens into short first-person entries. There are many wordings for each kind of moment, chosen once and kept forever, so your journal never rewrites itself.

• Levels — where you dinged, how long the level took, what happened on the way ("Level 12. Felt it settle somewhere behind the ribs, in Mulgore after 48m."). Tens get their own lines ("Forty. I can almost smell the mount.").
• Zones — the first time you set foot somewhere, with a line about the place for the classic zones ("Everything here wants to eat me, and some of it talks." for Stranglethorn).
• Deaths — what got you, where, and whether it's getting personal ("A Venture Co. Geologist again. Death number 3. I am starting to take it personally.").
• Dungeons and raids — an entered at and a left at entry for every run, with a run card: who came, bosses in order, deaths and wipes, loot of green and better and who won it, and a short write-up. It knows the difference between walking out, hearthing, teleporting, being summoned, releasing after a wipe and logging out inside.
• Firsts — your first green, blue and epic; your first mount; flight paths; professions; gold milestones; reputation; guilds; quest and kill counts.
• People — who you grouped with, how long you spent together, where you first met.
• Where you were — a trail point every ten seconds outdoors, so each day has a map of where you walked.

Pictures

• Pose & shoot (the minimap button, or /hearthbook pose) picks one of the game's own emotes, counts down, plays it, and takes the shot at the pose's best frame. One shot or a burst of three, with an optional caption. Weapons are sheathed and the UI, names, nameplates, chat bubbles and combat text are hidden for the shot, then put back exactly as they were.
• Automatic pictures at the big moments — levels, first visits, dungeon bosses, deaths, your first blue or epic, flight paths, mounts, level 60. Each kind is Auto, Remind (a note asks you to take your own), Both, or Off in Settings.
• Hearthbook's pictures are saved as PNG so the game can show them in the journal: as mosaics on the day cards, as the cover of a day, in the Photos page, and full-size in the viewer. Pictures taken today appear after the next game launch. Your other screenshots are untouched.

Three journals

• The Road to Sixty — everything from the first step to the ding. Closes at 60 and becomes read-only; every page stays yours to read.
• Life at Sixty — opens the moment you reach 60 and takes everything from then on. Locked until then.
• Personal — a private notebook. Only what you write into it, or pictures you choose to save there, go here; nothing automatic, and nothing from it appears in the other two.

All entries shows everything together.

How to use it

Open the journal: right-click the minimap button, or type /hearthbook. Left-click the minimap button for Pose & shoot.

The sidebar has two Insights tiles (days journaled, places walked), the three journals, and the pages: Photos, Atlas, People, Calendar, Statistics, Settings. Your character sits at the bottom with your portrait.

The feed is a column of day cards, newest first. Each card shows the day's photos, a title and summary in your character's voice, a few of the moments, and chips for the zone, the levels and the company. Click a photo to open it full-size, a chip to jump to the Atlas, Statistics or that person, and anywhere else to open the day. Beside the feed: Where you were today (a map of today's walk with pins), With, and On this day — which looks back a year, then a month, then a week, then earlier today.

Skim / Full. The journals have a switch at the top: Skim is one line per day under month headers, with level chips (Lv 10, Lv 20…) that jump straight to the day you dinged. Full is the card feed. A closed journal opens in Skim.

A day opens with its cover picture under the date, every entry on the left (your own words in violet, run write-ups in their own card), and cards on the right for where you were, who you were with, the pictures and the numbers. ‹ › step between days.

The + button writes an entry, opens Pose & shoot, or just takes a picture. The writer and Pose & shoot both ask where the entry goes: the journal being written, or Personal.

Photos is a grid by day; click to open the viewer, where you can caption, remove, open the day, or make a picture your portrait (My picture).

Atlas lists every zone with how much of it you've walked; pick one to see the map with your trail and pins for what happened there.

People lists everyone you've grouped with, most time together first; pick someone for the details and the days you shared.

Calendar marks each day with dots (violet entries, green pictures, red deaths) and a faint thumbnail; pick a day to read its summary and open it.

Statistics has Levels (time per level), Zones, Quests & kills, Deaths (with your nemeses), Gear, and, when enabled, Characters.

Settings covers the "on this day" greeting, the minimap button, real photos and how many stay loaded, the countdown and reminder, what to capture and what to hide for the shot, the trail and the world-map layer.

Commands

/hearthbook the journal · write a new entry · pose pose & shoot · snap a picture now · gear snapshot what you're wearing · restore put display settings back · minimap show or hide the button · reset wipe this character's journal

Notes

• Interface 16001 (WoW Forever)
• The typeface is Inter (SIL Open Font License); see Media/OFL-Inter.txt.
• If the game ever crashes mid-shot, display settings are restored at the next login (/hearthbook restore does it by hand).
• Hearthbook never opens the world map itself and never talks to other players. Everything stays on your computer.