About

PinchPot is a ceramics journal built for potters. Log every piece from wet clay to the final firing: photos, clay bodies, glazes, cone, techniques, and notes. Track kiln loads and firing outcomes, keep your materials library organized, and watch each piece move through every stage of the process, all synced across your devices with iCloud.

Logging is free. Unlimited pieces, unlimited photos, no caps, no trial clock. PinchPot Pro adds the studio tools on top: reminders, Glaze Lab, Insights, widgets, the kiln timer on your Lock Screen, the Watch app, App Icons, and more.

Free:

Unlimited pieces and photos, with stages, clay bodies, glaze layers, cones, techniques, notes and voice memos
Voice memos transcribed on your device, so you can search what you said
Ask your journal: type a question and get a filtered Journal (needs Apple Intelligence)
A drying countdown to bone dry, and pieces that have stalled at a stage
Full firing tracking: kiln loads, outcomes, Ready to Fire, firing results, and a kiln timer that counts down in the app
Materials library with glaze recipes, a batch weigh-out, firing ranges, and recipes linked to their test tiles
Size, weight, shrinkage, series, test tiles, an asking price, and a sale record for the ones you sell
List and Gallery views, search and filters
Duplicate a piece, use one as a template, or make a numbered batch
Share any piece as a photo card
Your profile: when you started, where you've worked, and your journal's numbers
Siri, Shortcuts and Spotlight
iCloud sync across all your devices and True Black dark mode

Pro:

Piece reminders: a nudge to trim, glaze, or unload, synced across your devices
Glaze Lab: your glaze combinations, what they produced, and the pairings you have not tried yet
Customizable layout: put Firings, Materials, Glaze Lab, Insights and the Calculator in the tab bar, the toolbar, or away
Insights: favorites, findings, badges, sales and kiln time
Widgets: Home Screen, Lock Screen and StandBy, with recents, work in progress, search and log, your next reminder, and the kiln
Kiln timer: a Live Activity counts down the firing and cool-down on your Lock Screen, and tells you when the kiln can be opened
Apple Watch app: pieces, stages, notes, reminders, firings and the calculator on your wrist, with complications
Recently Deleted: restore pieces, firings, materials, recipes and more for up to 30 days
Export: your whole journal as a CSV, or any piece as a PDF
Firing fee calculator: estimate kiln cost by volume
Journal Opens In: open the Journal in List or Gallery, your choice
Unlocked Piece Mode: every piece opens ready to edit
Piece Layout: put a piece's sections in your order, and hide the ones you don't use
New Pieces: choose what a new piece copies from your last one
App Icons: put the Kiln God, the Journal, the Mug, the Wheel, the Bag o' Clay or the Jar on your Home Screen

PinchPot Pro is an auto-renewing subscription, available monthly or yearly. Payment is charged to your Apple Account at confirmation of purchase. The subscription renews automatically unless cancelled at least 24 hours before the end of the current period. Manage or cancel anytime in your Apple Account settings.

Welcome to PinchPot.

A journal that follows every piece you make, from the first cut of clay to the final firing.

Form the pot.

Log the clay body, notes, techniques, and voice memos as you work.

Let it dry.

Greenware counts down to bone dry, so you know when it's ready.

Bisque it.

Ready to Fire groups waiting pieces by cone and fills in the kiln load for you.

Glaze it.

Keep your glazes in a materials library, with recipes linked to the test tiles that tried them.

Fire it.

Log every firing and kiln load: cone, atmosphere, schedule, and how each piece came out.

Every piece, in one place.

From the first pinch to the final firing, it's all in your journal.

Release Notes

V1.5: It's alive!

The icons are new, and they look around. Your studio friends, the Kiln God, the Journal, the Bag o' Clay, the Mug, the Test Tile and the rest, one meaning each, across the app, the widgets and your watch. They blink, look around and doze off. Prefer Apple's symbols? Profile, Appearance, Icons switches back.

Made for iPhone Duo: PinchPot fills both displays, and keeps your place when you unfold it.

Also new:

A piece says what's next: where it is, what to do, and the pieces that share its glazes. Loads ready to open sit at the top of the Journal with a Record Outcome button.
Lost a pot? Mark it as a loss. It stays out of the Journal, the widgets and your watch unless you ask to see losses, and the stage stays where it was.
An idea is a piece too. Log a title and some notes with no photo and it reads as an idea, not a pot in progress, until you make it.
"Next time" lives under the rating: what you'd change. New from This carries it onto the next piece, and What's Next brings it back on anything with the same glaze or clay.
Making a set? A new piece has a How Many count, and Save makes them numbered.
Fired size and shrinkage, an asking price, and a For Sale filter. The firing screen says whether a load will fit the kiln.
The kiln timer has a clock that shows when the load started, a thermometer that cools, and the kiln opens when it's ready.
A fuller profile: name, when you started, your studios and links. And a glossary of ceramics and PinchPot terms under Profile, About.
The piece menu is five things. Profile is shorter. Footers are one sentence. Dozens of screens got lighter.
Insights has badges for what your journal already holds, and What Your Pieces Say: your best-rated glaze combination, cone and clay, and this season against the last. (Pro)
New Pieces: choose what a new piece copies from your last one. (Pro)
App Icons: six of the friends on your Home Screen. (Pro)

V1.4.1: Hello 27

iOS 27 support and some new features:

Ask your journal. Type a question in the search box, like "glazed shino pieces" or "anything that cracked", and you get back a filtered Journal. It happens on your device, and it needs Apple Intelligence.
Voice memos get transcribed as you record them, on your device, so you can search what you said.
Greenware counts down to bone dry.
Recipes and test tiles are linked now. A tile shows which recipe it tested, and a recipe shows how its tiles came out.
A firing can record the peak temperature, the witness cone, what it cost, and a photo of the kiln god.
Peak temperature in Celsius or Fahrenheit, whichever your controller shows.
Glazes and recipes can say which cones they're for, and you get a warning when a load is planned outside that.
Photos remember the stage they were taken at, and they can have a caption.
Photos are saved without their location.
Firings and materials show up in Spotlight now, and tapping one opens it.
Your units, drying time and layout follow you to your other devices.
Recently Deleted holds firings, kilns, materials, recipes and techniques too, not just pieces. (Pro)
Piece Layout lets you put a piece's sections in your own order, and hide the ones you don't use. (Pro)
Journal cards count down to a reminder instead of just showing a bell. (Pro)
Siri can check on a piece, tell you what needs attention, and set a reminder. (Pro)
The kiln shows up in your Apple Watch Smart Stack while a load is in. (Pro)
Scrolling is quicker on a big library, plus a lot of small polish.

V1.4: Glaze it

The kiln timer. Set the firing length and cool-down on a kiln load and PinchPot counts down in Firings. With Pro, a Live Activity keeps the countdown on your Lock Screen and tells you when the kiln can be opened.

A tab bar on iPhone gives Journal, Firings, Materials and Insights each a home, with Profile one tap away from every tab. With Pro, choose where Firings, Materials, Glaze Lab, Insights and the Calculator live: the tab bar, the toolbar, or hidden.

Also new:

Ready to Fire groups waiting pieces by cone and fills in the kiln load for you
Add a piece to a load in the kiln, or a recent one, from the piece itself
Glaze recipes with a batch weigh-out
Size, weight, series, test tiles and sales on every piece
The full Orton cone range
A Centimetres switch for sizes
A test-tile filter in the Journal
Glaze Lab shelves that show the pairings you have not tried (Pro)
Insights for kiln time, sizes, series and revenue (Pro)
Lock Screen and StandBy widgets, and a kiln widget (Pro)
A redesigned Apple Watch app with complications, and a kiln timer you can start from your wrist (Pro)

V1.3: More Free, even more Pro.

Logging is free and unlimited.

PinchPot Pro now includes: piece reminders, Glaze Lab (browse every glaze combination you've tried), a fully customizable menu, Insights, home-screen widgets, an Apple Watch app, Recently Deleted, journal export, a firing fee calculator, and your choice of default view.

Plus Siri Shortcuts, a guided first-launch setup, multi-kiln firings, separate bisque/glaze cone tracking, voice memos, camera-roll auto-save, and a redesigned, more accessible interface throughout.

V1.2.3: As easy as

True Black Dark Mode is now free for everyone. No subscription needed for that pure-black, easy-on-the-eyes look in a dim studio.

This update also brings a full accessibility pass: VoiceOver now reads your pieces, ratings, and stats clearly instead of a jumble of icons and separators; the app respects Reduce Motion; and every screen (Journal, Firings, Materials, Insights) holds up properly at larger text sizes.

Plus some polish: filtering your Journal to zero results now tells you what happened (and gets you back), firing sessions edit in place instead of opening a separate form, and various small layout fixes throughout.

V1.2.2: In-sync

iCloud sync indicator.

V1.2.1: Chaz edit

Title is now directly editable. Credit to Chaz for that idea!

V1.2: Just all-around better

PinchPot now works with Siri Shortcuts. Now you can ask Siri to log a piece, record a firing, or check what's in the kiln without touching your phone.

Also in this update:

Guided studio setup for new users
Full-screen photos with pinch-to-zoom
Track multiple kilns per piece (bisque in one, glaze fire in another)
Long-press the compose button to snap a photo first, then log
Save photos to your camera roll automatically as you shoot
Log a firing straight from a piece, with dates optional
Select mode for batch duplicating, deleting, or re-staging pieces
Refined List and Gallery views, with a matching header between them
New Stain material category
The search bar, star ratings, and glaze picker are all snappier and more reliable

V1.1: It's time

Apple Watch support is here! See your Recent pieces and what's still In Progress right on your wrist, synced live from your phone.