A calm blood glucose journal for Linux, Windows and Android.
Log a reading in seconds, watch the trends, hand your doctor a clean report,
and keep every device in step with no account and no server.
Living with diabetes means writing down numbers several times a day, for years. Most apps make that feel like an exam: red numbers, alerts, streaks. Honeycomb takes the opposite view. The reading is big and unjudged, the status is a quiet word beside it, colour only appears when something is actually off, and nothing nags. Your data sits in a plain file you own, on machines you own.
- Fast logging. Open the app and the reading field already has focus. Type a number and press Enter. The time is prefilled and keeps ticking until you change it, with quick presets like "30 min ago" for the reading you forgot to log. Optional context (fasting, before or after a meal and which meal, bedtime, exercise, feeling unwell) and a note.
- Honest feedback. As you type, the app tells you whether the reading is in range, high, low, or very high, in words, not just colours. Nothing shouts.
- Trends. Average, time in range, estimated A1c, lowest and highest, variability, and fasting average over 7, 14, 30, or 90 days, each compared with the period before. Step back through earlier periods with the arrows, or pick any two dates. A readings chart with the target band, time in range by day or week, and a time-of-day view that shows when your levels tend to run high.
- A report for your doctor. A printable sheet with the summary figures, chart, and a table of every reading. Save it as a PDF, export or share a CSV, or copy a plain-text summary, on the computer or the phone.
- Your data stays yours. Readings are stored as CSV in
~/.local/share/honeycomb/readings.csvon Linux and%APPDATA%\honeycomb\readings.csvon Windows. Point the app at a different file if you prefer, or import an export on a new machine. - Sync between devices, no account needed. Pair two computers, or a computer and a phone, and they keep the same readings. Devices talk to each other directly with end-to-end encryption. A device that was off simply catches up the next time both are running.
- Android. The same app, with a phone layout, syncs with your desktop.
- Units and targets. mmol/L or mg/dL, an adjustable target range, 12 or 24 hour clock, and a light or dark theme that follows your system.
Packages for each release are on the Releases page:
an .rpm for Fedora and friends, a .deb for Ubuntu and Debian, a -setup.exe installer for
64-bit Windows 10 and 11, and an .apk for arm64 Android phones, with a SHA256SUMS file alongside.
sudo dnf install ./Honeycomb-<version>.x86_64.rpm # Fedora
sudo apt install ./Honeycomb_<version>_amd64.deb # Ubuntu, Debian
adb install Honeycomb-<version>-arm64.apk # Android, or copy the file to the phoneOn Windows, run Honeycomb_<version>_x64-setup.exe. It installs for your user only, with no
administrator prompt, and adds Honeycomb to the Start menu. The installer carries no paid code
signing certificate, so SmartScreen may say the publisher is unknown: choose More info, then Run
anyway. The first time sync starts, Windows Firewall asks whether Honeycomb may accept connections;
allow it on private networks so devices on the same Wi-Fi can find each other. Sync through the
relay works either way.
The Android package is signed with the project's own key, so the phone will ask you to allow installing from this source.
Settings, About has a Check for updates button. It asks GitHub for the latest version number and nothing else. Automatic checks, at startup and every twelve hours while the app runs, are off until you turn them on. On Windows a new version installs from inside the app with one click and Honeycomb restarts into it; on Linux and Android the button takes you to the release.
You need Node 20 or newer, pnpm, a Rust toolchain, and the WebKitGTK development packages that Tauri 2 requires.
git clone https://github.com/Gingerbreadfork/honeycomb
cd honeycomb
./install.shinstall.sh builds the app and installs it for your user under ~/.local (binary, icon, and
launcher entry). No root needed. For system packages instead:
pnpm install
pnpm tauri build # writes .rpm and .deb to src-tauri/target/release/bundle/On Windows you need the same Node, pnpm and Rust, plus the Visual Studio Build Tools with the
"Desktop development with C++" workload, as the
Tauri prerequisites describe. WebView2 is
part of Windows 10 and 11. The same two commands then write the installer to
src-tauri\target\release\bundle\nsis\, and pnpm tauri dev works as on Linux.
./android-build.sh # builds a signed release APK for arm64 phonesThis needs the Android SDK, an NDK, and a JDK 17 or 21. Set ANDROID_HOME, NDK_HOME, and
JAVA_HOME if they are not found automatically. The script creates a personal signing key at
~/.config/honeycomb/android-release.jks on first use; keep it, because updates have to be
signed with the same key. The APK is written to src-tauri/target/release/bundle/android/.
Install it with adb install or copy it to the phone.
On the phone, readings live in the app's private storage and are left out of Android's cloud backup and phone-to-phone transfer. The Report page can save a PDF through Android's print dialog and hand a CSV to any app through the share sheet; sync and Copy summary work too. Pair a new phone rather than restoring onto it.
Open Settings, then Devices, and choose Pair a device.
- Same network. Other computers running Honeycomb show up automatically. Tap Pair, confirm the six-digit code shown on both screens, done.
- Anywhere else. Show a code on one device and enter it on the other, or point the phone's camera at the QR code beside it. Codes work once and expire after ten minutes.
After pairing, sync is automatic: on startup, after every change, when the window regains focus, and every couple of minutes. Both devices need to be running for a sync to happen. On a desktop you can turn on "Keep syncing after the window is closed" so it stays reachable in the background.
How it works: every reading carries an id and a last-edited stamp, and deletions are kept as hidden tombstones for two years. A sync first compares a fingerprint of both sides; only when they differ do the devices exchange their rows and keep the newer version of each. Edits and removals made while apart merge cleanly in both directions. Connections use iroh: encrypted QUIC keyed to each device's identity, direct wherever possible, with public relay servers used only to get through home routers. Relays never see your data.
time,glucose,unit,context,note,id,updated,deleted
2026-09-15T08:42:00+10:00,6.4,mmol/L,fasting,,k3v9tq2xm8pd,2026-09-15T08:42:07.512+10:00,The first five columns are what you would expect. Each time keeps the UTC offset of the place it was taken, and the app shows it by that clock: a reading logged at 8 am in Sydney still reads 8 am when you open the file in London. The last three exist for sync and are harmless in a spreadsheet. The export from the Report page is the tidy five-column version without deleted rows. Files without the extra columns, including exports and reasonably named spreadsheets with a time and a glucose column, import cleanly, and importing the same file twice adds nothing. Meter exports that open with a title line or spread values over several glucose columns are read too, and when the headers are not recognised the import dialog lets you say which column is which.
Before the first change on any day, the file as it stood is copied to
~/.local/share/honeycomb/backups/readings-<date>.csv. The last 14 are kept. To go back to one,
quit the app and copy it over readings.csv, or import it to bring back only what is missing.
Settings live in ~/.config/honeycomb/settings.json. On Windows everything sits together under
%APPDATA%\honeycomb: readings.csv, settings.json, and the backups folder. Edits made to the
data file outside the app are picked up the next time the window gains focus.
pnpm install
pnpm tauri dev # native window with hot reload
pnpm dev # browser only, data kept in localStorage
pnpm check # svelte-check
pnpm test # vitest
cargo test --manifest-path src-tauri/Cargo.toml
pnpm tauri android dev # run on a connected device or emulatorPushing a tag like v0.2.0 runs the release workflow, which runs the tests, builds the Linux
packages and the Windows installer, and attaches them to a GitHub release. The tag has to match
the version in package.json, src-tauri/tauri.conf.json and src-tauri/Cargo.toml;
./scripts/check-version.sh tells you whether the three agree. The Android job also runs if the repository has two secrets:
ANDROID_KEYSTORE_BASE64 (the signing keystore, base64 encoded) and ANDROID_KEYSTORE_PASS.
Without them, build the APK locally with ./android-build.sh and upload it by hand.
The Windows job signs the installer for in-app updates when the repository has a
TAURI_SIGNING_PRIVATE_KEY secret holding the contents of ~/.config/honeycomb/updater.key, and
then publishes latest.json, the feed installed copies read. pnpm tauri signer generate -w ~/.config/honeycomb/updater.key makes a key; its public half lives in src-tauri/tauri.conf.json,
so a new key means installed copies have to be updated by hand once.
gh secret set TAURI_SIGNING_PRIVATE_KEY < ~/.config/honeycomb/updater.key stores it. Without the
secret the installer still builds but cannot update itself.
HONEYCOMB_PROFILE=name runs a separate copy with its own data and no single-instance lock, which
is handy for testing sync between two instances on one machine.
Built with Tauri 2, Svelte 5, and iroh. Type is Atkinson Hyperlegible Next for numbers and text, and Bricolage Grotesque for headings.
| Keys | Action |
|---|---|
| Enter | Save the reading |
| Ctrl+1, Ctrl+2, Ctrl+3 | Log, Trends, Report |
| Ctrl+, | Settings |
| Ctrl+Q | Quit |
Estimated A1c is calculated from the average of your readings using the glucose management indicator formula. It is an estimate for your own reference, not a laboratory result, and fingerstick readings taken at chosen moments are not the same as continuous monitoring. Talk to your care team about your targets and what the numbers mean for you.
MIT. See LICENSE.