How to Use CaseStamp

CaseStamp is a personal evidence log: you create a case, add photos and video as things happen, and export everything as a single organized report. This page walks through each part.

Creating a case

Tap New case and give it an Issue title and, if relevant, Who it involves, Where, and First noticed — tap the date field to pick it from a calendar. The Description field is for what happened and what it's costing you — as much or as little detail as you want.

If you're documenting on behalf of an employer, client, or organization, you can also fill in Prepared by, Company / organization, Employee ID, and Title / role. All four are optional, and any that you fill in are printed on every page of the exported report so it's clear who compiled it.

Status and days open

Every case starts with a status of Open. From inside an existing case, change it to In Progress, No Action, or Resolved as things develop, using the status selector on the case's detail view. Open, In Progress, and No Action all count as open; Resolved is the only status that closes a case.

While a case is open, CaseStamp shows a running day count — days since the case was first created — on-screen and in the copy-as-text report. That count stops once a case is marked Resolved. Status, Category, and the day count all print in the exported PDF report — a Resolved case shows "—" for days open instead of a count, since it's no longer running.

Organizing cases

Give a case a Category when you create it, so you can filter your case list later. Category is optional and can be changed any time from inside the case. The options are:

• Housing / Landlord
• Workplace
• Insurance claim
• Vehicle / Accident
• Purchase / Warranty
• Service provider
• Medical / Billing
• Neighbor / HOA
• Roads / Public infrastructure
• Government agency
• Property
• Incident
• Other

Adding evidence

From inside a case, use Take photo or Record video to capture evidence directly, or add a photo from your library. Every photo and video is stamped the moment it's added with the date, time, GPS location (if location access is granted), and a SHA-256 hash of the file — a unique fingerprint that changes if even one byte of the file is altered later. The timestamp is set at save time and can't be edited within the app — there's no way to alter a stamp after the fact, and any change to the file itself breaks its hash. The time comes from your device's clock, so a report reflects what that clock read at capture.

Video evidence includes audio. Recording laws vary — some states and countries require everyone's consent before recording audio. Know the rules where you are before recording conversations.

Library imports

Take photo captures directly; From library adds an existing photo from your device's photo library instead. Either way, the entry is stamped the moment it's added to the case — for a library photo, that's when you added it, not necessarily when the photo was originally taken.

Each photo entry is marked with where it came from: a photo taken with Take photo reads "Captured in CaseStamp"; a photo added with From library reads "Added from library." The marking shows on the entry and prints in the exported report. Photos added before this marking existed have no recorded source — rather than guessing, they're labeled "Not recorded (logged before source tracking was added)," not assumed to be captures. Video entries are marked the same way now: Record video has no library-import option, so every video is captured live, and new video entries read "Captured in CaseStamp" too. Video entries recorded before this marking existed read "Not recorded" — same as an older photo, and for the same reason: the value genuinely wasn't stored at the time, so it isn't guessed after the fact. If every entry in a case predates source tracking, the case shows no source information at all, exactly as it did before.

Video capture

Record video works the same way as Take photo, and gets the same guarantees: the moment recording stops, the file is stamped with the date, time, GPS location (if available), and a SHA-256 hash, exactly like a photo.

CaseStamp hashes video regardless of length — the 20MB figure in this section refers to email attachment limits, not a capture limit. Video files run much larger than photos, and email providers cap attachment sizes well under what a few minutes of video can reach. If a video is over 20MB, its entry shows a warning that it's too large to include when you email the whole case at once — the video and its hash are still saved and still verify normally either way. See Sharing a case below for what that means at export time.

Notes

There are two kinds of notes. Case notes are a free-text narrative for the case as a whole — arrival time, what happened, references to specific captures — in a Notes field on the case itself. Per-entry notes are a short note on one specific photo or video, for context that belongs to that item alone rather than the whole case.

Both save automatically a moment after you stop typing — there's no separate save step, and no risk of losing a note by navigating away.

Logging a conversation

Beyond photos and video, CaseStamp can log conversations — a phone call, an in-person conversation, a voicemail, an email — as their own kind of record in the case.

While creating a new case, after adding any notes, tap + Already talked to someone? Log it now to open a conversation form: who you spoke with and their role, how you contacted them (in person, phone call, voicemail, text message, email, or online portal), their phone (it formats as you type) or email, a reference or ticket number if they gave you one, and what was said. It rides the same autosave as the rest of the new case while you're filling it in.

From inside a case you've already created, tap + Log a conversation in the Communication log section instead. Fill in the same fields, then tap Save (stamps current time) — unlike case and per-entry notes, a logged conversation only saves once you tap Save, timestamped at that moment.

What's hashed and what isn't

Photos and videos are the only entries that get a SHA-256 hash — sealed the moment they're added, so any later change to the file is detectable. Case notes, per-entry notes, and logged conversations are written records: timestamped, but not cryptographically sealed the way photos and video are.

Case notes and per-entry notes autosave as you type and stay editable any time you come back to them. A logged conversation works differently: once you tap Save, it can't be edited — only deleted. The record is stamped once, at the moment you saved it.

The report

Every case exports as a PDF laid out like a form, not a casual printout — a header block with the case details and preparer information, then each entry numbered in order with its timestamp, GPS coordinates and accuracy radius (if available), and SHA-256 hash printed alongside it. A photo or video entry also gets a Source line — "Captured in CaseStamp," "Added from library" (photo only — video has no library- import path), or, for an entry that predates source tracking for its media type, "Not recorded" — but only if at least one entry in the case has one; a case entirely of older entries prints with no Source line at all. That structure is deliberate: it gives whoever receives the report a verifiable record of when each item was captured, and proof it hasn't changed since, from that moment to the moment the case was exported.

If you've added case notes, they print near the top of the report, right after the case details — left off entirely if you haven't added any. Any per-entry note prints in a NOTES column alongside that entry's own timestamp, GPS with accuracy, and hash.

Logged conversations print separately, in their own Communication log section — each one listed with its date, time, contact method, and who you spoke with, followed by their contact details and what was said.

See the FAQ for common questions, or how to verify a report if you're on the receiving end of one.

What's free and what's paid

Documenting is entirely free, and there is no limit on it: unlimited cases, unlimited photo and video entries, GPS stamping, SHA-256 hashing, entry notes, and the full communication log. Nothing you log is ever locked away from you inside the app — every case, entry, hash, and timestamp stays readable on screen whether or not you buy anything.

Getting a case out of the app is the paid part, unlocked by a single $9.99 purchase. That covers every route out: Share case, Print PDF, Copy report text, and sharing an individual photo or video from its entry. It's a one-time purchase, not a subscription, and it stays unlocked permanently on any device signed into the same store account.

Because your cases live only on this device, that also means keeping an off-device backup is part of what the unlock buys — see backing up your cases below. We'd rather say that plainly than let you find out after the phone is gone.

Sharing a case

The Share action bundles the PDF report together with the case's photos and videos into one share sheet, so you can send everything at once to email, Messages, Drive, or any other app. Email attachments have hard size limits — most providers cap them well under the size a few minutes of video can reach — so CaseStamp keeps the shared package under a size that travels safely by email, and if a video would push the package over that limit, it's left out of the bundle automatically. The per-video 20MB warning and this overall bundle limit are different thresholds — a case with several videos each under 20MB can still have one or more trimmed from the bundle at export, even though none of them individually showed a warning.

A video left out of the bundle is still listed in the report by entry number and SHA-256 hash, so the record of it exists even though the file itself wasn't attached. You can share that video on its own — open it from its entry and use its Share action — to Drive, Messages, AirDrop, or anywhere else that handles larger files, and its hash in the report still verifies it's the same file.

Printing

Print PDF opens your device's system print dialog with the same report document the Share action attaches. From that dialog you can send it to a physical printer, or use your device's own Save as PDF option to get a file without going through Share.

Privacy

Everything above happens entirely on your device. CaseStamp has no servers of its own and collects nothing. The only network activity in the app is the optional $9.99 purchase (and restoring it), handled entirely by Apple or Google — everything else happens fully offline. See the Privacy Policy for the full statement. When you share or print a case, you're handing it to an app you chose (Mail, Drive, AirDrop, your printer driver); CaseStamp has no part in, and no visibility into, what happens after that.

Storage

There's no limit on the number of cases you can create. The only ceiling is your device's available storage — and since video files are much larger than photos, video is typically what fills that up first.

Back up your cases

Because everything lives only on your device, that's also the one place it can be lost. If CaseStamp is deleted, or your phone is lost, broken, or wiped, anything you haven't exported is gone for good — there's no account to recover it from and no server copy to restore it.

The fix is simple, and it's worth being direct about what it costs: backing up means exporting, and exporting is the one-time $9.99 unlock (see what's free and what's paid). Once you have it, export or share your cases regularly, the same way you'd back up any photos that matter to you — send a case to your own Google Drive, iCloud, or Dropbox, or just email it to yourself. Once it's out of the app and sitting in your inbox or cloud storage, that copy is safe no matter what happens to the phone.

Do this as soon as a case matters — right after adding key evidence, not weeks later — and again whenever you add something new.

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