Getting started

Purl is a quiet, ad-free app for knitting and crochet. Patterns, projects, yarn, kept in one place, on your device, no account needed. Designed to work offline (on couches, planes, cabins with no signal) and to stay calm out of your way while you craft.

Install

Purl is on Google Play (currently in testing; ask for an invite if the listing isn't visible to you yet). Some testers instead run a sideloaded APK; Android may ask you to allow installing apps from outside the Play Store the first time. iPhone and iPad support is coming.

The four tabs

Across the bottom of the screen:

Projects: things you're making, planning to make, or have finished. Each project ties together a pattern + yarn + your progress + photos.
Patterns: your library of written patterns and imported PDFs.
Stash: your yarn and your equipment (needles, hooks, etc.).
More: everything else. Calculator, terminology glossary, search, backups, settings, the changelog, the roadmap, and a few power-user tools.

Your first few minutes

The fastest way to feel the app out:

Tap Stash → + Add yarn. Type a brand, a name, a colour, a number of skeins. Save.
Tap Patterns → + Import. Pick a PDF pattern from your phone (or use one of the bundled demo patterns if you're just exploring). It lands in your library.
Tap Projects → + New project. Pick the pattern you just added. Pick the yarn you just added. Save.
Open the project, tap into the pattern, and you're knitting. The PDF viewer's tools let you place a row tracker and a counter; for a written pattern, tap Track to start stepping through.

Once you've done the loop once, everything else is shape variations on it. The rest of this guide goes through each tab in depth.

Three things to know up front

Your data is local. Purl doesn't have a cloud account. Nothing gets uploaded anywhere. The trade-off: backups are your responsibility, but the app makes them easy (see backups).
Mistakes are recoverable. If you delete something by accident, it lives in Recently Deleted for 30 days. The app also takes rolling snapshots so you can roll back to "a week ago" if something goes badly wrong.
The Norwegian and English versions are both first-class. Switch the app language in More → Settings. The knitting + crochet glossary is bilingual and lets you browse one language while the app is in the other.

When something doesn't work right

Purl is in active development. If something feels off (a button doesn't do what you expected, the app crashes, a feature is hard to find) tap More → Send feedback and send a note. It's anonymous, and every report is read.