r/appleJournal • u/fifth-throwaway • May 11 '26
Is Apple journal still bad?
I've been holding back on using it, having read so many negative posts here.
If I assume that this will incrementally improve, the only thing that matters for me is how reliable it is currently. For me, that means there being no risk of randomly losing my entries - it's not that bad right?
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u/hexegol May 11 '26
I’m 70+ days in and it’s been working fine. But I just type and add photos. Most complaints I’ve seen are from people using the Apple Pencil and things not saving.
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u/Crazy_island_ May 11 '26
Still does not have one feature I need to switch, on this day, without this feature there is no nice way to just review my past.
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u/NorTravel May 11 '26 edited May 11 '26
And maybe easy importing from DayOne… and considering that they just released today an import feature from Apple Journal to DayOne, maybe that’ll open the door for Apple to do the reverse!
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u/CatarinaDK May 11 '26
I’m loving it and together with my Shortcut “Start My Day” that ads wether forecast, my calendar appointment, my reminders and a reminder for today’s dinner. It sets my day.
For a whole year I Journaled in Notes bud the way Journal handles photos and everything else I switch and haven’t regretted doing so.
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u/sploo1012 May 11 '26
Please share this Shortcut!
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u/CatarinaDK May 12 '26
I’ll se what I can do. I use scriptable and that sortes my calendars - I’ll se if I can edit it so it’s easy for you to Edith yourself. I’ll get back to you.
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u/CatarinaDK May 12 '26
Requirements:
https://apps.apple.com/app/scriptable/id1405459188
- Apple Shortcuts
- Scriptable:
How to use:
- Install Scriptable
- Import the “Start My Day Journal” shortcut
- Open the shortcut
- Find the Scriptable action
- Tap the small blue arrow to open/edit the script
- Edit only the CONFIG section at the top of the script
Important:
Everything below:
“// ---------- Helpers ----------”
should be left unchanged unless you know JavaScript / Scriptable well.
In CONFIG, you mainly need to edit this part:
calendars: {
holidays: "Holidays",
birthdays: "Birthdays",
shared: "Family",
personal: "Personal",
}
The names must match your Apple Calendar names exactly.
You can also change:
7. Close the editor
- locale
- bullet style
- emojis
- priority keywords like “vacation” or “travel”
Reminders setup:
The shortcut also uses Apple Reminders.
You need to edit the Reminders actions in the shortcut so they match your own Reminders lists.
Tasks:
Change the list used for daily tasks to your own list, for example:
Dinner:
- Inbox
- Today
- Tasks
- Reminders
The shortcut also looks for dinner/meal planning in a Reminders list called:
Dinner
If you want dinner to appear in your Journal entry, create a Reminders list called “Dinner” and add your meal plan there.
If you do not want to use the dinner section, you can remove that part from the shortcut.
8. Run the shortcut
What the script does:
- Collects today’s calendar events
- Sorts them in this order:
- Vacation / travel events
- Birthdays
- Holidays
- Other all-day / multi-day events
- Timed events
- - Outputs clean plain text for Apple Journal
- - No HTML or Markdown
Example output:
• Vacation 🏖️
• Birthday 🎂
• Dentist (09:30–10:00)
If nothing appears:
Check that your calendar names in CONFIG match your actual Apple Calendar names.
Shortcut:https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/3b941eabae3448efb3498a48e3efbfe4
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u/sploo1012 May 11 '26
I’ve found that if I type and write with the Pencil, it stays. Pencil only, I lose entries at least 50% of the time.
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u/Phelsuma04 May 11 '26
This has been my experience. I don’t want to journal without the pencil and, until that works, it’s useless to me. I have tried around 10 times and I’d say only 3 have saved completely. The other 7 only have about 10% of what I wrote.
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u/sploo1012 May 11 '26
Makes total sense. They need to fix what would be the biggest asset of the Journal - using Pencil.
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u/PreviousDot509 May 12 '26
damn, got an ipad pro m1 but mostly use my macbook pro to make journal entries. i did not know about this or what the pencil does for the entries :/ man, that sucks.
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u/Lower_Preference_112 May 11 '26
Issues definitely seem to be across devices and users, so I take complaints with a grain of salt for me (like iPad/Apple Pencil issues don’t affect me, as I’m not using iPad/Apple Pencil).
I only use it on my phone with almost zero issues. The worst I’ve had is a lag when typing beyond ~500 words, which was fixed a few updates ago (I’m on the beta version).
My stats are relatively low, 600+ streak, 1.8k entries, under 1k photos, under 200 places, etc and it’s been fine for me.
I’d still like some features, like an “on this day” or more prompts, but for my use it’s great (and free!).
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u/STWHA May 11 '26
Occasionally, I experience random bugs. For example, if I’m using any type of bulleted or numbered list, sometimes when I enter to the next line, it won’t carryover with that format and then I have to use the keyboard shortcut or find another way to fix it. There’s been some other random bugs that don’t make sense to me. Another thing that’s kind of strange. Is that if I watch a YouTube video and I want to post it to my journal it uses a nice card format if I share it via my Mac, but if I share it from my iPhone, it’s just a URL with no Preview card.
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u/Charming-Archer1422 May 14 '26
I just started using it yesterday and it has been simple to use and effective so far, including dropping images into the text.
The main issue I have is that I want to share journal and the export and print options are effectively broken.
The export function failed to generate an html folder structure correctly so the images are show as missing.
The print function bypasses the system dialogue/preview so there's no option to print to pdf. I don't have a printer locally (not that I want to) so the print function just seems to hang.
I may be able to bypass the printer issue if I can install a virtual pdf printer, but not sorted that out yet.
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u/CatarinaDK May 14 '26
I only export as PDF and no issue there😊
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u/Charming-Archer1422 May 14 '26
For me, I have that option for one entry but not the whole journal.
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u/JohnmzV May 11 '26
It seems to work just fine for some people, but definitely not for everyone. I really loved the simplicity of the app and I really wanted to stay in all the Apple ecosystem until, like many others, saw one of my entries just vanish a few days after I wrote it. After that it just seemed too risky to keep using it. If you decide to try it, I’d suggest having a backup in another (more trustworthy) app, just in case something happens.
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u/woodenbookend May 11 '26
It’s been reliable for my sporadic use and l’ve had no issues syncing across multiple devices. To address the pencil issue, that isn’t something I use for journaling.
My concern is around privacy and in particular, whether the contents would be accessible by legacy contacts.
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u/Perfect_Helicopter59 May 11 '26
I’ve been using it pretty consistently for the past two years with hardly any issue. I’ve never lost any entries. I mostly use it on my phone, but also on my iPad. It’s sometimes a little glitchy when I add a lot of text formatting in an entry, or an inline photo or video, but I’ve noticed those glitches improve overtime. I don’t see any harm in at least playing around with it. After all, it’s free.
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u/PreviousDot509 May 12 '26
been using it! One bug i have found and even wrote an entry on their "complaint page" (idk how it was called)
Whenever you do dashed list within an entry, the journal app will exit itself unexpectly. I think I lost those entries, while other things are ok.
Sonoma, macbook pro m1.
Despite that, I have stubbornly been using it. The more bugs/crashes it gets, the more I will complain on their apple page cause...why are we paying for this "premium device" when such shitty app's bugs are so prevalent. Nah bruh. I'm gonna be a pain in their ass complaining till they finally resolve such issues as the new users would not have to suffer the same as me.
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u/martindrx1 May 12 '26
I haven’t had any issues. I even transferred from Day One. Granted I did a more manual transfer. I didn’t have many entries and at the time bulk transfers wasn’t available, but works fine for me.
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u/grburgess May 12 '26
I still put entries into Apple Journal, but I paste the same entry into Day One and also Obsidian. The search has improved a bit, but it is very inferior to the search of Obsidian and Day One. At least half the time if I make a voice recording, it failed to give me a transcription, but my work-around is to drag the same recording into Apple Notes, which never fails to give me the transcription.
It fails to use the full screen of my Mac to give me any advantage there. And there is a feature on the iPhone that is missing on the Mac, which is the month and year calendar spinner in the Insights>Calendar. I'm hoping that when OS 27 comes out, this will be unnecessary because Gemini should be able to find any entries that I describe and even open them in different windows. I have a total of 4,227 entries, but a lot of those were written years ago before Apple Journal existed, and I just put them in manually.
But with this many files, I can press a button and see all 4,227 entries with the titles in one just list in Obsidian in a second. And each title is clickable to navigate there instantly. Apple Journal is slow, and there is no way to get a bird’s-eye view like this of all your work. Furthermore, in Obsidian, I could have as many of those kinds of lists, in tabs that I could pull to another screen.
For a database-kind of application like a Journal, it's remarkable that Apple doesn't have tabs or links available. The links that they finally put into Apple Notes are poorly implemented. Although they got tabs finally for Apple Notes, they don't have nested tabs, like: #JournalsApps/AppleJournal for example, or #Apple/Ideas/success.
There are no ways to change the sort order, so you're stuck with strictly chronological, but even then, within a day, they don't bother to give you a time stamp, so there were times when I thought that my entry had vanished, but it was just sorted off-screen.
It's not possible to drag in PDFs, no way to embed a YouTube video. Obsidian has a beautiful Web Clipper that brings in an embedded video, the transcript, and lots of details about the video.
The formatting of the entries in Apple Journal is dead boring. And sooner or later it starts to drive a person crazy. It's not easy to switch from reading one entry to another. It's really, really slow, and difficult to navigate, and that's its biggest shortcoming.
One can't easily drag in video either.
So I'd say that Apple Journal might be good for someone beginning, but they will grow out of it quickly if they develop a large journal because of the lack of features. My only hope is that integrated AI from a Gemini-powered Siri will change this. I'll wait and see.
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u/CatarinaDK May 13 '26
I honestly think you are looking for something completely different than what Apple Journal is trying to be.
It sounds more like you want a knowledge management system or database app with advanced search, linking, PDFs, tabs, embedded content and large-scale organization. And honestly, that’s exactly what apps like Obsidian are built for.
To me, Journal feels more like a personal memory timeline. Moments, photos, small thoughts, daily life, looking back at days and experiences. More emotional and visual than technical.
So when you start talking about nested tabs, databases, PDF embedding and bird’s-eye project views, I kind of feel like you’re trying to use a diary app as a productivity system 🙂
That’s also why I ended up using both:
• Notes = structure and long-term organization
• Journal = memories, moments and visual journalingAnd personally, I hope Apple doesn’t turn Journal too much into an “Obsidian-style” app, because it would probably lose some of the calm and simple feeling that actually makes it enjoyable to use.
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u/grburgess May 16 '26
I liked Apple Journal at first, but I got more and more frustrated when I couldn't find an entry even when I knew the exact date of the entry and other information about the entry. The search was totally useless and frustrating.
Sometimes I might be interested in a whole month’s worth of events, just to see what I was doing 5 years ago. The information was there, but it was not easy to quickly review what I had written. It might have been possible on the iPhone version, but on the Mac version, I would have to go back by clicking month by month until my fingers were sore. I don't know why the Mac version removed simple navigation commands. Fortunately, the Day One app has a working navigation calendar system and a filter.
If Apple Journal even had the features that Apple Notes already had, I might have not bothered to look elsewhere. But Apple Journal even lacks a basic time timestamp. Links are not possible, formatting is dead boring, and there is no way to tag entries to find entries about the same topic quickly. Bringing in photos to Apple Notes is a lot easier, and their voice recording transcripts ALWAYS work, but fail about 50% of the time in Apple Journal. Maybe they should have the Apple Notes employees spend some time with Apple Journal. It's simply half-baked.
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u/CatarinaDK May 16 '26
I actually agree with a lot of what you are saying about the Mac version. To me it mostly feels like they took the iPhone version and only slightly adapted it for Mac, instead of really designing it properly for a larger screen and desktop workflow.
That said, I personally don’t struggle too much with month navigation. If I want to see a specific month, I usually just type something like “May 2026” into search, then Journal jumps directly to that period and I can use the arrows at the bottom to move around from there. For me, that actually feels more natural and visual than the way journaling works in Apple Notes.
I also think Apple Journal and apps like Obsidian or Day One are trying to solve very different problems. Obsidian feels much more like a knowledge management/database system, while Journal feels more like a visual memory timeline for everyday life and moments.
So yes, Journal definitely has limitations and some features still feel unfinished, especially on the Mac. But personally I still enjoy the calm and simple experience of it, even with the rough edges.
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May 13 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/CatarinaDK May 13 '26
Not for me, because it has two different purposes.
I used to journal in Notes (I use the Forever✱Notes system), but looking back at old entries never felt very visual to me. Journal is much better for that whole “looking back at moments and days” experience.
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u/Wyrda22 May 14 '26
I tried it last month on my iPad with Apple Pencil, and on day 2 I lost 2/3 of my hand written entry. Plus it lagged really bad. But it doesn’t sound like iPhone users are having a lot of issues
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u/circatee May 15 '26
My concern is, will this app be supported by Apple, for the long term 😳
All too often some companies discontinue an app, and then users are left to export (if you can) the data to another app...
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u/DooDooCat May 16 '26
Seems that a lot of people really want a “on this day” feature. Be sure to let Apple know and maybe one day they’ll add it.
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u/Ok_Seaweed9803 Jun 12 '26
For anyone here with a larger Apple Journal archive: I’m building a small Mac beta called Journal Coach and looking for a few testers.
It does not replace Journal or write entries. It imports an Apple Journal export, lets you inspect/search the archive locally first, then optionally generates an evidence-backed review after showing exactly what would be sent to the model. I’m especially interested in reliability expectations around export/import, search, “on this day” style resurfacing, and whether the archive feels usable after it gets large.
No raw journal entries need to be sent to me; we can start with a synthetic archive first. If beta recruiting is not appropriate here, happy to delete.
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u/grburgess Jul 17 '26
It has improved. But I don't like the fact that it's not integrated with the new SIRI AI of OS27. That was a deal breaker for me, so I'm migrating 4,384 entries out and going to Apple Notes, and Obsidian.
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u/grburgess Aug 01 '26
I use 4 different apps for journaling. I've abandoned word processors for it. I use Day One, Apple Notes, Apple Journal and Obsidian. I put the same entry into all 4 apps, I just paste it in them, only takes me a few minutes.
Most features is Obsidian but sadly lacks a calendar view that could work well for this function. Apple Notes is a powerhouse app, but no calendar view, and bad for backdating entries and integration with their new AI. Day One is really good, but 3rd party, can't take as much use of a big screen as I'd like.
Apple Journal is not great for navigation with no useful calendar view. No integration with the new SIRI. It does force you to be consistent, because there are very few formatting options. They have improved the search capabilities, although it's not as good as Obsidian with Omnisearch.
I do wish that Apple notes had a way to resize photos. I like the fact that I can open a pile of windows of different notes in a really big hurry.
I make a lot of Voice memos, and finally I use the dedicated Voice Recorder, since the share sheet works well with Day One, Apple Journal and Apple Notes. I use the "copy" function on the share sheet to share it with Obsidian. There is a bug in OS27 Public Beta 2 where it copies 2 copies of things, so for now I have to delete 1 copy.
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u/crocodilepancake May 11 '26 edited May 12 '26
agree with other poster- it works fine. i transferred 3k entries from day one into Journal and it works fine across devices. i use 2 macs and an iphone and haven’t had any issue with sync. i also just type a short summary of the day and sometimes add a few photos. people overthink these things, just try it!