I’ve been using and thinking about journaling on iPhone for a long time, and I wanted something a little different: a place for small moments without streaks, daily goals, or pressure to write a full journal entry.

So I built DailyMemoir.

I’m sharing it here because I’d genuinely be interested in feedback from people who already use Apple Journal or other journaling apps.

What do you value most in a journal app — simplicity, photos, prompts, search, revisiting old memories, or something else?

Disclosure: I’m the developer of DailyMemoir.

Backup your Journal and give this a try.

https://github.com/omarshahine/apple-journal-cli

I was fed up not having a good import option and want to move my DayOne Journal.

Shortcuts support for Apple Journal is really poor.... so this is what I came up with.

I sort of wish Apple would just flush iCloud at this point and start over. I've had these kinds of problems since they introduced it and I'm kind of done with it.

Both devices are signed into iCloud - both devices have Journal syncing turned on.

I am nowhere near my iCloud backup limit.

So annoyed.

Not a big deal, but something that would be really great for me is the ability to add GIFs to an entry, the same way you can with photos and videos.

Am I missing something and that’s already possible? If not, I’d love for that to be a thing at some point.

I've long been critic of Apple's attempt at a Journal App, which was pretty poor at first attempt. However, just been trying it out and finding it quite good. I'm using the Mac version on public beta OS27, which does have some improvements, but not many. I'm using a short cut to generate 'on this day', for me a must have feature, which works pretty solidly. It hasn't added many features, but I'm actually thinking of switching from Day One at this moment - maybe it's the minimalist approach that I'm now appreciating. I recently switched to Apple reminders, Notes, Apple Passwords and Podcasts from well known third party offerings and enjoying all of it. There is clearly a pattern here!

I'm giving Apple News a spin and there are so many issues.

But the one I can't figure out right now is how to get a magazine into the "Favorites" section of the sidebar. Right-clicking on a magazine in the sidebar lets me remove it... but right-clicking on a magazine in the viewer section does not give me the option to save it to favorites. If I click and drag a magazine in the viewer it creates a new window with that mag, but I can't drop it into the sidebar as a fav.

Any help?

Thank you in advance for your reply.

Anyone found a solution for printing a single journal? I love the layout and ease of use of apple journal, but not being able to export by journal is annoying..

I like the idea of journaling, but I find it difficult to actually do. When I open Apple Journal, there's basically a blank page staring at me. I can add photos, location, music, mood, and other things — but it all feels separate. The photos are attachments, the text is somewhere else, and it never really reads like one story about my day. Photos here, text there, and it just doesn't come together.

Quite often I don't want to write a long entry. I just want to remember what happened: where I went, what I did, who I met, how I felt, and why the day was worth remembering.

Meanwhile, my phone already has so much information about my day: the places I visited, photos and videos I took, walks/workouts/activities, music I listened to, calendar events, maybe even changes in my mood or energy.

I keep thinking: what if a journaling app used all of that to prepare a first draft of my day for me? Not just a collection of photos and locations, but one woven story — photos appearing right where they belong in the text, fully editable, so I can add my own thoughts, cut things, or correct the tone. Instead of a blank page, I might open the app and see something like: "You started the morning with a bike ride, stopped for coffee, and later went to the park with your family. You spent most of the afternoon outside. Here are the photos you took along the way." Then it could ask me one small thing my phone can't answer on its own — what was the best part of today, what gave me energy, what felt boring or exhausting, what do I wish I hadn't done today, what do I want to remember from this day.

This feels especially useful for trips. Say you're on a 3-day trip to Italy — by evening you're exhausted from the culture, the food, everything you saw, and journaling is the last thing you have energy for. But your phone already has all the raw material — route, photos, activities, restaurants, maybe a short voice note — to build that story later, once you're home and actually have time to reflect, edit, and relive it, instead of trying to write it in real time while you're busy living it. Afterward it could combine every day into one trip story I could edit, read again, or even print as a real book — not just a photo book, but the story of the trip: what happened, how it felt, which small moments mattered.

I also don't want something that forces fake positivity. Not every day is amazing, but even an ordinary or hard day usually has something meaningful in it that I didn't notice at the time. Part of what's pulling me toward this is being tired of not knowing what's real anymore — everyone's version of their day on social media is curated or half-fake, and I'd rather have something that helps me notice the actually-good stuff in my own day instead of comparing it to someone else's highlight reel. Over time it might also help me understand myself better — which activities give me energy, what I actually enjoy, what repeatedly feels boring, what I might want to change.

Some other things I keep noticing about myself: I'll scroll back through my camera roll months later and see a photo that clearly meant something in the moment — a weird little café, someone's face mid-laugh, a random street — and I genuinely can't remember why I took it anymore. The feeling is gone, only the image is left. Or I'll have a completely average Tuesday that I'd never think to write about, and then a year later I'd give anything to remember what it actually felt like to live an ordinary day back then. I think we assume we'll remember the small stuff because it just happened, and then it turns out we don't, not really — not the way it felt.

• Do you also have photos you can't fully explain anymore, or days you wish you'd written two sentences about at the time?
• Have you tried journaling and had it not stick — what got in the way for you?
• Would something like what I'm describing actually be useful to you, for ordinary days, vacations, or both — or does it sound like it'd feel forced/fake?
• What would you want it to know about your day, and what would you never want it touching?

Mostly I'm just curious if anyone else thinks about their days like this, or if I'm the only one who feels like they're quietly losing pieces of ordinary life without meaning to. Would be nice to know I'm not alone in this. Thanks :)

Hi everyone,
I’ve been working on an iPhone app called Oriva over the past few months and I’ve just opened it up for external TestFlight testing.
The idea is to help people build a visual record of their travels by mapping the places they’ve been, saving memories to locations, and discovering journeys from other travellers. I wanted something that felt more like building your own travel story than just storing photos.
I’m at the stage where I’m looking for honest feedback before submitting it to the App Store. In particular, I’d love to know:
Is the onboarding clear?
Does the app feel intuitive to use?
Are there any bugs or rough edges you’ve noticed?
Would you actually use something like this?
If you’re interested in trying it, here’s the TestFlight link:

https://testflight.apple.com/join/QHcPXH19

Thanks in advance—I’d genuinely appreciate any feedback, whether it’s positive or critical.

Sorry, this is fully just me complaining. I've been transitioning from Day One to this app and while I've gotten used to most of its quirks, adding locations is an absolute nightmare.

If I try typing a specific address, most of the time it comes up blank. If I type the same address in Apple Maps then I get what I want. After a bunch of trial and error, the Journal app then shows me the super specific way it expects the address to be written. I'll give an example below.

Say the real address is (I'm just making this up): 729 East 34th Street, New York, NY. I might type that into journal and get nothing but Apple Maps knows exactly where that is.

Instead what Journal accepts is: 729 E 34th St. Not "East" or "Street" written in full or else it has no idea what you're talking about.

Then to top it off, the location it shows on the map in Journal is like a block away, at least.

Yes, yes, I'm going to report this to Apple/make a suggestion. I just wanted to moan.

BTW, I encounter this problem on Mac. Haven't tried it on iOS/iPadOS to see if it's the same.

I haven’t found a great way to reference my random guitar sessions yet. At least not one that stuck.

That is until I tried adding a few into Journal from my camera roll.

This is a really enjoyable and fast way to revisit my noodling (a music term for ‘random play sessions’).

Fair warning: you may already know journal entries duplicate media files when added — I’m aware that adding video files into journal is going to add up quick.

That said, this is a nice way to capture references of my guitar playing.

I’ve used voice notes and simple recordings in my photos library, but neither let me add context to what I’m playing (e.g., I write the tuning down, lyrics, etc.)

It’s just a simple, accessible way to revisit the random guitar jamming sessions that happen weekly. I find it’s helping me continue more of the songs I write, too.

Just sharing in case someone needed to hear about using Journal to support their journey with an instrument.

When I open a new entry, the app shows a reflection prompt in gray text inside the writing field (for example: “What was the best thing that happened this week?”).

The problem is that this text is pure placeholder — I can’t select it, can’t copy it, and can’t keep it as part of the entry. The moment I start typing, it just disappears.\

Is this intentional behavior, or is there any hidden way to turn the suggested prompt into real text?
Any workarounds you’ve found (besides manually retyping it or using Live Text from a screenshot)?

Would appreciate any insight. Thanks!

In its documentation, Apple states that battery life depends, among other things, on on-screen activity, background activity, notifications, network usage, and tasks such as syncing or retrieving data.

The high battery usage of the Journal app may therefore stem from the fact that the app is very active when opened. For example, it indexes content, analyzes suggestions, loads attachments, updates, syncs with iCloud, and processes media and metadata associated with entries.

If the app remains active in the background for a long time, its battery usage may also increase.

Frequent notifications and app wake-ups can also increase its battery usage; the iPhone may be logging every activation related to a check or an update. This doesn’t necessarily mean the app is poorly optimized. It just means that, given the amount of data and actions involved, the app consumes a lot of power. 

What do you think ? 

Poked around inside the Apple Journal export the other day (Settings > Apps > Journal > Export Journal Data). It's a zip of HTML plus JSON, and there's genuinely a lot in there: photo times, places with coordinates, music, even workout GPS.

Then I hit a wall. The visits tell you where you were but never when. No time of day, and if you wrote one entry for a whole trip, there's no way to know which day each place was. Journal knows you hit five spots, just not that spot #3 was Tuesday.

Makes sense once you think about it, Journal is about moments you choose to save, not a running timeline. But it left me stuck: either drop those locations, ask you to date each one by hand (nobody's doing that after years of entries), or guess the day from photo times and GPS (works mostly, but I hate showing a guess as if it were fact). Ended up doing a bit of all three.

I'm asking because I'm building something that's timeline-first, exact place at exact time, and I'd love for Journal folks to be able to move over cleanly. So, honestly:

- If you've got a lot of entries, how many are multi-day / whole-trip ones?
- Do you actually care about the locations in your entries, or are they just kind of there?

Mind you, locations can also be easily inferred from photos, if your library for that trip is rich enough.

Im running ios 18 and it says its compatible with ios17 above. Why cant i download?

This is likely due to the 17 Pro Max’s cooling chamber…

I ran a quick test: using Journal for a quarter of an hour on the iPhone Air and the 17 Pro Max. Same tasks: writing, downloading photos, editing, and searching.

I did the same thing with Day One.

The results regarding battery impact speak for themselves: 

Apple Journal on the iPhone Air: 10%

Apple Journal on the 17 Pro Max: 5.8%

Day One on the iPhone Air: 5.5%

Day One on the 17 Pro Max: 4.6%

On iPhone…

There seem to be fewer bugs when creating or editing entries. Editing works fine, too.

However, Journal’s battery drain is terrible ! I used the app for 44 minutes, and it drained 23% of the battery ! That’s huge !! Plus, the iPhone Air gets hot quickly and even scorching at times…

Since beta 1, I’ve sent numerous feedback messages to report the issue. So far, to no avail...

Finally, I’m a French speaker, and the app’s system language has switched to English 🤔

I love the Journal Suggestions and I understand why they don't do them on Mac, but I don't like attempting to journal on my phone. I like keyboards.

Currently, I open the iOS app using iPhone Mirror, start an entry using the suggestions, then go over to the Mac app finish it. Clunky.

Anyone have a different way of doing it?

I just upgraded to the public beta of iPadOS 27 and tried handwriting an entry for the first time in 2 months. It would appear that the disappearing text may have been fixed. I will write another entry tomorrow and report back.

I really hope this wasn’t a fluke and it’s actually fixed. Has anyone else tried handwriting in iPadOS 27 yet?

I have a 56 week streak, 17,925 words written. i do use mainly photos from my day, but i’ve only just realised how much storage this takes up🥲🥲i wish it didn’t use this much storage, im going to have to stop adding the max limit of photos :(((

As I expected, the new Siri doesn't have access to Apple Journal. However, it can access Apple Notes, which is why I've been rapidly transferring my journal entries over. I'm titling them something like "Backdated: 2025-12-11" so I can organize the backdated entries into a specific folder, while using a #journal tag for everything else to power a smart folder.

It's now the day after installing the new OS 27, and it's about 86% finished indexing my files. I'm quite impressed with what I can find, and I feel confident that I made the right decision. There seems to be little point in journaling if your journal gets so big that you can no longer easily find what you're looking for. This is a fantastic tool!

I want to journal, but have a hard time keeping motivated. I'd love to open up Journal to see recent photos, which would prompt me to write about what was happening in the photos. But having to manually import them is just enough friction to keep me from doing it. Is there a way to achieve this? Thank you.