Apple’s All-New JOURNAL App — Everything You Need To Know!
Apple’s new Journal app for the iPhone helps users log their thoughts and reflections anytime, anywhere. This article will help you get started with using the app and explore everything around it.
Introduction
Apple spoke about its native Journal app coming to iPhones with the release of iOS 17, back in June during WWDC. The release of the app was slated for later this year and with the release of the beta for iOS 17.2, it is closer than ever to public release. The public beta allowed me to test the Journal app and what it had to offer. So whether you are reading this during the beta stages of iOS 17.2 or its release, you should find this article updated with time with all the features the app has to offer.
In this article, I will go over the app’s user interface, the writing entry customizability, writing prompts, notifications, and some other notable features in the app. Finally, we shall conclude with how this app compares to other journaling apps in the app store and what could make it better.
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Journal App UI
When you open the app for the first time, you will be greeted with a splash screen of this sort that will explain all that the app has to offer. But fear not, we are here to dive deeper, so keep reading.
The landing page of the app looks… plain. Apple meant to keep it that way as all their design language is centered around simplicity. The landing page is serene and will not arouse any anxiety in your mind.
That’s until you hit the ‘+’ icon at the bottom to add journal entries. The app will ask permission to access certain privacy settings — access to your Photo library, Apple Music, Podcasts, Calls and Messages, Health Activities (workouts and exercises), and Significant locations. All this is to offer better recommendations for your journaling and you can toggle them on or off from the native settings app on your iPhone:
Settings > Journal > Journaling Suggestions> Suggestion Privacy Settings.
Upon accepting (or not accepting) those privacy settings, you will be met with this new tab prompting you to either start a fresh entry by choosing ‘New Entry’ or go through the recommended or recent suggestions that the app has for you. These will be based on the privacy settings you have turned on before.
Navigating on Apple’s Journal app is pretty simple: a filter at the top-right corner allows you to filter entries based on media captured in those entries and the ‘+’ button at the bottom center allows you to start a new entry. That’s all about the UI of the new Journal app.
Writing Entry
Upon choosing to write a new entry, a new screen comes up with a fresh slate for you to put your words down on. A curious mind of mine led me to tap on the three-dots menu to see what options are present only to find out that it exists for choosing the entry date — today’s date or any custom date.
A huge bummer is that there are absolutely no formatting options available for text-based entry which means the only way to differentiate a title from the body of your entry is by selecting the words, going to Format, and choosing between Bold, Italics, Underline, and Strikethrough. Apart from these, there is no other way to have headings or sub-headings or choose font color or size.
Font customizability part, you can choose to have attachments in your entry in the form of images, videos recorded audio, and your location. One, many, or all at a time. If you have chosen to write a new entry, you can still choose a suggested recommendation by clicking on the pencil option at the bottom left.
Writing Prompts
One thing you look at the most in any journaling app is — writing prompts. Sometimes you just need some prompts to get you into the habit of writing your thoughts and prompts help.
The Journal app has them too and Apple has called them ‘Reflections’. These are simple questions or tasks that offer you to think or do something to reflect better on certain matters in life. Let's see some examples below:
A Filled Journal
By that, I don’t mean you can fill the journal app with your entries (unless you run out of iCloud Storage, YIKES). Instead, we shall see how the app looks after having quite a few journal entries.
This is how the landing page of the Journal app looks when filled with journal entries of all sorts. You can head over to the filter icon on the top-right corner of the app and choose between all the filter options available.
Swiping left on your journal entry will give you options to either edit the entry or delete the entry completely while swiping to the right will allow you to book mark your entry.
These are based on the media and other labels you have used in your journal entries such as Bookmarked, Photos, Recorded Audio, Music & Podcasts, Reflections, Conversations, and Places (I might have missed a few). Choosing any will take you to those desired journal entry types.
PS: You can bookmark your journal entries and they appear on a separate shelf when ‘Bookmarked’ is chosen from the filter options.
The UI looks simple yet amazing with the way the media is attached on top of the journal entry and how it seems to blur out at the bottom as the entries in the app increase.
Notifications
The native Journal app has two different kinds of notifications:
- The first ones are based on suggestions from your the media it has access to. This could include new locations or photo memories generated. The app would detect these new changes and ask you if you want to write a journal entry based on them.
2. The second type includes your journaling scheduling. This is under the user’s control and you can change it by going to the native Settings app on your iPhone and then Settings > Journal > Journaling Schedule. Here you can choose what days and at what time you want to schedule so the app can send you a reminder at that time.
Notable Settings to look out for
Apple’s Journal is so simple that you will have to head over to the native Settings app to see some other notable settings for the app.
Here, the first distinct thing you will notice is the new ‘Journaling Suggestions’ field. Choose that and then choose ‘Suggestions Privacy Settings’. Here you can see all device data the apps have access to for generating new suggestions. Turn them on or off as per your will. If you feel they are getting repetitive or boring, you Clear History too.
Under ‘Nearby People’, you have some exciting new features. The first one, ‘Prefer Suggestions with Others’ tends to suggest more journal entry recommendations centered around group settings like family and friends, from photos in your photo library. By turning this off, you will tend to receive fewer suggestions for writing about others. The next one is ‘Discoverable with Others’ which essentially communicates with other iPhones in the network (probably those on iOS 17.2 and later) and helps them prioritize suggestions in their journal about you. This could be something nice when you are on a family/friends vacation.
Coming out of Journaling Suggestions, there are a bunch of other settings for this app such as :
- Skip Journaling Suggestions: With this, you can skip the recommendation tab that comes up every time you hit the new entry ‘+’ icon in the Journal app and go directly to writing your entry.
- Lock Journal: Allows you to lock the journal app using your device passcode or biometric (FaceID or TouchID).
- Journaling Schedule: As discussed above, this helps you set the time and day for when you want to journal and send you a notification for the same.
- Save to Photos: This will save all the photos and videos taken in the Journal app to your Photo library.
PS: Journal app notifications are different from Journal Suggestions notifications and appear only within Settings > Journal > Journal Suggestions > Journal Suggestions Settings
Features Apple missed out on during the release
There is a list of them.
While I appreciate Apple’s idea of simplicity throughout the app, there are some things that Apple should have released along with the launch of the app. These include:
- Widgets and Siri Shortcuts: Just like writing prompts, widgets on the home screen or lock screen and Siri shortcuts could have helped users get into the habit of writing more in the journal app in a much quicker way.
- In-App Search and Spotlight Indexing: As someone who likes to search some text within their journal entries, this would have made me much happier. Also, the ability to use Spotlight directly to search for a journal entry would be pretty cool as some journaling apps already do.
- Exporting and Importing Entries: This is going to be a huge bummer for those already using a journal app for a long time and are thinking of switching to Apple’s native option. Without importing and exporting capabilities, this app just remains on-device and synced to iCloud.
- iPad & Mac App support: Typing on iPhone’s keyboard is way slower than typing on laptop/desktop keyboards. Since the Journal app already syncs to iCloud I thought this was a no-brainer for Apple.
- Recorded Audio Transcription: I know so many users who would love to have audio journal entries and not having a transcript for them once again going to be a huge blow.
What hurt me the most, personally, is not having iPad and Mac support for this new Journal app. What hurts even more is that it might take Apple until next fall to release new feature updates for the same.
Conclusion
The Journal app provides you with a good starting point for journaling if you have never done it before and want to give it a try, all at no cost at all. Even with some major features missing, it is bound to do its job: log your thoughts in it.
I wouldn’t make the mistake of comparing this app with any of the other journaling apps on the App Store because then this app would fall flat completely. Even the free versions of some other journaling apps provide better customizability and visual interface. One journaling app worth trying out is Day One. I will be writing another article soon highlighting all the differences between this native app and some major journaling apps on the App Store. So, stay tuned.
If you have updated to iOS 17.2 and tried out the new Journal app, do let me know what your experience has been and what features you liked or disliked about them. This will help me make my future posts more accurate and cater to my reader’s thoughts.
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