Apple’s Journal App vs Day One vs Stoic: Comparing Journaling Apps
Journaling apps on the App Store are wild. In this article, we aim to compare Apple’s latest native Journal App to two of the best journaling apps on the App Store and help you make the right decision when choosing a journal app that fits your lifestyle.
Introduction
In this article, I will be reviewing three journal apps all at once and comparing their existing common as well as notable features. These three apps are Apple’s Native Journaling App (for iPhone), the Day One app, and the Stoic app.
PS: If you want an introductory tour to Apple’s Journaling App, consider reading this story:
We will be covering everything from the UI/UX of the app to some of the common features across all of them and then proceed to discuss some notable features. I can completely understand if you don’t wish to read the entire article which is why I have also added a Comparison Chart towards the end which you can skip to right away to get the gist of this entire article.
In this review, we will cover:
- App UI
- Writing Prompts
- Writing Entry
- Notifications, Widgets & Shortcuts
- Other Notable Features
- Comparison Chart
6.1. Which Journaling App is meant for you?
6.2. What happens if you wish to use Day One or Stoic for free?
7. Conclusion
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App UI
Landing Page
The first screen that you will notice on opening the three apps is something like this:
Apple’s Journal App looks very plain and simple with filtering options based on media you capture in your entries like photos, recorded audio, places, conversations, etc. Day One opens up on its timeline page and shows different stats that you can browse through on the top. Stoic gives you writing prompts for morning and evening reflections on the landing page.
Navigating the App
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 a ‘+’ button at the bottom center allows you to start a new entry. Clicking on the ‘+’ brings up a hovering tab that gives you recommendations for journaling. You can either choose from these or simply tap ‘New entry’ to start with a blank page.
On Day One, you have more options for seeing your entries and the media in them. The bottom menu bar on Day One allows you to browse through the Timeline (landing page), Media, + (for new entry), Map, and Calendar. Clicking on the ‘+’ allows you to start a new journal entry. By swiping to the right on any page you shall see another vertical menu bar that shows your streaks, entry days, daily prompts, journals, trash, and settings.
On Stoic, you similarly have more options and you can browse through Home, Explore, + (for new entry), Journey, and Trends on the bottom menu bar. Stoic is a bit different from other journaling apps in a way that I won’t call it a proactive journaling app but rather a reactive journaling app. In layman’s terms: it involves a lot of in-built prompts/questions that you have to answer or choose while logging your mood or writing your journal entry.
The Home tab offers writing prompts, favorite entries, affirmations, and some quotes. This Home page can be personalized based on what you want to see on it. The Explore tab is an exciting one. It has four featured sections: Journal, Breathe, Meditate, and Quotes & Affirmations. The Journey tab shows you all your journal entries together and sorting options for Day, Week, Month, and Year at the top along with filters for other categories to the top-left. The Trend tab shows you general insights and emotions based on how you log them throughout the day in the app.
Appearance
Nothing can be changed about the native Journal app’s appearance. Light and Dark Mode on the app can be triggered only by toggling the native system settings on the device. Unless Apple decides to tweak it in future iOS updates, it is bound to remain the same for all.
Day One offers to change the theme (light, dark, scheduled) within its app. Apart from this, you could also choose from a range of fonts and font sizes between 5 and 99. For each Journal, you get to choose from 18 colors which become the accent color while you are using that journal.
Stoic, on the other hand, is mostly a monochromatic app. If you choose light mode, you have black text and if you choose dark mode, you have white text in the app. The Dark mode does technically offer three color options: Black, Graphite, and Blue while the Font options allow you to choose from two: Visuelt Pro and Avenir.
You can also choose the Dyslexic Font under the accessibility settings of the app. Choosing High Contrast under accessibility, I noticed, also gives you better readability on the app.
Writing Prompts
Writing Prompts on Apple’s Journal app appear in the form of Reflections. These reflections could either ask you questions or ask you to do something like click a picture or share a picture. Here are some examples of the reflections you might see:
On Day One, you swipe to the right to reveal a vertical menu bar that allows you to see the daily prompt. You can tap on it to answer that daily prompt or click on the three dots to see more relevant prompts to choose from and write on. Apart from this, Day One also offers Templates which you can either make yourself or choose from.
In Stoic, based on the time of the day, you will be asked to log your daily mood at that moment (sleep logging happens in the morning only). It will then ask you to reflect on your morning/evening and write about it.
Daily Journal prompts appear on the Home page, asking you to reflect on some questions. You can also head to the Explore tab on the app and choose from the plethora of journaling options there. Breathe and Meditate sections also allow you to meditate based on certain prompts. The quotes and affirmation section allows you to scroll through some amazing thoughts just like Insta reels (except they are less toxic).
Writing Entry
Most of Apple’s Journal app is centered around the idea of simplicity. It does a great job at recommending what to write by trying to understand your usage of Apple Music, Podcasts, Fitness, and Health Apps, Photos and videos you have taken, people you have contacted, and Locations you have been to among many others.
However, when you finally land on the entry page, it all falls flat. There is very little to no customizability available while writing your entry. The title of your entry can only be made bold after you select the text and choose ‘Format’. Format only allows for Bold, Italics, Underline, and Strikethorugh. There is no way to choose heading options or change font style or font size. You can add photos, videos, and voice notes of any size (as per my testing) and those will appear on the top of the entry.
Day One offers way more customizability when it comes to writing your journal entries. As soon as you start typing, the text option appears, allowing you to customize to your heart — options for title, subtitle, four different heading options, body, list options, quote, line divider, and indentation options.
You can choose photos & videos to add (Max: 5 mins video) and also PDFs. You can also draw in your journal entry using the native markup tools on iPhone. Attachments you choose will appear wherever your cursor is and can be dragged and dropped elsewhere too.
Stoic’s writing entry page is very plain. It gives you a heading option to write your entry’s title and then start with the body below. Attachments on Stoic only include photos and voice recordings. There is also an option to draw in your journal entry.
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Notifications, Widgets & Shortcuts
The native Journal app has two different kinds of notifications:
- The first ones are based on suggestions from 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.
Day One has a similar reminder setting on its app. For this, click on the settings wheel icon on the top-right corner and go to ‘Reminders’. There under notifications, you can set a daily reminder for when you want a notification reminder for journaling. There is also an option to create a custom notification to remind you to journal. While customizing, you can choose repeat frequency, time, the journal you want to write in, tags, templates, etc. At the end, you can choose the optional message that you want the notification to have.
Stoic has some notifications too however, they are not as customizable as those of Day One. You can choose to toggle them on or off depending on whether you wish to receive them at the moment of the day or else turn all notifications off completely.
The native Journal app has zero widgets as of its launch date. So nothing to talk about here.
Day One offers 11 Widget Options on your home screen and one lock screen widget option.
Stoic offers 23 widget options for your home screen and five lock screen widget options.
Suprisingly, Apple’s Journal app has no native shortcuts in the Shortcuts library unless you make one yourself for simply opening the app.
Day One offers four shortcuts in the shortcuts library. I tried all the four and these shortcuts directly take you into the app and start a new entry as per how the shortcut is set up.
Stoic offers a single shortcut and this one does not take you directly into the app. Instead, it asks you to type the title and the content of your journal entry right from your homescreen or lockscreen.
PS: This could change in the future as app developers update their apps with newer widgets, notification settings and Siri shortcuts. There is a chance Apple could make changes to the Journal app in future iOS 17 updates however, if you ask me, the chances for those are higher only with the next feature update i.e. iOS 18 (or maybe even later). Since Day One and Stoic receive more frequent updates than the native Journal app, there are chances that the number of widgets and their style might increase over time as the app is updated.
Other Notable Features
Since Apple’s Journal app is a new native app, I have already written about it in a previous article. There is the bookmark feature that allows you save certain journal entries which appear in the bookmarked shelf when you filter your journal entries.
Apart from this, there are no new notable features I could notice in this app as of its launch with iOS 17.2. The whole design of the app is centered around simplicity and that speaks for itself.
With Day One, there are some features worth glancing over again if you missed them the first time. You can have separate journals to write about different things like say a Workout/Training Journal, a Food Journal, or a Travel Journal — the possibilities are endless.
There is also a feature wherein you can also print your journal in a hardcover format. This will cost you extra and starts at $19.99. Apart from that you can also print it yourself by exporting it in PDF format or JSON, Plaintext, or CSV format.
Your journal entries can also be indexed by Spotlight and made more easy to search for using Day One. For this, on Day One, go to Settings > Advanced > Spotlight Search Entries and toggle it on.
You can even choose the App Icon you wish for the app to have on your device.
The last notable feature to look out for is the integration Day One offers with other apps and APIs. There is an Instagram Importer tool that auto-imports all existing Instagram content into a new journal (optional to have the photo, video, description, and hashtags).
There is also an Email to Journal feature wherein an email address is generated specifically for your journal allowing you to send your journal entry as an email, for the times you are too busy to open the app, and it will all be stored in your aforementioned journal.
There is also integration with Apple Health and IFTTT Applets that you can jump into to make journaling more connected across all the services you use.
On Stoic, you can similarly export your data in JSON or Plaintext/Markdown format. You could also share your single journal entry as an image or simply save it in your photo library.
Stoic’s most notable feature is the Stoic Shield which allows you to integrate the app with Screen Time to allow access to screen time data. You can then choose what apps you want to stay away from in the morning and evening and accordingly add them to those specific block lists. When you add those apps to the block list, for that specific period, they will appear unhighlighted on your device and when you open them, you will be greeted with a screen asking you to reflect on whether you want to open them or not.
You can open the app anyway or reflect once again on your decision. Here, Stoic has done the job of an app-blocker by itself.
As we discussed before, Stoic also has dedicated meditation and breathing prompts on it’s that you can explore in the Explore tab. And once again, Stoic seems to have done the job of a meditation app like Headspace all by itself.
Stoic allows for integration with Apple Health for better logging of health metrics like mindful minutes (Meditation) and analyzing trends.
Comparison Chart
Which Journaling App is meant for you?
This is a good question. The above comparison chart can be a good pointer for that decision-making process.
If you wish to not spend a penny, then you will have to go with the native Journal app you get with the iOS 17.2 release. It does the simple job of recording your journal entries in text, image, video, and audio format. There are no text formatting or image formatting options available at the time of the release. There is also no iPad or Mac app though this is a native Apple app.
If you are willing to spend some money, you can choose between Day One and Stoic. Both have their merits and demerits. Stoic is aimed mostly at users who wish to abstain from digital distractions. The monochromatic theme here helps Stoic achieve that along with a simple interface for those who just wish to write and a bit more complex options and templates for those willing to dive deeper. Also, the reflective way that the Stoic app approaches tends to draw you more inward and be more… stoic!? This does sound very cool but might not be for all. For those who don’t wish to just answer prompts can also write new fresh entries on their own however it does not have as many formatting options as Day One.
On the other hand, Day One is colorful and meant to be integrated with other services such that it becomes your Dear Diary for everything analog and digital. Both apps offer many widgets to choose from that remind you to log your thoughts. Both apps also support iCloud Sync across their iPad and Mac apps.
What happens if you wish to use Day One or Stoic for free?
A great question again. It’s not necessary to pay for these two apps if you don’t want to. When used for free, a lot of extra features are locked behind the paywall in these apps, which is why I didn’t want to mention them during this comparison.
Day One limits you from creating more than one journal. Remember: Journal and Journal entries are different. Even when it’s free, you can create unlimited journal entries in your single journal. You will also be limited to adding only one photo/video in your journal entry. Customizability options for the font and font sizes are also locked while using it for free. iCloud Sync across devices is also not supported in the free version.
Stoic is similarly limited in its free version. It does not allow iCloud Sync or any of the changes in its appearance in its free version. You can choose a few templates you want to have for your journaling but most of the others will remain locked then.
Conclusion
So without being diplomatic for a moment, if I had to choose between the three apps — I would go for Day One. It’s a winner and offers the best of all three apps. It’s insanely customizable and you won’t have much to complain about if you really can spend that amount of money annually for a journal app.
The second place, with no doubt, would be that of the Stoic app. It’s priced a bit higher than Day One but if it does sound like your spirit journaling personality, you should have no problems with this one. The monochromatic theme is lovely and answering and reflecting on the prompts/questions made me write more in this app than even on Day One. Even if you don’t plan on paying for this app, you should check out all the templates it has to offer — they are that great!
Finally, Apple’s native Journal app takes the last place. It’s a simple app that is not aiming for high results. If you are a beginner journal keeper who does not want to spend anything on journaling apps, this should do just fine if you are okay with all the privacy settings (giving permissions to access music, photos, podcasts, health apps, etc).
And that’s my take on all the three Journaling apps now availabe for the iPhone. Is there anything I missed out in this review? Anything you would like to know more about? Let me know about that in the comments below so I can refine my future stories for my audience even better.
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