Does the new Journal app track visited places in the background à la DayOne/Arc/etc? I like to keep a private log of places I’ve been to. Something locked down and system-level would definitely make that a more secure undertaking.
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iOS 17.2 Beta Introduces Journal App
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cflem
macrumors 6502
Can confirm it is not on iPadOS or MacOS…
racep
macrumors newbie
I'm amazed that this is it for this app.
There doesn't seem to be much complexity or features. I'm curious as to why it took so long for this to come out with such little functionality. And also is not showing up on my iPad.
No Tag capability, No Filters, No Check-in Capability, No Searching Capability
There doesn't seem to be much complexity or features. I'm curious as to why it took so long for this to come out with such little functionality. And also is not showing up on my iPad.
No Tag capability, No Filters, No Check-in Capability, No Searching Capability
ProfessionalFan
macrumors 603
I am going to just use this app to keep track of who pissed me off on social media that day
ProfessionalFan
macrumors 603
It would be interesting if Apple developed an iCloud App as well as a MacOs App as well. Having it all in the Cloud is a must these days.
jz0309
macrumors P6
hope you have the 1TB iPhone 😉
I'm afraid journaling on the native Apple app won't mean no subscription. DayOne now AppleOne ...
I’m sure there is or will be an export function. Can someone verify? I’m sure Apple knows it’s possible they may someday sunset the app, so I don’t think they would not give users that option. But I suppose they could not add the export function until they plan to discontinue the app, in which case then yeah it will glue those users to iPhones. But I’m inclined to think there will be an export function sooner rather than at the end, if not now then maybe when there is a Mac version.
I don’t know if it’s certain though that one will be required to update the phone every few years (3 years?) to use the journal app as opposed to updating at the end of the life of the phone due to other reasons (6+ years). Even if the phone doesn’t support the newest iOS, the journal app should continue working. There may be some feature fragmentation between your other Apple devices if those are updated though. But I don’t know if that’s too different from third party apps. Maybe some third party apps don’t even support older versions on older OSes.
jz0309
macrumors P6
I've been waiting for that feature on the mail app for years ...
I tried it. The cooler features are not there (yet?), such as pulling in data from Workouts, Music, Podcasts, etc. You can enter text, pictures, voice and a location. That's it. Hopefully that's still on-track.
Definitely won’t bother with it then. I enjoy Day One. I never bought the subscription, I was grandfathered in because I paid for the premium version of the app upfront back before they went with the subscription model. Another thing I like about Day One is that they let you export your entire journal in JSON or PDF format, so I know I’ll always be able to back it up. Don’t really like the idea of having it tied to my iPhone at all.
Juuro
macrumors 6502
Also it didn't come out yet. It is the first beta of this app. It will be weeks until iOS and the Journal app will be released. So let's talk again then.
Sean Patrick
macrumors newbie
Probably in the future, but as of right now Apple hasn't said anything about it being on macOS
zach-coleman
macrumors 65816
I wonder if the difficulty of making it cross platform is that the suggestions are very locked down, and without the suggestions it wouldn’t be a very good app. Like your iPad wouldn’t know what places you visited or music you listened to on your phone unless all of this was transmitted, which sounds like a very delicate thing to deal with. Maybe it will come next year.
They’ve been working on it for over 6 months at this point. There probably won’t be much more functionality added before iOS 18.
I won't be using it for journaling but more for "auto curation" of life. More like a life-logger than a journaling app. I can't type for crap on a mobile phone. In fact, I don't. I use iMessage / Google Voice/ Mail on Mac and iPhone is purely research and consumption. At least add the writing portion to an iPadOS app which appears to also not be coming.
Why? Serious question. One would assume that like Photos, Journal data can be stored in the Cloud.
Also, access on Mac via Handoff or whatever is of paramount importance.
Jdizzle188
macrumors regular
Regarding lifelogger, I like that term!
I can envision using this during travel. We recently came back from Europe and it would be lovely to have a record of where we went, for how long, etc. That would be really awesome. I can see myself using it for that kind of purpose. It's also one reason that I love using my iPhone camera during travel instead of a regular camera. iPhone camera records the geolocation which to me is important during travel because in time, I'm going to forget where exactly something is and even what city it may have been taken in. I know, some standalone cameras include GPS but I think that's few and far between.
This raises something I think people should consider regardless of what they choose. I know it’s inconceivable to ever think we wouldn’t have an iOS device with the journaling app on it. But that’s your data. You have a right to export it regardless of journaling app, and a responsibility to if you care about it being readable in the future. And what you import it into after that is your own business.
I haven’t checked day one specifically but the journaling app I used for a while supported pdf export and also just a zip of named-by-date text files I believe. That’s all you need. Every journal app should have an export to open format feature. If the export requires the original app it’s not much of an export.
Still not sure what that means for Apple actually implementing an import but it’s not impossible legally or technically. Or even unreasonable.
AppleInLVX
macrumors 65816
Well, Day One already exports JSON, does it not? Couldn't that be used by this to import content?
I've been using Day One for over a decade now, and I don't really see myself leaving unless this is truly stellar. The thing I take comfort in is if Day One ever calls it a day, I'll have somewhere else to go, because currently, there's nothing that works as well for me. But coming into the Apple fold would work in a pinch.
AppleInLVX
macrumors 65816
Apple Knowledge Navigator
macrumors 601
That’s likely intentional; I honestly don’t think Apple is trying to compete with the likes of Day One.
Those apps are designed to be very flexible in terms of the user uses them. They can be used as a personal diary, travel diary, to take notes from meetings/work, etc. It’s more of a reference-orientated approach.
Apple’s Journal app, as per the keynote, plays more into mindfulness and is about promoting the simple act of writing about a day (which itself is proven to be therapeutic), rather than a tool for different aspects of a persons life. This is why it has fewer distractions and uses machine learning to suggest ideas for writing themes.
And yes there are no iPad or Mac apps yet… Do you naysayers really believe Apple would make this iPhone-only? That makes absolutely no sense.