Apple Journal Early Impressions

I am a wannabe when it comes to journaling. I always admired how people could document their lives in a personal way and continue to do it over a long period of time. Writing by hand has never been my thing as my penmanship is atrocious and getting worse with age. I have tried to utilize a variety of digital tools to document my life but nothing ever clicked. I continue to be on the lookout for the Goldilocks solution. 

Enter Apple Journal. 

Apple released their Journal app for the iPhone as part of the iOS 17.2 update and I was eager to give it a try. It doesn’t have the bells and whistles of existing tools like the popular Day One journaling app but I wasn’t looking for a lot of features. I wanted something simple that encouraged me to stay engaged. Apple Journal looked simple enough and the promise of a journal suggestions framework to help surface ideas sounded promising. I began using Apple Journal yesterday and while it is too soon to get a good impression of how it will integrate into my life over time, I have an idea of its strengths and its glaring weaknesses. 

Writing in Journal is as easy as it could be. You open the app, press the big plus button at the bottom and create a new entry. Entries can include text, images from your photo library, location data, voice memos, recently played Music from Apple Music, and more. Creating a new journal entry about a moment in your life is as easy as posting to your favorite social network but in this app nobody sees it but you. 

Apple is powering Journal with a new iOS feature called journaling suggestions. Suggestions uses on-device machine learning to source content from your iPhone and help you better document your life. I have been given suggestions for expressing my thoughts on music I recently listened to, locations I visited throughout the day, and specific photo memories based on time or location. I have seen these suggestions grow and change since I began using Journal so I am curious to see what else may appear over time. 

As to the quality of the suggestions, they are good so far but I haven’t been blown away by what surfaced. Some photo memories reach far into the past, which I thought was odd, and then realized it was merely sourcing existing memories from the Photos app. Location suggestions have been more useful. I have suggestions for locations I have been to that aren’t home or work. I also received suggestions of songs I recently listened to. I find the location suggestions of interest because I can live in the moment and document that moment with the location attached later. Music suggestions are fun and I could see myself writing a comment about a new song I found. 

Apple, unsurprisingly, has put privacy front and center with Journal. Nobody can read your journal, not even Apple, and iCloud backups are stored with end-to-end encryption. Journal can be configured to require your device PIN or biometrics to unlock so if you hand your iPhone to someone while unlocked you still have an extra layer of protection for your most personal data. 

All of this sounds good but there are some surprising and not so surprising features missing. Anyone thinking about using Journal should be happy living in the walled garden of Apple because I do not see any way of exporting your data. Maybe that will change someday but keep in mind that what goes in your journal stays in your journal. 

Journal is limited to iOS meaning there’s no iPadOS or macOS support here. I have been known to write lengthy messages and documents using my iPhone. I don’t mind tapping away with my thumbs on the glass. My eyes, however, prefer using a larger screen. I would love to use my iPad Pro to write longer entries and those with nice handwriting might prefer to literally write in their journal with Apple Pencil. It is not unusual for Apple to roll out new apps on iPhone and bring them to their other platforms later so here’s hoping Journal finds its way to other Apple devices in a future version. 

The most glaring feature missing from Journal is search. It’s not there and I can not understand why. I only have a handful of entries in my journal but I don’t see myself endlessly scrolling to find something once the journal grows. There is a filter option that will show you only entries with location information, music, photos, etc. It helps but is not replacement for search. Worse, it doesn’t catch everything. I can filter for music and it will pull up music entries I sourced from the suggestions, however, I shared a playlist from Apple Music to Journal and that entry does not show up when I filter for music. Why? Because I shared a link to a playlist. It doesn’t have the same context as a music entry and isn’t recognized by the filter. Forget about tagging because that isn’t here either. A busy journal is going to become hard to look back on without search. I am sure Apple will pop up some kind of “today in history” the longer Journal is used but sometimes I like to go back and find something specific. It’s going to be challenging to do without search.

Apple created a simple journal app to add an important wellness feature to its Health offerings. Maybe too simple. There are more robust journaling apps out there and I recommend anyone serious about journaling use one of those instead. Apple isn’t Sherlocking any of them with Journal, at least not yet. The journal suggestions framework is the secret sauce of Journal but you know what the best part is? That is not exclusive to Journal. Other journaling apps can tap into journal suggestions and they can already integrate into Apple’s Health app. You don’t have to give up anything to use a different app. 

As for me, I’m going to stick with Journal for a while and see how it fits my life over time. I like simple apps and despite my criticisms I do think Journal could be enough for me. I am not asking for much but if nothing else, please Apple, give me search.