I’ve never been a diary person. I’ve tried them on and off at various points, including in high school and college, while studying abroad, and during transcontinental road trips, but they always seemed to eventually wane. As a result, I came to the conclusion that you are either a person who can keep a diary or a person who is not.
Apple may have high hopes for its new Journal app, but I think it’s unlikely that it will convert ordinary people who aren’t already avid journal keepers. And frankly, even if they already do, I’m not sure Apple’s Journal app will move them away from their current journal choices.
The Journal app was one of the big announcements for iOS 17 at this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference, but like many of the features announced as part of the company’s annual big software updates, it wasn’t available in the initial release. Instead, it has been postponed to a subsequent update, iOS 17.2, released today.
Like many of Apple’s apps, Journal isn’t an entirely new idea. There are many popular existing journal apps on Apple’s platform. But to differentiate itself, Apple is applying a secret sauce. It’s the fact that Apple owns the platform and can leverage data that third-party developers would never have access to. This comes in the form of journaling suggestions. This is a machine learning-based feature that can collect all the data about you on your iPhone and synthesize it to create prompts for you to write.
It’s a clever idea, clearly intended to help people get into the habit of journaling by answering the age-old question, “What should I write about?” But I’m not convinced that’s enough.
journalist not journalist
I’ve been using the Journal app in the iOS 17.2 beta for the past few weeks, and with the best of intentions, I keep the Journal app on my home screen in addition to turning on notifications that gently remind me to journal. Nevertheless, I collected a total of nine diaries.
Looking back at the entries I made, I concluded that Apple has already done this in the Photos app, and perhaps even better. The journaling suggestions appear to use the same algorithm as Photo’s Memories, which looks at photos and videos taken within a specific time period or in a specific location, and groups them based on theme. (In fact, Memories may even appear within the app’s suggestions.) But with Photos, you can do this. AutomaticallyRather than waiting for users to actively participate and manually create memories, present them as a fait accompli that they can revisit.
What Journal aims to differentiate from Memories is its ability to capture other data such as music you listen to, podcasts, and workouts. I don’t know if that makes sense to me. Personally, I don’t think I’m particularly interested in keeping a diary about these things, much less reading them back later. Do I really care that my wife started listening to Christmas music on October 30th?
I was wondering whether to allow it more The information that is imported can make your app even more appealing. I was surprised by the lack of integration with HealthKit data, other than the poor ability to view the workouts you’ve performed summarized in static screenshots. Apple’s recent mood tracking feature seems like it would be perfect for a diary app, but it’s not here. And of course, information from third-party apps (say you’re listening to podcasts on Overcast instead of Apple Podcasts) won’t help beginners.
A simple diary for more elegant times
What we appreciate about Journal from a purely design perspective is its focus on simplicity. There aren’t many extra or hidden features here. When you launch the app, you’ll be presented with a reverse chronological list of your diary entries and provided with a filter menu so you can view entries with only certain types of data (photos, videos, music and podcasts, activities, locations, etc.) ), or bookmarked, plus a large honk + button to create a new entry. That’s about it.
List views are very basic. You can’t actually tap on the entry, which is a little weird. Instead, tap the item within the entry.This will show you the item and a little bit of metadata, but not much do I’m with it at that point. Once again, I went back to photos and videos and wondered why I would choose to view them in a journal app instead of in Photos.
When you create a new entry, it will recommend events to include in your diary, or it will display a list of recent events. In some cases, photos can also evoke memories. There’s also a prompt that Apple calls “Reflection” that suggests ideas to write in your journal, but to be honest, I’ve never felt motivated to write more. (This is in no small part because I don’t feel comfortable typing entries with my thumb for long periods of time; I’m older and find it uncomfortable.) , states that other apps could also utilize this proposal framework. This is probably the unusual best part of this whole feature. Third-party journaling apps, the ones that people are actively buying or downloading because they’re passionate about journaling, tend to get even better.
When creating a diary entry, you can also capture an image from a photo, add a location, take a photo with your camera, or record an audio clip. You can also access journaling suggestions here, giving you easy access to recent places you’ve been and media you’ve consumed.
all by myself
Ultimately, I was struck by how lonely the Journal app was. You see, this is an introspective exercise to do for yourself. There’s a reason the Journal app is biometrically or passcode-locked. But for me personally, a big part of the joy of memories (and capitalized “photo memories”) is sharing them with others. Journal doesn’t have any export options, and there’s no way to share it with others other than by surrounding them with the same iPhone. But it was clearly the result of a deliberate choice made by Apple, and I can respect that decision, even if it wasn’t for me.
In the end, Journal feels a bit like Apple applying its trademark obsession with privacy to social networking. That is, it is a social network for one person, he is one person. In an age when we spend so much time broadcasting everything we think, this is perhaps admirable (and yes, it’s very Apple). Could the Journal app steal your time, attention, and mindshare from the daily dopamine hit of endless scrolling? That might not be a bad thing if it happens, but this company… I think it’s going to be an uphill climb from now on. We’ll see if things can continue like this, or if the Journal app itself will become a casualty of a world that’s gone online.
[Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors. You can find him on Mastodon at @dmoren@zeppelin.flights or reach him by email at dan@sixcolors.com. His latest novel, the supernatural detective story All Souls Lost, is out now.]
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