The Apple Journal app is so easy that, at first, it felt like I used to be lacking one thing. The entire app is only one display: a reverse-chronological timeline of your journal entries, with a giant plus button down on the backside. I hit the plus, and an overlay appeared with some choices: faucet “new entry” on the high, or reply to considered one of Journal’s “reflection” prompts. “What might you do to make somebody’s day higher this week?” considered one of them asks. “Write a few time you discovered an surprising resolution to a tough drawback,” reads one other.
If you’re making a journal entry, you may add pictures and video, file a voice memo, or log a location related along with your entry. If you’re wanting on the timeline, you may filter to see solely the entries with pictures, or the extra-special entries you’ve bookmarked, however that’s about it. You may have the app remind you to journal day by day, too. I don’t know what I anticipated from an Apple-made journaling app, actually, however it is extremely a lot… only a journaling app — and a reasonably fundamental one at that.
So far as I can inform, there are two causes the Journal app, which is coming to iPhone users in iOS 17.2 and is in public beta proper now, exists in any respect. The primary is that well being and wellness are essential to Apple as an organization, and there’s a number of proof to recommend that frequently journaling in a roundabout way is an effective factor. The second is that, in numerous methods, your telephone is definitely the excellent place to maintain a journal — as a result of it may possibly type of do it for you.
The massive thought behind Apple Journal is that your telephone can study to acknowledge what Apple calls “Moments.” It will possibly have a look at the place you have been, who you FaceTimed with, what number of movies you took, and different indicators that solely your telephone has entry to and deduce that this was most likely one thing you’d wish to keep in mind and revisit. Your telephone is the one machine that each is aware of you have been on the telephone along with your boyfriend for an hour and that instantly afterward you listened to 11 straight Dashboard Confessional songs. It is aware of that you simply hit a private file in your marathon coaching right this moment and that you simply completed the run at a sick view from the highest of a mountain. With entry to all that info, Journal might, in concept, begin to put issues collectively and immediate you to not solely add them to your private timeline but additionally take a second to mirror on them. Apple is coy about precisely the way it all works, although, and precisely what indicators matter and the way.
This can be a actually intriguing thought, particularly as a result of Apple is making this tech — which Apple calls a “ideas API” for Moments — obtainable to different third-party journaling apps as nicely. All of the machine studying and processing occurs in your machine, and the app you’re utilizing solely will get details about Moments when you choose one so as to add. (The one a part of Journal that isn’t utterly native is the iCloud backups, that are themselves encrypted.)
It’s additionally, I ought to say, a complete minefield. Bear in mind when Fb’s On This Day characteristic used to point out individuals horrible recollections they’d slightly not relive and revisit? Journal has entry to much more knowledge and will do even worse. As my colleague Victoria Tune wrote back in June, “In case your digital camera roll is like mine, it’s a jumble of pleased, serene, infuriating, useless, mundane, and melancholy moments. It’s messy as a result of life is messy. And if the Journal app actually takes a web page from Apple’s Recollections characteristic, there’s a great probability it’s going to tactlessly ambush you with recollections you both don’t need or aren’t able to see.”
You get some management over what knowledge Journal makes use of to recommend Moments, and you may also simply flip them off totally if you would like. However these are all on / off switches, and it’d be good to see Apple provide some extra fine-grained controls over time.
Up to now, I can’t vouch for a way any of it really works as a result of I’ve solely been utilizing Journal for a few days, and it hasn’t as soon as provided me a second to incorporate. (And I’ve been taking moody footage and listening to Taylor Swift the entire time!) But it surely’s going to be fascinating to see how Apple handles the second producing course of and the way and whether or not different apps select to combine the ideas API. Third-party apps received’t have the ability to insert their stuff immediately into the Moments system, however knowledge from any app that makes use of SiriKit, CallKit, or HealthKit might funnel into ideas as nicely. Once more, the precise alchemy behind Moments stays considerably mysterious.
The opposite strategy to get issues into Journal is thru the iPhone’s share sheet. It can save you hyperlinks and media from the net or a number of different apps, and Journal saves a wealthy hyperlink again to the supply. The intentions right here appear to be good (I can play a Spotify monitor proper in my Journal timeline), however the execution is off in spots. (It doesn’t understand I’m a subscriber and simply begins the free preview.) Generally, Journal positively received’t change your bookmarking app or read-later service, neither is it making an attempt to; this app is so targeted on being a straightforward place to create and evaluate journal entries that it received’t even let you will have tags or folders.
Not less than for now, I think Journal would possibly attraction as an entry-level journaling app however will not be prone to persuade many individuals to dump their current diary. (I’m a longtime Day One consumer, and nothing in Journal makes me wish to swap.) It’s completely true that your telephone is aware of you in contrast to every other machine you will have, and Apple’s most likely proper to try to determine how you can use that to enhance your life.
However I take into consideration all of the instances my Apple Watch yells at me to face whereas I’m sick in mattress, and I ponder how nicely my units really do know me. And I ponder how I really feel about the concept that my telephone even might get it proper. Are we actually only a assortment of the stuff we do on our screens, and is it our duty to show our units to grasp us higher? Is that the AI future we’re in search of?
Sorry to get all existential on you there. Tends to occur after I’ve been journaling rather a lot.