Day One: Daily Journal & Diary

all the little things

a review of a journaling app, i suppose, is as good a place to reminisce as any. here goes. i miss when software, especially that on iOS, reflected a virtually irrepressible care and concern for “the little things,” those little flourishes of care that distinguish mere utilities for “getting the job done” from little extensions of self that bring joy upon use. it breaks my heart to say that recent interface changes have downgraded this app from the latter to, tragically, the former. to elude this peculiar “update” to a paradoxically downgraded experience, i kept my Day One on version 2023.23 until upgrading to iOS 26 broke its share sheet, forcing me to update Day One to the current version. for perspective, i’ve been using Day One as an offline (multi-)journal for the greater part of a decade, and haven’t found much (personal) use for syncing, though i know it’s a wonderful feature for those choosing to use it. this offline only use in mind, consider how horrendous the UX is to not only have to select “skip for now”—a “for now” that inspires concern that One Day, this “for now” will give way to a mandatory “or else,” or no-entry scenario otherwise—on a full-height prompt wall with no dismiss button and a picture of someone i don’t know (as opposed to a settings specified picture from a journal entry), temporarily rendering the better title for the app: “Day One Promptwall: Private, yet Curiously Inaccessible Diary.” *then* i must dismiss a “Not Now/Sign In” banner to atop all of entries, which robs me of screen height should i not dismiss. but perhaps more egregious than either of these, there is now an always present, un-collapsing “Sign In” button that… takes precedence over *the name of the current journal*. this is insane to me: the current journal’s name will literally be truncated by ellipsis to… make way for a collection of letters vastly more important, “Sign In.” and why, when this very same (read: redundant, in terms of UI) “feature” can be accessed simply by tapping another button a few pixels to the right? could it at least be hidden if the user taps “Not Now” in the “Don’t lose your data” banner? wow. and there is no “opt out,” “manage without sync,” “let iCloud backups handle it,” or even “use offline.” it’s only, “you’re literally insane for not uploading all of your most personal inner thoughts to the computers of people you’ve never met, so it’s comically obtrusive full-heights, banners, and ellipses for you!” beyond this, Day One circa 2023 had nifty little journal stats and streak data atop the journal, and while i know one can still access this information elsewhere, it was nice to have it immediately present and prominent. now, in their place are tabs that by Liquid Glass’ design language should probably be moved to where the “Journals, Prompts, More” buttons currently are on iOS 26. (an incidentally welcome change, i’d think, at least it is in brainscape.) if “Lists, Calendar, Media, Map” were made to be the Liquid Glass button cluster on the bottom, the “Journals” button currently there would be unnecessary, and the “Prompts” button could be rolled into a long-press feature of the “+” button—which curiously is not vertically aligned with the other button buttons? 🤔 (i think it would be nice in general to have a little more Liquid Glass style, such as collapsing the top bar to one word, “[Current Journal],” when scrolling upward and allowing timeline content to still be visible even as it scrolls past the clock and iOS connectivity indicators toward infinity beyond the top of the device). next, in the timeline, there is so. much. dead space: each entry is now a massively juicy, septuple-height chonk. it’s like helplessly wandering through a visual desert interspersed with oases of memories. i know some people like that, and i don’t mind that they do, but i wish there were a setting for a little more of a compact presentation per entry. maybe one where the attached image (glyphed with a “+” if more than one) lies right-justified and frosted for readability just beneath the entry title and words. something modern like that. speaking of which, the timeline no longer displays attached photos as right justified by default, so in journal entries without words, photos and media now leap to the far left in timeline view, so that the relative locations of photos in the timeline look awkwardly haphazard and inconsistent, slapdash even, when scrolling through memories. also, long pressing an entry in the timeline does not provide an option to copy or move it to another journal. but it never did, so that’s just a wish listing. nor does it have an option to display entry information/copy x-callback url (now THIS is a nitpick, but you’d be surprised how useful it is to directly link to a specific entry from another app. if you haven’t yet, please try it!) another wish listing 😊 oh! here’s a little thing, the 2023ish version color coded the journal titles in the share sheet selector, now they’re all white and indistinguishable, other than by their letters. also regarding formatting, the entries themselves don’t even have as much formatting versatility as Apple Notes (?!), eg they have only one (?!) highlighting color. it wouldn’t hurt to have more formatting niceties as well, like super/subscript, easier drag and drop of text/images, text beside images, etc. and perhaps most of all, if you make any of these changes, please consider making them for everyone. i understand locking things behind subwalls for money, but the rest of us (or even the Plus’ers like myself) shouldn’t be abandoned to UX friction. i know ⌛️💸 is the official emoji combo of all apps these days, but please have mercy.

Most useful app for over 10 years

Five star app for realibilitu and usefulness. I use Day One on iPhone, iPad, and MacOS for daily journaling and miscellaneous journals that record quotes , record memories by back dating posts, and store an archive of things that hold special memories. It has never lost information and I can post photos and videos. Sync between devices works seemlessly Ability to export to a pdf if I want to generate a “book” or send a snippet of information to someone.