I’ve been keeping journals and diaries since I was twelve years old, and I’ve gone through many, many notebooks. From Bratz themed journals to the coveted Moleskin journals, I’ve scratched through them all.
However, as I got older, I found it increasingly difficult to find time to write down my thoughts in a physical journal, and between the constant commute and trips back home to my family in Zambia, I found myself increasingly spent money. When I’m on trains and planes, I tend to leave a diary at home or lose it altogether. So I decided to give Apple’s new Journal app a try, because what could be more convenient than having a digital notebook built into your phone?
The diary app has been rolled out to all iPhones with the new iOS 17 update, with the app acting as your digital diary, allowing you to record photos of your day, answer reflective prompts, add music and people to your notes and even you can record your diary. Apple Fitness Activities.
Introducing my new diary
I started the week optimistic when it came to journaling in the app because it eliminated my biggest problem with having to carry my journal in my bag all day. The first day I was super excited to make little notes about the music I listened to, the fun things I did, or even just scroll through the auto-generated prompts to see if I liked anything. Since I’m constantly scrolling through social media or playing mobile games on my phone, I place the app at the very top of my homepage as a visual reminder to use it whenever I see fit.
The on-device machine learning journal used to make suggestions unlocks a new level of deeper reflection that you might normally forget, based on the activities recorded on your phone throughout the day. Many may have doubts about implementing AI learning software within such a personal app, but this is machine learning technology at a surface level; you are not sharing your deepest thoughts here with a ChatGPT derivative.
I liked the collage suggestions it gave me, which made me think about moments that I honestly wouldn’t have thought of if I had used a physical journal. For example, I spent my Monday at home, which I would normally find quite dreary, but the app showed a collage of all the cute photos I took of my cat that day and put them together with the comment ‘Have a calm Monday afternoon at home ‘, which I appreciated. It made me think about how even though my day was quite mundane, there was still an aspect of enjoyment that deserved to be documented.
Keeping a routine
This makes it feel like you have a digital scrapbook on your phone, giving you a nice log of things you can look back on as you keep adding messages. One of the nicer features I appreciated later in the week was the ability to add an entry for a day you missed under the actual day of the event, which makes everything look chronological even if you missed a day or so. This was great for me… because on Wednesday I completely forgot about the app.
While the Journal has a lot of good features and is a pretty solid diary app in every respect, it’s pretty forgettable. Honestly, even in my worst journaling weeks, I wrote more — or at least thought about writing more — when I used a physical journal than I did with this app.
Even with the notifications asking you to journal at certain times, I barely noticed them and very easily ignored them. When I opened the app and sat down to write my journal, I found it more of an inconvenience than an actual act of reflection, and discovered that with all the texting, scrolling, calling, and checking I was already doing on my phone, the latter what I did what I wanted to do was open the phone again to think.
Not enough room for all these thoughts
Of course, not everyone will encounter the same problem, and the few friends I know who use Journal use it more as a digital dump to collage photos or set reminders than as an actual diary.
Of any journaling app, it can be said that the ‘fun’ and reflection that comes with journaling is in physically writing down your thoughts, and at a time when I feel like I simply can’t escape technology (yes, I know what I do for a living), the last thing I want to do is use another app.
As the week went on, I completely forgot the app was on my phone, and by Thursday I hadn’t written anything down. When I opened the app and looked for something to write, I couldn’t think of anything short enough to fill the space.
When I write a journal, I usually fill pages and pages and let my thoughts and feelings wash over the paper like water. When I use the Journal app, I feel like I’m clumsily composing a tweet (sorry Elon, I definitely meant to write “X post”) that no one will read. I found it difficult to really throw myself into any of the entries on my phone because it doesn’t really feel like the right place for me.
Maybe people who write a bullet journal or normally write very short, concise journal entries won’t feel the disconnect I did, but as a writer with a lot to say, it just felt weird having to type on my phone for hours. Maybe it’s a symptom of our well-documented modern phone addiction, but for now I think I’ll stick to pen and paper for my journaling needs.