Day One Journal: Private Diary Ratings and Reviews

Day One has come a long way!

I have been using Day One for about 4 years now. I have always kept a journal since I was a kid but I wanted something password protected to use on my MacBook. When I first started using the Day One, it was limited and the phone app was incredibly buggy especially on iPhone. Over the years the developers have absolutely refined Day One into one of the best apps you can invest in on the App Store. I truly enjoy looking back over the years to see how far I have come.

I mainly use this app as a “mind dump” whenever I feel overwhelmed and to record my dreams. Over time it has expanded into several different journals. I’m just now starting to use it to record smaller and simpler thoughts throughout the day to replace social media and it’s doing wonders for my mental health. Since it’s much more stable and reliable on iPhone it’s been a joy to use on-the-go. We all have those thoughts we just want to get out and social media isn’t always the place for that. Day One is a perfect judge-free zone where I won’t look back on a post 5 years later and feel deep regret for making that thought public.

I did try out Day One Premium for 1 year because I wanted to use the video feature. I could only record a couple of minutes at a time and I didn’t end up using it as much as I thought I would. I didn’t use any of the other features in that year so I ended up reverting back to the basic package, but I’m sure those extra features will be useful for others!

A blessing disgusted as an app

I love to write, as an over-thinker and someone who ruminates on things a lot it’s something very therapeutic. It’s nice to write down a reflection of how your day was, a good or bad moment of your day, something that triggered you, someone that hurt you or about the past. Oh the past! I could write for days. What’s really great about this app is that it has a feature where you can create a passcode for the app or even choose to unlock it with your Face ID like your phone. I’ve tried other apps that don’t have that, or they do have it but you have to upgrade to premium for it but not this one. As a kid I grew up with very strict people around me, and privacy was something I didn’t have most of the time, I’m now 18 and have a cellphone that I bought and pay each month, so there’s that just for reference. I always wanted to start journaling but because of the lack of privacy I help myself back but this has helped me a lot, I feel safe I feel that my thoughts are safe and that I can express myself and actually write what I want to write about my life. The cool thing is you can also add pictures and audio notes, it keeps track of how many days in a row you’ve journaled to keep you motivated and to keep a streak going. 10/10 for me. I hope to learn to process my thoughts and emotions through journaling to then be able to learn and be more aware of myself, heal and grow as a person. Thank you Day One!

Needs great UX/UI

hi guys, thanks for improving the app.. but i wanna point out some things. Make timeline page have a customizable ‘action’ button, because i wanted to just click once to pull a video and start recording me talking for 30 mins about my life. Currently there are photos, audio and text. Make it customizable. This will be very helpful to truckers, delivery drivers that works alone but don’t want to fiddle a lot of buttons just to record. And second, after recording a video, can you label the ‘input title’ field with ‘write your title’, because right now, there’s only blank which confuses the user to navigate the title field. Also the timeline, it’s way too cramped especially the bottom part where you’ll see the time of the audio, address and weather, can you put a separator between them, cause right now they are just connected in one line, makes the UI jarring to read. also for audio clips, put an icon on the right hand side, and maybe put the length of the audio overlaying the icon. instead of cramping it at the bottom of the journal entry in the timeline view.. make it look beatiful and simple, easy to navigate.. but i really love what youre trying to do, its the best journal app there is… i would love to subscribe if these features are available… theres more that i would love to input but its getting too long. Do you have suggestions email? Thank you, i’ll rate it 5 stars for you guys

Great app and the BEST customer service

I love this app and have been using it daily since 2018 and have filled it to bursting with pictures and videos and all sorts of important stuff …..but unfortunately with a huge file like that, things will happen and entries have disappeared. Some entries disappeared on their own in December and January and I was helped significantly by a gentleman named Cameron. Plus I was very relieved to discover that they can restore deleted entries, but they can’t see what is in the entry. So privacy is super secure, which is important to me. Then on the morning of March 3, 2022 I accidentally created a duplicate entry, and instead of deleting the empty duplicate, I deleted yesterday’s extremely important entry, and was very upset at myself and distraught, and I emailed support through the app…. but since I still had the emails from Cameron, I emailed him as well, and then I went to the grocery store and the bank, and by the time I got home, he had restored it. No fuss, no muss, no coconuts. Most importantly, no judgment. And very shortly after Cameron resolved things, I heard back from the email I sent through the app. The importance of this wonderful customer service cannot be overstated. I cannot thank Cameron and Lindsey and everybody else who works there enough for their support. And I can’t emphasize enough what a great resource this app is for somebody who is getting older and whose memory is not what it used to be!

Developer Response ,

Thank you for your review! We are glad to hear Cameron was able to help!

Highly recommend! Very customizable.

I can't update my old review which was 4 stars, so I'll just do a new one. The only reason I didn't give it 5 stars at that time was a feature that they fixed (adding voice recordings within a text entry). Thank you!

I love Day One and I use Premium which is worth it. I created a template for a daily journal which has become a mixture of habit tracking (using the checklist feature), voice recordings for reflection, pictures to capture memories or lessons, and actual written highlights and reflections of my day. I have found a way to use Day One that creates a powerful tool not just for capturing memories, but creating growth experiences and tracking my personal growth journey. I look back at old posts (On This Day) from 1, 2, or 3 years ago and am amazed with how far I've come, and by keeping track of what I've learned, I can reread it and remember to apply them over and over. Day One is so customizable as a journal, and you can even create multiple journals too with Premium if you want to separate your entries. I've recently started going through and taking notes on some of my audio lessons/recordings since Day One also makes it easy to keyword search what you're looking for, which is way faster than going through hours of audio lessons. The tag feature is also helpful here.

Highly recommend!

Developer Response ,

Hi! Thanks for your review! We are aware of the issue you mention about the Audio entries and are working on a fix, please look out for confirmation of this in an upcoming release.

PDF format has improved- Thank you!

THANK YOU for continuing to improve the PDF format! Just as I was about to give up and look for a journaling method elsewhere, the PDF format was improved and now there are multiple pictures per page, and the flow and format is a lot nicer. I also like that the text is larger and one page can even fit up to 9 pictures. It still isn’t perfect. If I could give the suggestion to make the date and time font darker and maybe a little bigger, it would be near to perfect. That is hardly visible, especially once printed out. But the picture flow has dramatically improved, and I applaud you! I am fine paying a subscription as long as these updates are being made, because I appreciate the continuous work to improve the customer’s experience. So far, to the best of my knowledge, these improvements haven’t been made to the book printing, but I assume they are working on that as well. Thank you and please, for your subscribers, continue with these improvements! It’s the only thing that keeps me hanging on to this app because a physical, printed copy is so important to me, and though I love everything else about the app digitally, I would be forced to look elsewhere if I wasn’t satisfied with the printing (via book or PDF). I’m sure I’m not the only customer who feels this way. Thank you for hearing me out!

Developer Response ,

Thank you for your feedback. Our team is still working on PDF improvements. Thank you for your patience.

A request to address certain problems

I’ve been using your app for years, definitely one of the best apps I have ever used. However lately I have been facing problems. I have an iPhone 8. Often times when I copy or past something, the app would lag a lot and then crash and I would need to restart it. Another huge problem I have is that when I want to edit an entry, the app would instantly take me to the bottom of the entry instead of the place I already was. I write long entries so if I’m in the middle of something and notice a typo, I don’t want to fix it because it will take me all the way to the bottom. And if I slide up and tap on the text I want to edit, most of the time the app just keeps taking me back to the bottom. I think I have to double tap it sometimes and make sure I am not sliding to get it to select the text I want. It is so frustrating for me, why can this not work like google docs where it just stays at the same spot I click edit instead of going all the way down. Please, I have been a loyal customer for a very long time and I hope you fix this, or either give me an option to disable this ‘function’. Lastly, I would greatly appreciate if you guys would give us the option to sync with iCloud/Dropbox again, if we’re paying for something we really should get the option of where we want to save our data.

Developer Response ,

Thank you so much for your feedback. We will forward this to our engineers and designers for review. If you have any other specific feedback, please let our support team know. http://dayoneapp.com/contact

Finally paid for it

Been using Day One off and on for over 10 years. Recently I’ve been dealing with trauma recovery and an eating disorder and was looking for something to do 3 times a day “check ins” to stop and recognize what my body feels, emotions etc to recognize they are happening, feel them and allow my nervous system to let the feelings subside in a healthy way. I spent a day looking at different “check in” apps and journals. Thought about just doing little notes in the habits app I use. Or the check in apps where you tap emotions and smiley faces. All dumb and none of the journaling apps really do what Day One does. So I downloaded it again and realized a perfect solution is to pay for premium and have a “daily checkins” journal and a regular one. When I write a long form proper entry I can put it in the journal…the short ones that are just noticing thoughts and feelings (an exercise) I can put in the other. Eventually decided you know I pay $100 for each therapy session and incorporating Day One into my self care routine with all the features is definitely worth $30 a year. I can also send a quick email from work if I miss a check in and don’t want to pull out my phone.

Last thought…please just keep developing and supporting the app! I would hate to see it abandoned someday.

A Gateway to Reality

I have always wanted to journal, but the inconvenience of having the small book, an appropriate pen, and the physical circumstances seemed to prevent me from doing so. As I have an iPhone, iPad, and a MacBook Pro, and have one of those readily available just about all the time, journaling becomes practice. The two missing elements are a busy life and moments I want to capture that are sufficiently stirring that they will make me want to record the event. Day One reminds me each day to journal (Important!) and allows me to take a photo either in Photos or right from the app. The combination inspires me to write about what I have photographed. I have been frustrated with photo apps in that they are not focused on a written description of what was going on a the moment the image was captured. Day One solves that. Perhaps the greatest benefit of Day One is that I can easily see and read (unlike my handwriting in awkward places and in a small journaling book) what I have written in the past. The "me" that is revealed in my writing is a different "me" than the one I perceive in my mind's eye. Writing is, as others have noted, a window into the soul and a reflection of reality. I am benefitting from that window and that reflection thanks to Day One. I am sincerely thankful for the creators of this wonderful app.

On the fence

I have only been using Day One for a few days now and overall I like it, I think. I think it is great how they offer a 1 month trial period for premium, that gives you a lot of time to really figure out all the features and whether it is the right app for you or not. The photos with the location options is a great feature and it is nice to be able to easily reflect back on specific days. My biggest “upset” with the app is that I wish the entries were distinguished differently. I am only using the iPhone version of this app so I cannot speak on any other version, but every entry and day just seems to blend together. The only thing too indicate that entries are from different days is a small date stamp on the right side of the screen. Ideally, I would like to see an option that allows you to only see that days entries and you can toggle left or right to go in between days. I say that as an option because it seems like the majority of users of this app have no complaints about the layout but for those that do, something like that would be a great feature.

EDITED: So I literally found the Today View right after posting this review. If there was an option to have the Today View as the primary viewing option in the Timeline tab than that would be perfect!