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New reports suggest that Apple will unveil a brand-new app for the iPhone during WWDC this year as part of the iOS 17 preview.
Those close to the project suggest that the app will help users keep track of their lives by compiling daily activities. It’s thought that this will be achieved via tight integration with Apple’s wealth of health, location, and communication services that are already packed into every iPhone.
This, as you might expect, will provide a significant advantage over third-party journaling apps, which only have tightly controlled access to a portion of that data.
It’s therefore no surprise that the developers of Day One are – to put no finer point on it – shitting themselves.
Apple’s journal app plans
As is always the case with Apple rumours, I’d suggest taking a cautious approach to believing what you’re about to read.
Apple hasn’t – and will never – reveal anything intentionally leading up to WWDC, therefore any suggestion that we’re going to see an iPhone journaling app in June must be taken with a pinch of salt.
It does sound super cool, though.
Our iPhones already securely and privately track a huge amount of data about our movements, health, and interactions. The rumours suggest that this data will be leveraged to help users identify patterns of behaviour during their daily lives and spot when something out of the ordinary takes place.
This sounds like a super rich journaling experience and one which will, presumably, be accompanied by the usual text-based ramblings we journal users like to spill out onto the page.
No other details have leaked thus far, so we only have our imagination to fuel the ideas of what an Apple-developed journaling app might look like. Although it’s fair to assume that it’ll feature a simple design, smart prompting, and a bunch of missing features that will gradually appear in future iOS updates.
The Day One reaction
“Day One will continue to differentiate from Apple and other journaling apps with a focus on inspiring writing, beautiful design, security, and new innovations,” explains Day One founder, Paul Mayne, in a blog post reaction to the Apple rumours.
Given that these are still nothing but rumours, and assuming that the team at Day One are just as in the dark about Apple’s plans as the rest of us, the desire for Mayne to hit ‘publish’ speaks volumes.
He is super concerned about this move by Apple. And he should be because the launch of an Apple-branded app on the only smartphone platform natively supported by Day One is probably the news he’s dreaded daily. Add in the fact that Apple’s app will most likely be a free inclusion within iOS 17 and benefit from a raft of deep system integrations that’ll never be made available to third-party developers, and… well, yikes.
I feel for Day One. I’m a long-term user of the app and it has helped me enormously when it comes to arranging thoughts in my head and planning my business. Unfortunately, Mayne’s blog post feels more desperate than defiant (the promise of “shared journals” isn’t going to divert attention away from iOS 17 news, I’m afraid) and his note that it’s time for Day One to “push ourselves to deliver even more unique features and capabilities that set us apart from the competition” does raise one important question.
Why weren’t they doing that already?
In June 2021, Day One was acquired by Automattic, the company behind WordPress. Since then, updates to the journaling app have been sporadic at best, with the app and its team seemingly content riding the wave of being arguably the best at its craft.
Who’d have thought that it could all come crashing down, eh?
Final thought
There’s one massive caveat regarding Apple’s rumoured journal app, which is the fact that it appears to be iPhone-only.
It would make sense for the app to eventually scale across the entire Apple ecosystem and appear on the likes of the Mac and iPad, but it’ll be a tough sell for me if that isn’t available at launch.
The idea of writing journal entries solely on my iPhone isn’t particularly enticing. I do it occasionally with Day One, but that’s only in a pinch and when a thought strikes which needs to be immediately captured. I’m very much a sit-down-at-a-traditional-keyboard journal person.
Day One’s biggest mistake was to never extend support beyond the Apple ecosystem. Had the app (which arguably remains the best-in-class for its purpose) ventured into Windows and Android territory, it would have extended its user base considerably and provided quite a cushion in the event of a Sherlocking.
The recent release of Day One on the web is timely (suspiciously timely?) but it feels a bit too late and doesn’t satisfy the need for native apps on non-Apple platforms.
As it stands, and if the rumours turn out to be true, Day One’s days as king of the journaling app jungle are probably numbered. Let’s hope it finds a way to differentiate itself from Apple.
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1 Comment
As a long time day one user I share the same empathies for day one but also concerns for myself as a subscriber and with a lot of content going back to 12 years or so . Equally I’m excited by the potentials of a first party app but like you to work for me it would have to be across all devices and os’s . I would love a way (is there one ? IFFTT ?) where my daily smart playlist of what I played that day automatically appear in day one . If apple’s new rumoured app could do that now I’m there . (I screen shot at present)