This Journaling App Actually Helped Me Stick To My Daily Pages

While your bestie might not always be available to listen to a 15-minute voice message at midnight, the Day One app will never let you down. Whether you’re looking to vent about your day, start a journaling practice, or simply organize your thoughts in one place, this sleek, easy-to-use app could be your new best friend. (No offense to your IRL BFF, of course.)

Day One has 4.8 stars from over 107,000 ratings in the Apple store, and it’s been voted “app of the year” by Wired and The New York Times. It’s not only the perfect place to jot down your feelings when you’re stressed, happy, or hoping to save meaningful memories, but it can also help you start and stick with a healthy journaling habit once and for all.

As someone with notebooks lying around, I’ll never say no to the beautiful art of sitting at my desk with a pen in hand. I’ve always kept journals and love to write in them when something big and exciting happens, but for those day-to-day musings I often forget to jot down my thoughts — and that’s when they start to pile up in my head.

It’s why I’ve been enjoying a new habit where I lay in bed at the end of the day, open this app, and tell it everything and anything. It’s been so refreshing and relaxing. Here’s what to know about Day One, including all of its unique features.

Fast Facts

• Price: Free to download and use, $34.99 a year for access to audio features and more
• Best for: Journaling, venting, organizing scattered thoughts
• My rating: 4/5
• What we like: Easy to use, handy audio feature, offers multiple security measures for privacy, allows you to organize entries with tags, titles, and pictures
• What we don't like: Interface isn’t very cute, audio translation is glitchy

About The Day One Journaling App

While Day One isn’t the cutest, brightest, or girliest app you’ve ever seen, it still managed to gain 15 million downloads simply because it’s sleek, trusted, and easy to use. It lets you record your life as you live it, whether you’re on the train, walking home from a date, or lying in bed, and it also keeps your info safe with various security measures, like passwords and a Face ID.

The New York Times called it a “completely private digital space,” because you can trust that your info will stay safely encrypted on your phone. It also backs up your entries in the cloud and allows you to convert them to PDFs or text if you want to store them in other places or print them out. But what’s even cooler is what you can do within the app.

Day One allows you to type out journal entries and notes, add pics to your entries, record audio and video, and more. Unlike a notebook, which will eventually run out of pages, it has unlimited text entry space.

There are templates and daily writing prompts that can help guide you through a journaling sesh, like morning writing prompts or three questions that’ll encourage you to think about all the lovely things that happened in your day.

Like any good app, Day One also shows your streaks to see how many days you journaled in a row. There are notifications if you want to be reminded to jot down your thoughts. You can even connect the app to your phone’s Health app to track your daily mindfulness minutes.

If you want to doodle in your journal, there’s an option to scribble on your screen. As a bonus, you can even check in on a map within the app to see all the places you’ve journaled, which would be so cute to do while traveling.

Trying It Out

TBH, I wasn’t impressed with this app when I first downloaded it. Even with its glowing reviews, it looked like the most basic interface ever: a blank place to write and a few buttons to tap. But as I got further into it, I realized it had so much to offer.

While you can use the app without paying for it (always a bonus, in my book) I did sign up for the one-month free trial so that I had access to the audio journaling. My goal? To lay in bed each night and stream-of-conscious thought dump about my day.

The app listened as I gabbed and then translated what I said into text. It wasn’t perfect, but it did allow me to go in and edit after the fact. The audio option gave me 10 minutes to chat. Sometimes I used all 10 and sometimes I got my thoughts out in three. Either way, I’ve been turning to Day One as a way to wind down my day.

This app is als also quickly becoming my go-to space to organize my thoughts. Instead of jotting ideas down on various mediums, like Post-Its, notes apps, and in the corners of my paper planner, I’ve been consolidating it all into Day One, which allows me to organize and tag my entries so I can find them easily, look back on memories, etc.

It’s also easy to personalize, which I love. If you tap the three dots at the top right of your journal entry, you’ll get to see the data attached to it, including your location, the weather that day, and even the music you were listening to while writing. It even includes the moon phase, which does my heart good as a lifelong astrology girlie.

The Takeaway

The journal prompt I’ve been using every night — which can be found under “Templates” on the writing screen — is the one that asks me to ponder three good things that happened to me in a day and how I plan to make tomorrow even better.

This is the perfect prompt when I’m super tired but still want to jot down my thoughts, and it’s only one of dozens of options. There are morning prompts, gratitude prompts — you name it. The more I’ve been exploring this app, the more I’ve discovered.

IMO, the audio journaling is the best feature because it’s what allows me to vent and get my stress out before I sleep. Once I’m done yapping, I have a way easier time relaxing and settling in for the night.

It’s also been fun to look back on what I was worried or excited about and to see how it all played out. I’ll keep using Day One, and can’t wait to dive even deeper, add more colors, themes, and pics, and keep using it as my go-to diary.