Since trying out Apple Journal, I’ve embraced its ability to suggest personal activities and Moments. The feature is rich, rewarding, and has made journaling more delightful in a way I wasn’t expecting. Yet while the app is about a year old now, I was missing out.
One major thing that prevented me from jumping into Journal sooner was that it is iPhone-only (yet now it’s on my Mac). But it makes sense because of Moments. Since you always have your smart-phone with you and it “knows” your location and other data points, it can use your activity to suggest personal moments as journal entries.
Journal uses your Photos, Maps, Music, Podcasts, Workouts, Exercises and other Moments to suggest entries. It can even suggest things you’ve done with nearby iPhone users — people you “Connected” with — though I haven’t experienced that yet.
If you rage quit something and throw your iPhone across the room, I’d like to see Journal suggest an entry to record your “Unpleasant” mood. That’d be, uh, an interesting data point based on your phone’s accelerometer (kind of like the Apple Watch’s Fall or Crash Detection feature.)
There are two ways to use a suggested Moment. You can first choose a Recent or Recommended one and then start writing. Simple enough. Or you can start writing an entry and then tap the icon for Moments, select one, and have the content automatically added to your entry. This is nice if you happen to launch straight into writing an entry or if you go back to a previously dated entry and add a Moment to it. I like both options; they’re handy.
A Lunch Moment
Here’s an example of a recently suggested moment — without any phone throwing. I was treated to a company lunch at a nice restaurant and took a photo of my delicious meal (Steak Tip Loaded Baked Potato if you’re curious). Later that day when I opened Journal, it presented a nicely arranged grouping of my photo next to a Maps location of the restaurant, and it auto-filled a bold title. All I had to do was tap it, type a few words about the event, and the entry was created. Nice and easy.
A Walk Moment
The longer I use Journal, the more I’m appreciating the power of Moments. For another example, I walked up and down my dirt road the other day to watch the darkening sky. A much needed cold front was coming to my part of Texas; the gray clouds low on the horizon promised relief from summer heat and dry conditions. I brought my camera (iPhone) to take landscape and weather pictures and wasn’t even thinking of Journaling about the cold front.
Later that evening, when reminded by my phone to write the day’s journal entry, I discovered the above Moment suggested. Some of my photos were there along with a location map. To my surprise, there was also a graphic with a walking person and the number of steps I’d taken! I don’t even own an Apple Watch anymore, yet there were steps from my iPhone. It was all neatly presented, so I wrote my entry. Delightful.
A Birthday Moment
Another instance that took me by surprise was a suggested Moment after taking my two youngest kids to a friend’s birthday party. A photo and video I’d taken, with the geolocation in a map, were a suggested entry. But the title made my eyes go wide: it showed the names of my two sons. How did it “know?!” The Journal app must have input their names from their faces that I had tagged long before in the Photos app — it “remembered!” And this isn’t even “Apple Intelligence.”
Summary
When I first heard about these kinds of personal suggestions, the whole idea sounded creepy. You know, privacy concerns. But you can turn any part, or all of it, off. So no worries really. And now that I’ve tried it, I think moment-suggestions are super handy and nicely done. While you can go full-manual, adding text and photos when and how you want, it’s nice to have Moment suggestions. They encourage richer recording of life’s events and make journaling easier, more accessible, and more delightful.
Apple Journal Mood: Very Pleasant.
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