Exploring the iOS 17 Journal App

Oleksandr Kaledin
5 min readNov 3, 2023

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Recalling cherished moments in life holds immense power. Many people cherish the experience of reliving their iPhone-captured memories through visual montages. Enter the newly introduced Journal app in iOS 17, tailored precisely for this purpose. The Journal app goes beyond mere reminiscence; it empowers users to document their life experiences, drawing inspiration from intricate details of their day, including individuals, places, activities, and even the music that accompanied those moments, all complemented by photos.

Apple has designed the Journal app to address some of the prevalent challenges encountered during journaling. For instance, the Journal app employs text prompts, prompting users with questions about their day, and facilitating the extraction of their thoughts. This feature comes to the aid of those grappling with writer’s block. Additionally, you can set daily reminders to ensure you don’t forget to take a moment to pen down your thoughts.

How to Obtain the Journal App on Your iPhone? As previously mentioned, the Journal app is currently accessible within iOS 17.2 beta 1. Consequently, the only method to acquire the iOS 17 Journal app at this moment is to install the iOS 17 developer beta. However, it’s worth noting that the developer beta may come with certain bugs that could potentially disrupt the overall user experience. Our recommendation is to await the official release of the Journal app within the stable iOS 17. In the meantime, there are alternative journaling applications available that you can explore.

Overview of iOS 17 Journal App Features Although the Journal app isn’t available within iOS 17 yet, Apple has provided a preview of its key features at WWDC 2023. Here’s what you can anticipate in the Journal app when it’s officially launched in iOS 17:

Enriched Media Journals

The central feature of the Journal app will enable users to create journals infused with audio, photos, and videos. Users can document their cherished memories, supplementing their written entries with images, videos, voice recordings, and location tags.

Theme-Driven Journal Entries

The Journal app offers an array of themes to choose from when composing an entry. These themes could revolve around the places you visited, the music you listened to, or the photos you captured during a specific journey.

Personalized Recommendations

This is the standout feature of the Journal app in iOS 17. Your iPhone will present tailored suggestions in the Journal app based on your photos, locations, music, podcasts, and workouts. These recommendations are curated using on-device machine learning, and you can select the specific category from which you’d like suggestions to appear in the Journal app.

Writing Prompts

The iOS 17 Journal app offers suggestions categorized into “Recent” and “Reflections” to assist you in getting started. Each suggestion features a writing prompt, such as “What was the highlight of your mountain trip?” or “What’s the story behind these photos?” You can also select from reflection prompts like “What’s your secret superpower?” or “Which activity leaves you feeling most refreshed?” to spark your writing.

Bookmarking Entries

Every journal entry holds its significance in our lives, but some entries are undeniably more important than others. To address this, the iOS 17 Journal app allows you to bookmark entries, ensuring you can easily locate them when needed.

Every journal entry holds its significance in our lives, but some entries are undeniably more important than others. To address this, the iOS 17 Journal app allows you to bookmark entries, ensuring you can easily locate them when needed.

Integration into the Share Sheet

With the iOS 17 Journal app, you can seamlessly incorporate the music and podcasts you’re currently enjoying on the Apple Music app into your journal. Simply tap the share button to save your thoughts on books, websites, or news articles for future reference.

Entry Filtering

The iOS 17 Journal app simplifies the process of sifting through past entries by enabling you to filter entries containing photos, videos, places, or websites you’ve bookmarked for later, eliminating the need to scroll through numerous entries.

Notifications

The Journal app will notify you whenever new journaling suggestions become available, ensuring you don’t miss important details in your daily life.

Journaling Schedule

Journaling requires consistency, but it’s easy to forget amidst our busy lives. To assist with this, you can establish a journaling schedule, either at the beginning or end of your day, to cultivate a regular journaling habit.

Locking Journal Entries

Journal entries are personal, and Apple places a strong emphasis on user privacy. The iOS 17 Journal app follows suit by allowing you to secure your journal entries with Face ID, ensuring that only you can access them.

iOS 17 Journal App Release Date
While the Journal app was unveiled at the iOS 17 Keynote event during WWDC 2023, Apple clarified that the app, along with other iOS 17 features, would not be available upon the initial release of iOS 17 firmware. However, this prediction has materialized, and the Journal app is now accessible with the iOS 17.2 Beta 1 update. We can anticipate the Journal app’s availability for download alongside the stable iOS 17.2 release, expected to be around the same time next month.

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Oleksandr Kaledin

iOS App Developer with 2+ years' experience. Expert in Swift, Xcode, and tech writing.