Day One app review: a new way to journal

Day One (Journal / Diary)

Price: $4.99

Day One by Bloom Build, LLC is a different kind of journaling app for your iOS device. It was updated on February 28, 2013. It’s available in English only and takes up just over 33MB of space.

User Experience
This app will give you a brand new away to write down events, memories, and ideas. You can also enter photos to keep track of your memories in a way you’ve never experienced before. Everything you journal will be synced using Dropbox or iCloud.

The app is designed to remember more and write more about your daily life. It has a simple design that is full of functionality yet really easy to use. It’s not overwhelming like some apps can be, and the ability to add photos is a huge plus.

It’s super quick and easy to add an entry. This is probably the largest reason most people don’t journal regularly with other apps. With Day One, all of your entries are synced among your devices and computer, so your journal is always ready and waiting for you.

You can do one entry a day, or 15. It’s up to you. You can make them long or short, add a photo or not, and you can even have the app save your location, temperature, and weather (if you’re on your iOS device).

It’s easy to tag or star entries as well.

If you need a reminder to journal each day, you can set one! This is probably the coolest part of the app. Set as many as you like: one in mid-afternoon for your computer and one at night for your iPhone or iPad, or none at all.

Features  

This app is certainly full of features. You get calendar view, passcode lock, multi-markdown, entries by year view, and reminders. You can search, add tags and hashtags, photos, and temperature and weather data.

You get TextExpander snippet support, email entry, full screen mode, sync among devices, and the ability to send as Tweet.

This is a universal app so you can download it on all your devices after you pay once.

 

Update Info

The app is currently running on Version 1.10. The update added custom date range, tag filtering, and the ability to send as PDF to Dropbox, iBooks, and other apps. It also added historical weather, a new reminder sound, and the Sanchez font option. The update re-organized Settings, made a faster startup time, improved and refactored the sound effects, and improved Dropbox sync for large journals.

The developer says a Mac update is coming soon.

 

Customer Ratings and Feedback Comments
The current version has 1587 customer ratings with an average of 4.5 out of five stars. Feedback comments are all mostly positive, but with some requests: users would like encryption for better security and the ability to add more than one photo to entries.

 

Personal Comments by Reviewer
I’ve kept a journal pretty much my whole life off and on since I started printing. They’ve been on loose paper, in spiral-bound notebooks, in lockable diaries, and on my computer. This is really the first time I’ve spent any time trying to remember to put daily entries into an iOS device and Day One makes it surprisingly pain-free and actually quite fun.

I especially like the fact that you can add a photo and the app will ask you if you want to add the weather for that day – up to 30 days ago! That’s pretty cool.

 

Pros

• Tons of features
• Easy to use
• Simple design
• You can add a photo
• You can set reminders

 

Cons

• The information isn’t encrypted
• You can’t add more than one photo for each entry

 

For: iPhone, iPod touch, iPad with iOS 5.1 or later. Day One is optimized for iPhone 5.