Dailybook app review: create a journal of your life

Dailybook

Price: Free for a limited time

Dailybook by IdeaBlocks, Inc. is an app that helps you create a journal of your life, simply and easily. It was updated on April 25, 2013 and is available in English only. It requires 33.2MB of storage space. Its price fluctuates; most recently it was $1.99 but it’s free for a limited time so get it fast.

User Experience                                   
When the creators of the app say it’s simple, boy do they mean it! There are no frills with this app, just the basics. When you go to create an entry, you put in the title and then your body of words. That’s it. You have some options to add photos or a voice memo, as well as some symbols, but that’s all. There are no special fonts, no different colors, nothing.

There’s no home page, either. There is a search function, where you can search by title or keyword.
It appears that the most recent entry will appear first and you can swipe through the entries from there.

You can make multiple entries each day, and if you forgot to make an entry you can go back and put one in and edit the date to be correct.

Features
The app offers restore and backup function using iTunes file sharing or Dropbox, email entry, and you can export all of your entries in PDF format by email. You can add tags, photos, and audio clips. The app allows you to bookmark special events, gives you password protection, and it says you can change the font, font size, and colors, but it’s kind of tricky to find: it took me a while. The font changer and Settings icons are on “page two” of the toolbar, so swipe to the left to see them. Maybe I’m just missing something.

Each entry receives a date and time stamp and you can share entries to Twitter and Facebook – and not just the entry, but any photos associated with that entry.

You can create multiple books in case you want different journals.

Update Info
Dailybook is currently running on Version 3.3. The update added iOS 6 and iPhone 5 support and improved the toolbar with paging. It also improved stability and performance and made a bunch of changes and additions that will improve user experience, such as an improved toolbar for the iPad, increased photo size and resolution, an added background skin, and improved entry format.

Customer Ratings and Feedback Comments
The current version has 19 ratings so far, with an average of four out of five stars. Feedback comments are all positive, with one complaint being how awkward it is to back up or sync between devices. Otherwise, users are thrilled with the features and the fact you can add multiple photos to each entry.

Personal Comments by Reviewer
I admit that when I first launched the app I was a little underwhelmed. It’s very simple in appearance and function, and I guess that’s part of the charm. It’s fast and easy to make an entry, and once you know how to access all of the options in the toolbar, it seems a much better app than on first appearance.

Pros

• Simple and easy to use
• Minimalistic look
• Free for a limited time
• No in-app purchases

Cons

• Can be hard to use all the features at first before you find them
• Should have a video tutorial

For: iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, iPod touch (3rd generation), iPod touch (4th generation), iPod touch (5th generation) and iPad with iOS 5.1 or later. Dailybook is optimized for iPhone 5.