Day One: Daily Journal & Diary

I have been using day one app daily for years (since 2019) and absolutely love the app and pay for premium. But something happened about 2 weeks ago and literally my entire iPhone freezes when I try to open the app. It opens to show the list page and then completely freezes (and freezes every other app until I can finally swipe up close). I have plenty of space on my phone, I've deleted the app twice and re uploaded to see if that will help. I can't reach out to support because the app freezes before I can get help :/ I love this app, just need to know why it's doing this, please help!

I refuse to pay to have access on both my iOS purchase and macOS. Sorry My data is in the cloud. Too bad you require more cash to access it on macOS natively. Also, “some” additional support for v 27 devices is so slow in coming, why should I pay for the sluggish adoptatation that you have had many months to implement and yet have not? Also, stealing my intimate data is so lame that you should be ashamed of your privacy practices.

UPDATE - AMAZING PRODUCT FROM AN AWFUL COMPANY! Wow! This is hands-down the best journal app out there! I use it every single day and I think the changes are great! After purchasing several different journal apps I got the original day one as a free app of the week and it just won me over, and with this new version they really refined an already great experience.

I've been using this app for years and it is immensely helpful, particularly since it's searchable. Brilliant for tracking moods, medical issues and the like. I wish the editing functions were better. It's difficult to place the cursor if you want to go back and change something.

I remember paying for this app many years ago, thought I would redownload to start journaling again. Turns out they’ve released another version and then transitioned that to freemium and my original payment doesn’t mean anything anymore? Not a huge deal but leaves a bad taste in my mouth and probably will pay for a different journaling app instead

I noticed the little star thing that indicates an AI feature. AI. In a journaling app. It’s like, tell me you don’t fundamentally understand the point of journaling without telling me.

As usual, greed from developers ALWAYS ruins a good thing. I’m exporting all my diaries and deleting the app.

Ai is pushy pushy.. I am done

So I haven’t journaled in a really long time and decided I would open up this app to start back only to be met with a screen asking for $50 or a yearly subscription. I had a free subscription and I am no longer able to access my earlier entries because I cannot get around the screen asking me for money. Is there a workaround?

If you have this app I recommend you quickly export your journal so you would not be in the same position. I had the misfortune of losing 2 whole months of daily journal entry. All of the recommended troubleshooting amounted to diddly squats. After going back and forth with the support team and happiness engineer I am still awaiting resolution. I STRONGLY RECOMMEND YOU EXPORT YOUR ENTRIES ASAP ESPECIALLY IF YOU HAVE THE FREE VERSION. Hoping Dayone resolves the issue and “recover” the missing entries without forcing me to pay $50. Still waiting patiently

2022: A lot of basic text editing features are missing. No text colors, single color for highlighting. It is been a while, but still no fix. 2024: Last update is not an improvement of the look. Huge font, can only see few entries. Please, add an option to get back to an old look. 12/7/2025: After last update, copy/cut/paste functionality is messed up. Cannot select more than 10 lines of text. Practically unusable. 7/28/26 - copy/cut/paste functionality is still not fixed. You can’t copy even a few paragraphs, page starts jumping, text becomes unselected. The only work around is to go by small chunks of text. Very annoying that it is still not fixed. For some reason they never fix reported issues.

I used to love Day One, but I’m really disappointed with how they handled the AI features. When I upgraded, AI was advertised as one of the premium features. Now, those same AI features have been moved behind an even more expensive subscription tier. Existing paying customers weren’t clearly informed that something they already paid for would require another upgrade. I’m not against companies charging for new features, but taking away or restricting features that were part of the premium experience feels misleading. A little transparency and better communication would have gone a long way. Day One is still a beautiful journaling app, but this change has made me lose trust in the company. I hope they reconsider how they treat their loyal subscribers.

I wish I had learned before committing to this app that it has deliberately, despite consistent user requests, refused to add in a very critical search-within-note feature. This is really sad because it is a solid journaling app. even the free version. I've enjoyed using it quite a bit, but will probably need to leave it because if I can't search within my notes, then why type all of this information into it to begin with?

New UI in the recent update completely loses the focus of being a journal app - too much wasted space and much harder to quickly switch between journals. The new update also adds AI-based chats and journaling, which is fine if that’s how you want to write, but it feels like a big step in the wrong direction for this app.

$75 for a digital journal??? And….deleted.

I been using this app for about four years now. Love it BUT suddenly yesterday it disappeared and when I back to app search and tried to open it. It wouldn’t let me. I have it on my older iPad and it still works fine. Why can’t I get it back on my new iPad? I’ve been using it on it for a number of years already on this iPad.

The app deleted years of journaling with an update. I’m beyond furious that I’ve lost my written thoughts and memories upon the birth of my daughter

Why bother paying an annual fee for something that Apple provides for free? I’ve used both this and Apple’s free version and I don’t see what I’m paying for. I just wish I could get some of my money back.

Hey maybe it’s just my phone but everytime I drop a pin in the maps it usually adds the location coordinates but it keeps saving as 0 0 coordinates and not the right location. Please fix! And I’d give it 5 stars but I’ve been using this app for a while and it’s worked amazing until this glitch started happening

If you don't mind constant popups begging you to pay them money to have the basic human right to change your color scheme, and don't mind how for some reason they too, are shoving AI features in your face you can just barely turn off, Then this app is great. But for anyone else, it's grown to be unusable. And with the way the modern internet is, it probably won't ever show you this review because they withhold information to hold more power over you. If you have to take away anything let it be this, stay true to yourself and don't let any screens or technology affect you. Learn to rely on yourself and learn the real truth that they hide from you to make more money. They control your screens now, and if you let the screens influence you, they control your mind, and the worlds mind to. Spread the word.

I pay for a Silver subscription. I don’t care about AI and I don’t want to be constantly pestered to ‘upgrade’ to the Gold plan. This app is now garbage. You’ve ruined it. I have unsubscribed. Good riddance. In response to the developer: it’s too late. You’ve lost a paying customer for life. Stupid decisions have consequences.

Now the screen shows up as Buy or no longer being able to access the basic version? This is not nice at all

I’m unable to access the journal from the list screen and I’m unable to add photos to entries.

I really liked Day One. I’ve had it for over five years. They recently included some Ai features that were included in my premium service. You could generate AI IMAGES from your entries, get prompts, and some great summaries for your entries., I had really been enjoying this new addition to DayOne. UNTIL TONIGHT— when those features were suddenly 🚫removed 🚫 from my premium membership ! NOW they made a new membership level that costs more and if you want those previously included in Premium, you have to upgrade to Silver. It really stinks that I received the AI features for a short time only to have Day One take them away. I am strongly thinking of canceling my over 5 year old membership and looking for another journaling app. Thanks a lot,DayOne. 👎🏽

I too was originally skeptical of being forced into their sync system. I read their terms of service and frankly some of the language was frightening, but I had a couple email exchanges with their extremely responsive customer service and I was satisfied they could not use my private entries in the future. I've been using for two months now and their sync service is fantastic. I had period issues with iCloud with Day One Classic, but I've never had an issue so far syncing between my iMac, iPhone, and iPad. The bottom line is that for YEARS I struggled to consistently journal - since getting Dayone in 2012, and now Dayone 2 - I journal more than I have in my entire life. It is awesome for capturing moments and recording my life. I know some day there won't be a price you can put on having these entries. It's so easy to capture photos in DayOne 2 and being able to have multiple photos in an entry is awesome. If your nervous about their sync, just read the news, it's a risk we all take using the cloud, but to me the trade off is that I'm building a lifetime of memories with this app. Update MANY years later - I wrote the above a long time ago. I’ve been using this app daily and haven’t missed a day since 2015. The new conversation element is amazing to me. It helps me journal throughout the day more instead of trying to remember the whole day. Quite frankly the AI asks some very insightful questions that help me go deeper and have really improved my entries. I’m hoping eventually they will add the ability to use AI to “converse” with your older entires like “hey how did I handle this previously . . . “. UPDATE 6/11/2026 - after giving original plus members (I’ve been using the journal since 2012) the daily chat for about the last 8 months the tiers changed with no notice or warning. Went to use it today and see now I’m “silver” and have to upgrade to use it. I get it, apps need to make money but it’s a shame is the same old methods - hook you on the service for some indefinite period of time then take it away. Not a lot of loyalty for long time subscribers. I feel like that is disappointing. Even changing the tiers and not keeping it the same. Might be time to look for other options or use apples. Really a shame they just don’t have as much loyalty toward their subscribers and users that have been here since well Day One. Pun intended. Their latest bait and switch on features I just thought was a really poor thing to do. Gave the use of chat for like 8 months then raised the price of the tier I was on and decided to take away the features. I was using the chat in beta. Very disappointed and a little sad to have to login for another option.