We’ve long been fans of Day One and similar journal apps like journey on Android. Like many others, I found great pleasures and rewards from journaling. As someone who has dyslexia and grew up struggling to express myself (especially in writing), the practice of daily writing has helped me to clarify my thoughts and enable me to more eloquently express myself.
Now Day One has undergone a complete overhaul (rebuilt from the ground up according to the developers) and update to Day One 2, a paid upgrade. The big question that many people will have is “is it worth bothering to upgrade or buy in the first place?
Why Journal
There are many reasons to Journal and this could be a whole article on its own (turns out, we haven’t written one!), but I’d like to highlight a couple that I think will be of interest to most of our readers.
- Help to process your thoughts
- Help to reflect on what actually happened
- Remember special events better
Basically, when we write things down, we have to slow down and try to be more objective about what happened. This can also helps us to work out that strange feeling we have but can’t describe and we can look back later to remember it more clearly (unless you have a photographic memory).
For more reasons check out this post on the benefits of keeping a journal.
Why Use an eJournal?
There are some strong reasons NOT to use an electronic journal, but that’s for another occasion. In my opinion there are a few key reasons to consider an electronic journal.
- It can be on your phone, tablet and computer, you’ll probably have access to it anywhere, anytime.
- You can use rich media, like photos, audio and more. Not just text.
- You can create a standard template with question prompts to fill in. (for example, the storyline productivity schedule or Michael Hyatt’s daily journal template).
- You can search for old entries more easily.
All this makes for a good reason to give an electronic journal a go.
What’s New in Day One 2.0?
Day One 2 adds two key new features that distinguish it from it’s former version. Multiple photos per entry and multiple journals.
The first is obvious, formerly you were limited to one photo a post, now you can have more than one. Great to record a special trip somewhere. However, The second features is much more interesting. Now you can set up a journal to log your workouts (logging what activities you did, what your performance was like etc) or a prayer journal to record what you prayed for the day and check when it is answered. A food journal to log your recipe experiments or my favorite, a work journal so I can log my weekly goals, the progress I made each day, and so on.
At the same time, you can keep a separate journal for your personal reflections and special moments. This really helps to keep your ideas organized and speeds up searching through your old entries as you can be limited to the theme you want to search through.
Speaking of search, the new layout and design really help add to the experience of using the app to look at old entries. The map view shows you where entries were saved, the calendar helps you zoom to the date you want and the photo layout is cleaner and easier to navigate.
The Not So Good Side to Day One 2.0
Unfortunately, not everything is wonderful in the new Day One update. Surprisingly, a few features have been removed in the 2.0 version with the promise of being added at a later date. Give then legacy of the last version of Day One which over 5 years had 40 free major updates (including a flat redesign) and the presence of a road-map on the Day One blog, this looks a much better bet than some other app developers who promise updates only to fold. Still, Some of these features may be central to your Day One experience, potentially null and voiding its merits.
These missing features include the publish feature, Dropbox and iCloud syncing (Day One insist that their sync is more reliable, secure and free, hence the need to use their service).
Alternatives
There are a selection of alternative tools that you might want to consider if you like the idea of journaling, but Day one doesn’t suit you for some reason.
Journey
Journey is an Android and Chrome app that has clearly been modeled from Day One. Despite saying that, it has evolved to have its own unique take and features that are absent in Day One. Journey uses Google Drive to sync, can publish to WordPress, Tumblr and other publishing services, exporting as a Docx or PDF, and Journey supports video entries.
If you love Android then this is a great choice for you.
Evernote
If you don’t want a separate app or something that you need to pay for, you could just use Evernote. Evernote rich entries can make it a great choice to add a variety of data plus allow you to sync in different places and have rich media. With the use of Evernote notebooks, you can also get the “multiple journal” feature that Day One is boasting.
Momento
Momento is a different approach to journaling. Not only can you add your own notes and entries manually, but it will also pull in data from different sources (including social networks) to add details from your day into an entry automatically.
This makes Momento a bit more unique from the other alternatives. Unfortunately, Momento is limited to only the iPhone at the moment so you won’t be able to add entries on your desktop.
Rounding Up
Day One 2 seems to be a step forward, but also a little bit of a step backwards too. I have no problem with paying for an upgrade to an app especially after gaining so much value from it for so long, however I wish it had all the features of the previous version to make it an easy recommendation. If you are very fond of some of the features of the first version of Day One then wait a bit longer before you upgrade.
Design: 5 stars
Features: 3.5 stars
Performance: 5 stars
Value for Money: 4 stars
Day One 2 supports iOS and Mac OSX.
Learn more about Day One 2.
Eric Dye says
It’s a shame about the name, but when you name something XXX One, you’re going to have that problem. I still wonder if Day Two might have been a good move, but SEO, branding, etc… would get hurt. They were really painted into a corner with the name. :-/
Chris Wilson says
Yeah, Day One is a great name though. I think 2.0 would have been better but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ doesn’t affect the app quality.
Blessing Mpofu says
I’ve enjoyed using Day One. Cutting back on the features from the first version is what I’m not happy about.
I haven tried version 2 part… However; the simplicity and ‘cleanness’ of version one is one of the things I liked. How do the new features affect that?
Chris Wilson says
I don’t think the cut back in features is… TOO big a deal for me. The change in sync hasn’t really affected me, you can still export into dropbox if you like and using Day One sync saves icloud/dropbox space so I think it’s a win (plus it’s the set up for Android!) Losing publish is a bit of a shame but I didn’t really use Publish anyway. Other than that, I don’t think there are too many other features which have been taken away… Is there a particular feature you are worried about not being present?
The new interface is just as clean and simple. The only issue I’ve run into since using it, is I accidentally made two work journals and I can’t delete one! But I could rename it so it’s not too bad. Still that’s something I hope would be updated.
I hope that helps.
Neil says
Still clueless as to they can’t come up with an Android app and expand their base instead of being another Nokia of Journaling apps.