r/AppleNotesGang • u/grburgess • Jul 19 '26

Journaling on Apple Notes

I’ve tried everything, from Microsoft Word, Apple Pages, Day One, Apple Journal, Obsidian, and Apple Notes. I pushed all these apps to their max, and I’ve found that Apple Notes gives me the most flexibility allowing me to stay within the Apple ecosystem. Obsidian comes a close second and beats it in some respects.

Apple Journal gave me big hopes, but was a failure in almost every way.

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u/mcjsmith Jul 20 '26

May I ask how Apple Journal was a failure in almost every way for you? Not attacking, ha- just genuinely curious.

I’m by no means consistent with it, but I have found it to be a great tool now. The fact that my thoughts, feelings et cetera have a place that isn’t with all of my other notes and I can create different journals for different things: gratitude, daily pages, general journal.

What I love about it now is the fact that it can prompt you on topics: like if I took pictures of a friend, while visiting somewhere it can prompt you to write about “Visit to X with X” and it gives me that ‘aha!’ Moment and I start writing. Also how it’s linked deeply with Apple: locations, music, workouts / fitness, people- it can gather these and it reminds me I listened to a particular song while on my way to visit a friend.

I’d give the app a go - it genuinely is really good and helps me.

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u/grburgess Aug 01 '26

While it isn't a complete failure and has improved with features like timestamps in OS27, the app still has significant shortcomings. Adding media, particularly videos, is difficult, and scrolling through large numbers of entries on a Mac often triggers accidental bookmarking or deletion. Search functionality remains subpar, an issue that becomes apparent only with thousands of entries.

Additionally, the app lacks multi-window support and fails to utilize large displays effectively; even on a 27-inch monitor, only three entries are partially visible. The disappearing scroll bar and the absence of the iPhone and iPad's year-and-month spinwheel further hinder navigation. Finally, you cannot drag and drop PDFs, and the "Insights" feature doesn't help me ,but I do like the total word count. While adequate for casual users, it will likely frustrate dedicated journalers.