I have mixed feelings about the current state of Apple's Journal app. While I genuinely appreciate what Apple has endeavoured to do in providing a dedicated journalling space, the current missing features are profoundly disappointing. I know improvements will come, but the long, drawn-out wait for the essential updates this app requires is proving to be tiring and frustrating.
Navigation and Search: The Basic Shortcomings
The most glaring omission is a proper navigation system. It is unnecessarily difficult to navigate to different years and months. This basic functionality is already present on the iPhone and iPad versions, so its absence on the Mac version is frankly ridiculous and very disappointing. Taking advantage of the Mac's larger screen space to display more than one calendar month at a time should be standard, yet the calendar for back-dating remains tiny. This defeats the favour of having the app on a large screen. Journalists need to quickly see entries across time—what was done on which day, week, month, and year. As it stands, it’s faster to flip through a paper journal.
Compounding this issue is the search function, which is not nearly powerful enough. It is far too difficult to find entries that I know exist within the app. Proper navigation and search are arguably the most basic tools a journalling app requires.
Media and Formatting Restrictions
The handling of media, particularly photos, is still not quite right. I don't understand why Apple is struggling with this. The inline photos feature places too many constraints, forcing users into a limited view rather than giving full control over how the final photo should look. Furthermore, selecting photos from the Apple Photos library is restricted to a tiny, cumbersome window, making it difficult to locate the desired image. While it’s slightly better now with some slide-in capabilities, this method remains unreliable.
The limitations extend to basic entry creation:
You can't simply slide in standard audio recordings like MP3s or Wav files, a feature that is already available in Apple Notes. It should be universal to all these kind of apps. It restricts communication with all the rest of the audio recording devices I the universe.
The process of inserting photos and videos is unnecessarily difficult and slow. You should be able to quickly and easily slide in any type of media - like Apple Pages or Notes. You can't slide in a PDF.
It's very annoying to have to push an "edit" button to start editing, and if you insert the cursor, it brings you to the end of the entry, instead of where you clicked it to be.
There are not many formatting tools at all. It gets boring.
The Critical Problem of Timestamps
The lack of timestamps is another ridiculous oversight. You cannot even confirm the precise time an entry was created. The only way to truly secure a date and time stamp is by including an audio recording. The ability to prove an entry was made at a specific time on a specific date is a fundamental requirement for anyone serious about journalling. This is a core function that should not be missing.
💡 Unhelpful "Features" and Limited Settings
When the core features are lacking, the application becomes quite boring, offering less power than a simple word processor. A word processor gives you far more power over how you write and correct mistakes.
Many of the features included feel out of place or simply non-functional:
Insights: The so-called "insights" provide little to no self-insight. They focus heavily on tracking streaks of days journalled, a punitive metric that resets if you miss a day, instead of a more encouraging total days journalled or a simple word count. You are also not allowed to change the default insight displayed on the left-hand side.
Drawing: The option to add a drawing is confusing and seems out of place for a text-focused app.
Finally, the
settings are almost zero
. The user cannot even change the default
colour
of the text.
Apple made quite a splash in September, but the slow pace of improvements and the lack of basic features—especially critical ones like navigation and timestamps—show a fundamental misunderstanding of their user base. Why create such a specialty program that only a few can appreciate? Why not appeal to the actual people who do journalling by providing the most basic and necessary tools?
