- Build a Journal streak with at least one entry per week
- Use the Journal widget to keep track
- Log Mindful Minutes and State of Mind from the Journal app
Apple’s Journal app offers a free and secure way to keep a rich personal diary, and with iOS 18 it brings data-driven insights and a few other improvements to your daily journaling journey.
Insights
It might seem odd to want to quantify something as subjective and personal as a journal, but the numbers have their benefits. Diving into the data can help you solidify a journaling habit, or spot life and mental health trends that might otherwise be missed.
You’ll see a few key stats at the top of Journal’s main view, and you can tap any of them to see the Insights page in full. (Alternatively, choose Insights from the … menu). Here you’ll see several different types of data to help better reflect on your precious memories.
At the top, you’ll see your current streak, which continues to build so long as you write an entry at least once a week. There’s even a Home Screen widget that shows your streaks, as a regular reminder to keep it going.
Below that, a stats category summarizes your diary entries in numbers: entries, days, visits, and total word count. Finally, there’s a nice visual calendar that marks each day you wrote a journal entry.
Healthy mind
Journal now integrates with the mental health features of the Health app. You’ll be prompted to connect the two together to automatically log time spent journaling as Mindful Minutes. You can also add a State of Mind update within the Journal app, by choosing the rightmost menu icon when composing a new entry.
To enable these features, you’ll need to grant Health Access permissions from the … menu, and toggle on State of Mind in Settings > Privacy & Security > Journaling Suggestions.
Soul searching
You’ll also find much improved search and organization capabilities in Journal in iOS 18. You can filter by Bookmarks, Photos, Videos, and Places via the Search bar, and you can sort the entries by the date they were written or the date they actually happened.
Finally, you can now log audio notes and have the app automatically transcribe them for you. Neat!