Apple is Creating an iPhone Journaling App, Says Report

Apple is reportedly developing a journaling app that will be included for free for iPhone, reports the Wall Street Journal.

The app is code-named “Jurassic” and will help users track their daily activities, thoughts, and mental well-being, according to sources. This move apparently aligns with the company’s increased focus on mental and physical health technology, as seen with the Apple Watch.

The app will compete with existing journaling apps like Day One, and follows a trend where Apple builds apps that resemble those made by other developers. This practice, sometimes referred to as “sherlocking,” has led to concerns about intellectual property and competition. News like this is the worst for developers when they hear Apple is entering the same space.

However, Apple’s new app will reportedly be able to gather more user data than its competitors, such as text messages and phone calls, allowing for a more comprehensive experience.

The so-called Jurassic app will be designed with privacy and security as top priorities, analyzing user data on-device to ensure it is not transmitted or shared. The app is expected to be announced at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference or later, and will be preloaded onto every iPhone with iOS 17 (codenamed ‘Dawn’), the next version of the company’s mobile operating system.

Day One’s founder, Paul Mayne, acknowledged the challenge of differentiating their products from the tech giant’s offerings.

“It’s always the worst thing to have to hear that you’re about to be sherlocked,” said Paul Mayne to the WSJ. He also said support for Day One from Apple mysteriously dropped off three years ago. The app was featured in the App Store heavily before and the move hinted that the company could have been making its own journaling app at the time.

Day One was sold in 2021 to Automattic, the parent company of Wordpress but Maybe still leads the company.

Day One is a great journaling app (we haven’t used it in ages) and it’ll be interesting to see what Apple’s version will be like. If Apple can hook users into using its own journaling app (like exclusive to iOS?), it’s another way to keep users locked onto iPhone, so they don’t switch away to Android.

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