I’ve read several positive comments here from folks that love the Journal app in OS26. Some have even said it’s the one thing they’re upgrading to get. So I’m feeling a bit uninitiated/ignorant here, but…it seems to me like nothing more than Notes with a bit of UI polish. I must be missing something. So I’m eager to hear from its fans what that is.
For me it is a combination of a designated destination designed for journaling, ease of use of the Journal app itself, syncing with all my devices and…it’s free!
For a few years >20 years ago I used MacJournal but for various reasons fell out of the journaling habit. Looking back at many of those entries I so wish I would have continued.
Journal provides an easy re-entry and I’m looking forward to using it.
I’m not a fan per se, but Journal offers map view, a date-orientated interface, and writing prompts. Notes does not.
I’m the one who said Journal app was one of the reasons I opted in to Tahoe, but I certainly don’t ‘love’ it. It’s already proven to be buggy and unreliable. In time though, I’m sure this will improve.
I do, however, want a unified place where I can manage personal musings. I’m a ‘power user’ of Notes but have never found it suitable for Journaling. The idea of writing lengthy texts on a phone is unappealing (to me) so I don’t like Journal app on the phone. Being able to write using an actual keyboard is far more likely to see the Journal habit ingrain.
From a personal standpoint, I enjoy tracking things I do. I’m heavily involved in fitness and exercise and whilst Fitness and Strava can manage the metrics of what I do, I like to expand beyond the basics. If you saw my old diving logs with extensive maps and verbose descriptions you may understand.
I’m keeping a journal of my current classic car restoration, and I’ll Journal extensively while travelling. I create books of every major trip we do so it will be very handy to have much of the foundational work already done.
I think I understand better. Thanks! It seems I’m not a “journaler,” hence the lack of attraction on my part. I’m particularly impressed @trilo journaled his dives! Used to do a bit of that myself, back in the day.
Keeping a journal can be good for many reasons, as enumerated here and elsewhere. For Apple’s Journal app, the big deal is that it enables creation of a chronicle of the user’s mental state, which is or can become integrated with other information the user maintains about himself. This chronicle is automatically indexed with the date, time, and user location at the time of creation of each entry, facilitating integration. Analysis of this extensive compilation of data for each user eventually will enable Apple AI to provide the self-knowledge for the Apple user. Information recorded by the user in Apple journal will enable the insight created by Apple AI to reflect on these topics, as they relate to the user.
This is, of course, only my speculation that Journal could fit into Apple’s announced intention to have a major impact on health, and uses of AI.
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I left out a main point. Analysis of this personal user data by Apple AI will be only on the user’s Mac. Local-only analysis for AI will strongly differentiate Apple AI from most (all?) other AI, which is done in the cloud, away from the user.
Maybe it’s just not part of your Ikigai.
When I was younger and traveled a quite a bit, I wrote for several diving magazines. Many destinations would ask to see your log books before letting you do some of the more advanced dives, so logging was almost necessary. Most of my buddies logged their dives as well. In the early 80s I was producing and selling spiral bound log books for divers, maybe why I was so invested 
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I’ve been journaling every day (a reflection that I work on my car restoration every day) and it’s been interesting how easy it is to jot down a few notes about progress. Whilst that has been easy, the Journal app is a punish - it seems to constantly be fighting the user.
The image handling is simply terrible. You place the cursor into a space between paragraphs, select a picture from photos and it throws it to the top of the page - even when I already have other images there. It does allow you to drag images around once placed, but it is highly unreliable and primitive.
I’m going to stick with it because I expect it will improve over time, but right now it makes TextEdit look like InDesign. The organisation and structure is passable, but the actual writing - text entry and image content - is truly woeful.
Oh, and the Add a Location bug still requires a Force Quit if you use it. I had hoped the 26.0.1 update might fix it.