Day One: Daily Journal & Diary

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1. ★★★★★subscription and paid restrictions

   Used to be good, now AI slop + in your face premium features. If you don't mind constant popups begging you to pay them money to have the basic human right to change your color scheme, and don't mind how for some reason they too, are shoving AI features in your face you can just barely turn off, Then this app is great. But for anyone else, it's grown to be unusable. And with the way the modern internet is, it probably won't ever show you this review because they withhold information to hold more power over you. If you have to take away anything let it be this, stay true to yourself and don't let any screens or technology affect you. Learn to rely on yourself and learn the real truth that they hide from you to make more money. They control your screens now, and if you let the screens influence you, they control your mind, and the worlds mind to. Spread the word.

2. ★★★★★subscription and paid restrictions

   AI Slop. I pay for a Silver subscription. I don’t care about AI and I don’t want to be constantly pestered to ‘upgrade’ to the Gold plan. This app is now garbage. You’ve ruined it. I have unsubscribed. Good riddance. In response to the developer: it’s too late. You’ve lost a paying customer for life. Stupid decisions have consequences.

3. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

   Can’t access the free journal anymore. Now the screen shows up as Buy or no longer being able to access the basic version? This is not nice at all

4. ★★★★★subscription and paid restrictions

   Why charge a lot more for what was included in premium?. I really liked Day One. I’ve had it for over five years. They recently included some Ai features that were included in my premium service. You could generate AI IMAGES from your entries, get prompts, and some great summaries for your entries., I had really been enjoying this new addition to DayOne. UNTIL TONIGHT— when those features were suddenly 🚫removed 🚫 from my premium membership ! NOW they made a new membership level that costs more and if you want those previously included in Premium, you have to upgrade to Silver. It really stinks that I received the AI features for a short time only to have Day One take them away. I am strongly thinking of canceling my over 5 year old membership and looking for another journaling app. Thanks a lot,DayOne. 👎🏽

5. ★★★★★a needed feature is missing

   Unorganized and complicated. Your app sucks. Where’s the calendar?! So many options I can never find the only thing I need the screen with the calendar. So many options it’s so unorganized i can’t find anything! And everytime I try to enter something for yesterday it will write a new entry for today. No I clearly clicked on yesterday. Your app is so fkn annoying. Unessary complicated. Instead of my giant calendar I have to keep fkn scrolling by each day and it doesn’t even automatically show what I wrote it shows a bunch of pictures of my camera roll of options to put in… like just show me what I wrote nice and easy and quick. Instead it’s all a fkn migraine. So fkn unorganized and annoying. I’ve been using this for weeks and I still can’t get the hang of it . I hate this app. Used to be a big screen of a big calendar and u can click on the day.. where did it go?!! Why am I scrolling day by day?! Is it gone?!

6. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

   From 5 ⭐️to No More. Functionality LOST with Apple’s updates from April, May and June. Was holding out hope until the June update. Now more grief than when I began journaling. Years of archiving my journey with a rare disease for my daughter and those who come afterwards was healing and empowering. Now I cannot even open years of work. Evil overlords for the win again. Go tech bros. Thanks.

7. ★★★★★subscription and paid restrictions

   used to love this app but its wayyyy to expensive now? and not even any options to do pay monthly. i paid $10 or so for the old version of this app. each year the price is more and more expensive. $10/lifetime, then $4/per month, then $8, then $12, now the only option is $75 yearly?! sad to have to find an alternative

8. ★★★★★subscription and paid restrictions

   Complete money grab. all the basic features are hidden behind pay walls. You can’t even put it two images in the same notes without paying on top of that the prices are egregious $74 a month I believe. It didn’t seem to me because the app is very basic. You can find way better app for free doing the same thing for much better results I will be copying and pasting a few notes that I have in here into my new Notes app and will be deleting as soon as possible😭

9. ★★★★★trial charges and refunds

   How do I get my money back???. I started a free 30 day trial about 5 minutes ago but I was immediately charged for a full year. I’ve already gone into subscriptions and cancelled. HOW DO I GET MY MONEY BACK???? Very deceptive and dishonest practice!!

10. ★★★★★subscription and paid restrictions

    User since 2012. They’ve added new AI functionality, and despite it being on a plan I don’t pay for, and despite this being functionality I would never use in a personal journal — there’s no way to turn it off. It’s always sitting there, waiting for you to accidentally hit it.

11. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    Bad. App won't update at all no matter the wifi, can't delete it because it won't update.

12. ★★★★★subscription and paid restrictions

    Be Ware of the duplicate charges. I wanted this app to sync between my iPhone and MacBook so I purchased the subscription. They’ve charged me twice for the same subscription. They agree it’s the same but they blame Apple. When I reach out to Apple they blame Dayone for having different ID numbers for the same subscription as a result reading as two different items. I have wasted so much time trying to get a refund and I have no recourse. I am very unhappy having spent $100 for something so simple. I should have just used Google Docs. They need to do better.

13. ★★★★★data, history or progress disappears

    AI reading entries! Why? Since when??!?. Private features gone after 3.5 year streak break .

14. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    App crashes. Can’t use it. The app crashes 2 seconds after I open it. Only started happening after the latest update. Never had an issue before.

15. ★★★★★subscription and paid restrictions

    Trust Is Lost. I know the AI garbage is "opt-in" (for now) but I do not trust that it won't eventually work it's way into my private information. I mean they're using OpenAI, a company that's as sketchy as they come and I would never trust with anything! I've been using Day One since it was released but now I'm done. I cannot trust Day One's keepers anymore. I can't believe Paul & Co would think throwing AI into a journal app is an acceptable path to take. I knew the acquisition by Automattic would eventually lead to a terrible decision. I'll be exporting and letting my membership expire at the end of next month. What a bummer...

16. ★★★★★an update broke a familiar workflow

    Ai & price jump. The recent new update made me very unsatisfied. Been using the app for a few years and I loved it, but after the new update they ruined it. Why do they have to add AI for. To make it worse the button to use AI is everywhere in the app without a way to turn them off. The final nail in the coffin was the price jump. Why $35 to $50. Seriously? Sad they are going this route.

17. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    AI. I’m done with apps that shove AI down our throats.

18. ★★★★★an update broke a familiar workflow

    Daily user since 2014 Now Looking for an alternative. Writing this review on behalf of my mom. She was a longtime user of this app since 2014. But the iOS glass or update has ruined everything. Her older entries aren’t here. It’s missing so much. It’s a disaster in every single way. Thank god she has older devices where she can still access the older version of the app. I regret getting her a new phone. She’s so upset. And she pays for gold. This is a nightmare.

19. ★★★★★subscription and paid restrictions

    Paying User since March ‘11 Launch. Your arrogance in pushing all to Gold, without a hint of permission, tells us who you are at your core. Likewise, your AI delusions of grandeur confirm who is, and is not, in the room as you cement decisions. Translation → I defy anyone to tap the Create an Entry image, using ANY of its type choices, and come up with something that does NOT shout #OscarsSoWhite. It’s a well known problem, arrested only by the intelligent. Eg Download MindSera’s trial, play around in it, and notice their gentle yet effective taming mechanism. WordPress people, this you can NOT blame on Apple. YOU chose your coding. YOU chose to remain blind. Anything with your name on it now joins the Target list.

20. ★★★★★subscription and paid restrictions

    Forcing ai into the compose view. There’s a new ai button in the compose view that can’t be hidden. I’ve been a paying subscriber for a decade but I’ll migrate all my notes soon if there’s no option to hide it. I appreciate that all the ai features are opt in but now I am constantly reminded that they exist. Sad.

21. ★★★★★saving, exporting or sharing the result fails

    Latest update completely fried it. I’ve used Day One for years. Over the last few weeks, the typing became very laggy, almost to the point of not being usable. Then, today, it attempted to update, but is stuck halfway downloaded. I am unable to either delete the app or cancel the download, so I have no access to it at all. I’m disappointed, as this has been my favorite app. Please fix it quickly!

22. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    Going from five stars to one star. Day One is using AI to upsell sloppy features that are just plain risky to use. AI in my journals? Hell no. You lost my trust and respect by automatically turning on AI features.

23. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    Why is there AI??. Extremely disappointed with Day One and Automattic for the integration of AI into the app. I loved this app for years, but shoehorning in the AI features with a price hike was a dealbreaker. No longer subscribed, and moving to text edit.

24. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    memories brokener. bad app,evil company

25. ★★★★★data, history or progress disappears

    Lost all of my data. I had been using day one for over a year and lost everything. Worst app ever

26. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    Keeps freezing daily. I used to love this app. I've been using it for years. It has been freezing daily and it's unusable.

27. ★★★★★subscription and paid restrictions

    Ai Slop. I’ve been happily paying for Day One for years. Now they’ve introduced AI slop into the app and I immediately canceled my plan. I will never let them use my data for LLM. They’ve broken all trust with this bad update.

28. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    Duck AI. AI is raising my power bills and it’s polluting water. It’s investors bait, and shows the devs don’t care about what the people who buy their software.

29. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    Not able to open!! Used for years but can’t ATM!. Been using this app for a few years without any problem until now. I can’t even open the app, it’s stuck in updating on my iPad Air M3!

30. ★★★★★subscription and paid restrictions

    Introducing AI features while ignoring stuttering/slowdown/insane overheating. Been using this app for five years and have loved it, but the update they claimed fixed the issues that have been plaguing the app for the last few weeks did nothing for me. I was happy to see another update come through, sure that this would actually fix the problem. But this update just adds a new paid tier full of AI stuff that’s completely unnecessary and just bogs down what should be a simple app. I could ignore that if the technical issues weren’t still making the app unusable. My email to the developers simply generated an AI auto-reply generated from their FAQ that seemed to be outdated, so I don’t even know if the devs know that some people are still experiencing the issues they claim were fixed a couple updates ago. Ready and willing to change this to 5 stars if they can just actually fix this issue.