Diarly: Diary, Private Journal

What people write about

Direction describes a theme in aggregate. An individual review may differ — select a theme to inspect its star profile and every text.

loading the rest of the reviews

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

   I Still Can’t Figure Out How to Use This. Title says it all.

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

   Lost data during migration. Where did all my entries go after migration? This app upgrade lost all my entries!!

3. ★★★★★subscription and paid restrictions

   Years of Data Gone. After updating the app, it kept freezing, so I could not write any entries in it. I deleted and reinstalled the application, and all my data disappeared despite having backup on. I contacted the developer and was told I just turned the backup on, and there was nothing they could do, but they would offer me free premium if I contacted them when my subscription ends.

4. ★★★★★subscription and paid restrictions

   Potential but basic features are broken. Back in the day I had a subscription but I canceled it because it started to add more complex features like AI while at the same time basic features are broken, I can’t even create a link in a template, and choosing the app icon does not work on iPhone 16 I recommend to Diarly to go back to the basics

5. ★★★★★trial charges and refunds

   Told from free trial was instantly charged.. Trying to get a hold of staff, but nothing works—everything just leads to another link. I’m very disappointed. If I had liked the app, I would’ve paid for the year, but this is ridiculous. I’m being charged and told I would have one free week.

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

   What a bummer!. I really don’t like the new layout. I’ve been using this App for so many years now and have always enjoyed updates, but this new version is not efficient at all, all entries jammed in one page, so very disorganised and unpleasant to look at. It doesn’t work for me, so disappointed!

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

   New UI Just Adds More Taps. The new UI just adds more sections I don’t need, and the tabs are mostly duplicate info unless you keep multiple journals. The developer needs to understand that just changing the UI for change sake isn’t a good look. I just want a reliable journaling tool that works the same day in and day out. I will probably see if Apple’s built in Journal works for my purposes.

8. ★★★★★login, signup and account access

   Password Protect. This application REFUSES to allow me to password protect my journal. When I try to do so I get in an endless loop where I select “Password Protect”, enter the password and select enter and I am right back to the original page asking me to enter the password. I want what I put in my journal to be protected and if this is not possible then it is worthless to me. Either fix this error or I will go elsewhere! … Day One?

9. ★★★★★a needed feature is missing

   Please add lifetime. I hate subscriptions please add lifetime purchase

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

    Not intuitive. Too hard to use. Help feature is not helpful

11. ★★★★★trial charges and refunds

    Syncing across apps on different devices not working. I almost never write app reviews, but this app has truly been disappointing! I favored Diarly over Day One when I was picking an app to keep a diary for my toddler son because of the data security feature. And for the most part, Diarly and Day One seem to have the same main functions (Day One does have some more bells and whistles), and the most important one is syncing between different devices. I like to take pictures with my phone and may jot down some ideas on the phone which I will use my iPad to finish (so I can use a keyboard). However, it’s not working. I’ve tried contacting their support team when I was still in the 7 day free trial period, now the 7 days has passed, I never heard back, data is still not syncing and I have been charged with a year subscription. WORST experience!!!

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

    Too expensive. Too expensive

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

    Can't import txt(zip). The software prompts you to import xx files. But after clicking OK, 0 bars are actually displayed. However, if you export the imported diary (which appears empty in the software) as a PDF, you can actually see the imported contents.

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

    Too complicated. I wanted just a basic tool to help me track my To Dos, my moods, what happened today, my health etc. I just could not navigate around Diarly. I’m 62 and I don’t have enough hours left in my life to waste any more time on this app.

15. ★★★★★trial charges and refunds

    Horrible horrible app. Horrible, horrible. Trying to delete, can’t. It’s listed in my Apple purchases but not my subscriptions. There is no phone number to contact support. There is an email address. Says you can get refund within the free trial period, then you’re stuck. Think maybe you could send out an email notification that trial period is ending in a day or two? Can’t sign on, don’t know why. It’s not in apple passwords. I haven’t used this app, I want it deleted and I want a refund. I’ll also be sending an email. Thanks for nothing. Hope everyone who uses Diarly doesn’t really believe their privacy is protected. It isn’t.

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

    re-up to expired account. price options were presented in three tronches: monthy, six months, and 12 month. I wanted the advertised 2 year option at $3.99/month - that was not an option so I did not choose any of the three. I suddenly was "activated" and have no way to back out . I have no idea what I was signed up for.

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

    No reset for password?. I just recently “lost” my password and couldn’t find it. I found out that there is NO password reset possible! Are you freaking kidding me?! I can’t believe that in 2022 you don’t have the option to reset your password! I am NOT advocating for anyone else to have access to my entries. Even my password manager app has the option of a password reset! I am “lucky” that I didn’t have months or years of daily entries. I would give Diarly four or more stars if there were a password reset option.

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

    DOESNT WORK WITH APPLE PENCIL. If you expect to write entries with Apple Pencil save ur time and money this app us not for you. I tried writing developers for help and support but was told they didn’t take Apple Pencil to be the primary tool people would use… well it’s a journal so it’s all I want to use. Wish I could get my money back how can they not care to properly support Apple Pencil !!

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

    Can’t retrieve deleted file. Twice in several years of using Diarly, I mistakenly selected and instead of copy, I clicked cut. And now on this app nor on my iPad I have not found any way to retrieve these entries. Both this app and iPad don’t have a way to easily, if at all, to do this! I won’t use it again because of the frustration I’ve experienced today. Other than that, I have loved using this simple diary.

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

    Not easy. Can’t navigate very easilyAdded an entry and now can’t find it

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

    I love this app…..but. Not sure if it is because of a new iOS update but once I enter my password the app crashes on my phone. Works fine on my computer. When this gets fixed, I will give it 5 stars

22. ★★★★★subscription and paid restrictions

    Just as bad as the others. Found this when I was looking for a Day One alternative, but he’s just as greedy as the others—the app requires a subscription, and putting all privacy features behind a sub is especially gross. Never. I’d pay $40 for something like this—once. I believe in buying apps once, not every month.

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

    Some dates of the diary I wrote are gone!. Many months are gone from my Diarly app. Is it because of the update? I haven’t migrate to the new app yet, and they are already gone from the old app? Not reliable. Fortunately, I kept a copy of al my diary.

24. ★★★★★subscription and paid restrictions

    Wrong 🤧🤧🤧🤧. I want an app to record me I guess that’s a misnomer I’ll reconsider. Cancel my subscription immediately!

25. ★★★★★trial charges and refunds

    Interesting app. But subscription is a no go.. There were some reviews mention that there was a one time payment option. But trying out the app showed it was a 1 week trial then a forced subscription with no option for a one time payment. Description doesn't clearly state that this is a one week trial.

26. ★★★★★slow performance and long loading times

    Version 1.4.5. The new icloud udate didn't really work. The app was working great for me and then the new udpate came out and it's so slow and takes forever to load anything. I love the app before this.

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

    Beware before you buy. You are locked into having one journal entry per day. This is also true on the full version. You can have many journals (notebooks) but only one entry in each journal per day. There is no "plus" button, nor there is a "New Entry" on the File menu.

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

    What is wrong with the people who designed this. I opened it up, and it gave me a list of things to try. None actually did anything to help me get started. It felt like I bought something to help me only to be given a quiz or a puzzle and no help using it.

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

    No support. The website (which is where the "support" link sends you) doesn't seem to have any documentation, FAQ, or (most importantly) even a way to contact the developers! I've never seen an app with worse support options.

30. ★★★★★subscription and paid restrictions

    Missing a huge feature for me. The app if you’re just using it as a basic journaling app is totally serviceable. But I planned on using this as a cheaper alternative in terms of subscription costs to other markdown-based note taking tools, and that’s where it falls short in a major way: Notes are defaulted to a timeline/daily view. Even if you put a title in a note entered in the timeline/daily note section though, you can’t backlink to it as far as I can tell. This can be solved by copying/pasting a note from the timeline view into the notes section, but that gets frustrating and cumbersome. If there’s a way to title a daily note from how I see it on a user’s perspective, then the app should treat it as a note.