Day One 2 App for iOS

Upgrade to Day One 2 App

Day One 2 App is a marvellous application for digital journaling. I use Day One 2 every single day to write in my Digital Journal and so it was a no-brainer to update to the latest version. I had heard it was coming a few days before and I had my own little countdown because I wanted to get the application on my devices as soon as possible. It’s been written from the ground up and as often is the case with such a type of upgrade, the application is fast in operation. There are a number of new facilities and possibilities within the new Day One 2 App, which is great because we are always looking for improvements in our software.

What’s new in Day One 2 App

Multiple journals

Have more than one journal within the Day One 2 journalling application. We all like to compartmentalise our lives, so it is no surprise that we would like to do the same with our journal. You can keep it quite simple in terms of maybe having a journal for personal and then another journal for work. Then again, it’s possible to split things in as many sections as you see fit. I have set it up with a single main journal with just one separate area and that is for writing. It’s a good idea for a writer to keep a journal on the progress of various writing projects. I could do that with an area within Ulysses or within Scrivener. On account of the fact that I write a journal every day using Day One 2 App, it makes more sense for me to have my writing journal within that Day One.

Fantastic search facilities in Day One 2

While it makes things easier to find entries you made by splitting the diary into separate journals, those journals can still get quite large. My main Day One 2 App journal has over 3000 entries and I need to have a way to search within those entries. I absolutely love the search facilities available now within this updated application. You can search for specific words and within the iOS application the timeline will be filled with all of the entries containing your search term. There is a very powerful way to search within your entries and that is to use tags. It’s not too difficult to remember when creating an entry to add a tag to it. Only the first time you add a new tag will you have to fill out all of the word. Every time after that you’ll only need to put in a couple of letters and autofill will show you the tags available. If I type in the letter B, I see I have four words beginning with that letter. Just one more tap to choose one of them and I have the first tag applied to that entry. I can add more tags if I wish. The application window shows you how many entries you have already using tags you’ve created.

Searching for entries by filtering

There are some automatic tags created, starting with the date. Each time you create a new entry it is given a tag for the year in which it’s been created. There are also tags based on activity. You can choose from stationary, walking, eating all the way through to flying or being on a train. If the application knows what you’re doing it will put it in automatically. If the entry is made while you’re listening to music, Day One will also make a note of that. Then the other tag is whether or not it has been given a star to signify it being a favourite.

Lets do some filtering in Day One

So you start off by looking at your timeline with over 3000 entries. If I choose the year 2015 it just shows me 812 entries. I can go back into my tag filters and add another filter such as favourites and now my timeline only shows 14 entries. These are the entries from last year also with a star to show they are favourites. It would be nice if the filtering system could then go even further by using the search for a specific word. Unfortunately, that search is not connected to the filters already set up. There is one other filter entitled Published. In the old version of Day One it was possible to publish to social networks and to a Day One webpage. That is something missing from this new version of Day One. It is possible still, to filter based on that tag. So now I’m looking at a filtered timeline showing me just those entries which have a star from the year 2015 and those which were published. That search criteria just gives me one entry from the over 3000 entries in the database. When you’ve found whatever it is you’re looking for and you want to go back to see all of your entries again, all you have to do is to click at the bottom of the list to clear filters. All searching started from the standard timeline view.

Photos view – A new feature in Day One 2

You can begin your search by looking at the photos view. This is just going to show you the entries that include a photo. It’s then possible to filter from that list. Same as before, tap on the small icon at the top right of that pane, the one in between the magnifying glass and the gear icon. That will bring up the window once again that allows you to choose how you want to filter your timeline. In this search I started off with all of the entries with photos and I added the filter for favourites and the filter for the year 2016. This gives me four entries out of my total 3184.

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Searching based upon location

Another starting point for your search is based upon location. Perhaps you are looking for an entry which you know you wrote in a specific place. In this search instance my starting point will be Barcelona. I’m looking for an entry made in Barcelona in the city centre. So I open up the map view and locate Barcelona on the map. At the bottom of the map I can see that out of my total of journal entries I made 10 while in the Barcelona region. I can tap on the button and Day One 2 App shows me just those ten in the timeline. Again I can use the tags to further whittle down the list. In this case I’ve added the time for 2015 and two entries are removed from the list showing. If I had one more search criteria – Published entries, then all I’m shown is just one single entry. So now I have the entry I was looking for of the time I went to collect my mum from the Barcelona airport. If I tap on the small information icon in the bottom right corner I get all of the details of the entry. I can also add or change any of the details for that entry. So I could add a tag for family or for mom to the entry. Even though the ability to publish your entries in one go to Facebook and Twitter as well as to the Day One page has gone, if I click on more at the bottom of that window I get access to the share menu. I can still share out to the social networks, but I have to do it one network at a time.

The search on calendar view

The other view for looking at your entries is a calendar view. This is the least useful view for your Day One journal. I suppose it could be handy if you want to see if you have missed a day when you are journalling. Perhaps, you like to have a look at how often you to a particular type of entry. If you do a backup of your computer and make a note of it in Day One 2 App, you could have a visual view of how your backup strategy is working. The calendar view could be useful if you want to choose a particular date and initiate an entry for either a day in the past or a day in the future.

Creating entries in Day One

In the left-hand panel in the top half there is a icon for a camera and a plus icon. tapping on either of those will start a new entry and obviously if you choose the icon that looks like a camera it will take you to your camera roll and to your camera. You can choose up to 10 images to put into your entry and then the window opens up for you to type in or dictate using Siri whatever you want to say to go with your picture. At the bottom of the entry you’ll see to the left where you can choose which journal you want to add the entry to. The next icon is where you choose from the tags you have already created or you add a new one. Then you have the icon allowing you to set the location for the entry. You have a choice of four options for adding a location – Select Nearby Place, Use Current Location, Search, Select from Map and then the other option is to remove the location from the entry.

Writing your Journal in Day One 2 App

For speed I recommend using Siri dictation to put the text in there. With all of the filtering and search facilities available it is definitely worthwhile adding as much meta data as possible to each post. If you use one topic per entry it is good for the tagging. Although it doesn’t matter if you add as many tags as needed to cover all of the topics in the entry. Whatever works best for you.

Day One 2 for iOS

Can you use just the iOS version for your journaling? Do you need to have the Mac version of the app? Day One 2 for the iPad and iPhone could be all you need. If you are a post PC person it will surely fit the bill. If you think the Mac version is more than you want to pay, then using only iOS will work great. I like to have for both the Mac and the iOS devices because I work constantly on both platforms. The ability to use Dragon Dictate on my Mac is important for me. Otherwise I could easily just do iOS.

Go and have a a look to see if the Day One 2 App is still on offer. If it isn’t, then get it anyway. It’s a great app and worth getting. The developer is promising more updates to come, including audio notes for entries. I’m looking forward to that.