The app - which runs on Macs, iPhones and iPads, syncing your entries between your devices - can handle long text journals, short picture-focused status updates, and pretty much anything else that comes across the digital transom. You post updates to it just as you might on Instagram or Facebook. Think of Day One as a private social network for an audience of one: yourself.

I remembered I was supposed to be spending a nice weekend in the woods with my family why risk days of online drama for a stupid tweet?Īnd so, instead of sharing the silly lampshade joke, I journaled it in Day One, a magnificent digital diary app that has transformed my relationship with my phone, improved my memory, and given me a deeper perspective on my life than the one I was getting through the black mirror of social media.

I could imagine my dumb joke getting picked apart for all the ways it was problematic - “New York Times writer casually encourages bestial sexual assault! #deertoo” - bringing me ever closer to cancellation. Venturing onto social media these days, I often feel like a cat burglar stepping through a field of upturned rakes. In recent years, Twitter and much of the rest of the internet have been getting hotter, more reflexively outraged, less fun. Yet this time, for some reason, I stopped myself.

Diary vs journal