Welcome to Personal Diary!
The essence of Personal Diary is creating "entries" in your "journal". This provides a simple way to mimic the concept of writing each day or item on a page in a physical journalling book.
We will introduce you to the two most important places you'll be in the app: the Timeline and Entry Page.
You first begin in the Timeline after opening a journal. It is where all your entries are stored, and when populated, it looks a little something like this:
The Timeline displays a list of your entries in chronological order.
Some primary actions are at the top bar, while you can access a myriad of quick actions at the triple-dot menu ••• at the bottom right.
For more details, see the full Timeline documentation.
Now, creating an entry is easy. Simply press the + button at the top right and a new page should pop up.
Once you create or view an entry, you'll be greeted with the Entry Page. A filled in Entry Page may look like the following:
Initially, this would be mostly blank.
Take note of the following elements of the Entry Page:
- Entry Text
This center space contains your entry text. Click or tap the center space to edit.
- Entry Attachments
The bottom row consists of a horizontal list of image attachments. Tap the + button located at the right of the list to attach an item (only images are supported at the moment).
- Entry Metadata
Supplementary metadata about your entry is located around the page. Customizable metadata like the date can be clicked or tapped to edit.
- Extra Actions
On the top bar, we have buttons for other extra actions, like refreshing, exporting and edit options.
For more details, see the full Entry Page documentation.
While editing entry text, the app automatically saves as soon as you pause typing briefly, so you can be rest assured that your data is never lost.
The app syncs across all your devices via iCloud Drive. That means you can create, view and edit them on all devices and Personal Diary will stay up-to-date. For the exact requirements, see the full iCloud Sync documentation.
You can find more advanced options for an item by tapping and holding, Haptic Touch, 3D Touch, control-clicking or secondary-clicking. For instance, tap and hold an entry in the Timeline to see a preview or delete it.
?> This requires iOS 13+, iPadOS 13+, macOS 10.15+, or watchOS 6+.
Don't like the defaults? Many customization options are available in the app's settings. For example:
- Prefer to not have mood and weather set in your entries? Turn it off under New Entry Defaults.
- Want to emulate the feeling of turning pages in a book? Turn on Page Curl Animations.
- Prefer to customize the app colors? Check out Light & Dark Color Scheme options under Themes.
- Want to have multiple journals (like separate ones for Personal and Work)? You can turn Multi-Journal Mode on.
- ...and many more!
Check out the in-app settings (or look at the sidebar menu of this webpage) for more info!
That's it!
If you have any queries, do browse the other pages here, and as always, feel free to contact me under App Support in Personal Diary Settings.