Apple Journal vs tinythoughts

Apple Journal is a free journaling app for recording everyday moments and special events. Entries can combine text, photos, videos, audio, places, drawings, and a logged state of mind. On-device intelligence groups outings, workouts, photos, and media into suggestions, while reflection prompts and scheduled notifications support regular writing. You can create multiple journals, search and sort entries, browse a calendar, and view entries by location. Writing tools include formatting, inline attachments, drawings, and audio recording with transcription; Apple says transcription in English excludes Singapore and India locales. State-of-mind entries can be saved to Health, and writing time can become Mindful Minutes. Suggestions are processed on device, with sharing controlled by the user. Device passcodes encrypt entries; iCloud entries receive end-to-end encryption with default two-factor authentication and a passcode. iCloud sync covers iPhone, iPad, and Mac, but Journal entries are not included in iCloud backups.

tinythoughts is a sentence-a-day journal for short daily writing. Users create text entries, choose a reminder time, and receive a different writing prompt for every day of the year. Entries can include photos or GIFs, tags for category filtering, and automatically determined mood labels. Mood views separate positive and negative entries and show trends over time. The free plan permits five image uploads a month; premium adds daily image uploads and an image gallery. Users can download their data as CSV. tinythoughts says entries use end-to-end encryption so only the user can read them. The service is available on the web, Android, and iOS, while push notifications are available in Chrome and Firefox only. The free plan includes daily text entries and notifications. Premium costs $3 a month, is free for the first 14 days, and can be canceled any time. The privacy policy mentions data collection, cookies, Firebase hosting, and protection measures that cannot guarantee security.