I like to write down my thoughts and feelings almost all the time, but I do it in the Notes app on my iPhone. Apple introduced the Journal app not too long ago to provide a space to reflect on your day, and while I initially thought I’d use Journal every day, it turns out I don’t at all.
There’s nothing wrong with Journal, it’s a perfectly good app. I have friends and family who use it daily. I’m just personally not interested in keeping a diary on my phone. You’d think I could just ignore the app, right? Unfortunately, it’s not that simple.
I tried Journal once, just to see what it was all about, and then never used it again. But since I used Journal once, I absent-mindedly signed up for Journaling Suggestions, as I sometimes do when I quickly skip pop-ups when I want to try something out.
Now almost every day I get suggestions from the Diary app, in the form of notifications, asking me to think about everything I’ve just done, whether it’s a doctor’s appointment, a long bike ride or a trip to the grocery store. He knows what I’m doing because I gave him access (without thinking) to my location, photos, contacts and more.
The diary knows what I’m doing, where I’m going and who I’m doing it with. Since I don’t want to record anything, I’d rather Dnevnik not have access to this personal data, and I certainly don’t want to receive any additional notifications.
Fortunately, there’s an easy way to prevent Journal from ever bothering you again. I’ll show you two ways to do this: disable journaling suggestions and stop journaling notifications. Here’s what you need to know.
While you’re here, check out how to fix all the most annoying features and settings in iOS 17 and the best iPhone options in 2024.
If you do not use Dnevnik, you can prevent it from accessing your data.
How to prevent Logging Suggestions from accessing your data
Dnevnik sends you suggestions based on your activities, media usage, contacts, photos and notable locations. If you’re going to work, taking a photo at a restaurant, or spending some time in the park, you might get a suggestion from Journal because it kind of tracks what you’re doing.
The Diary also sends suggestions based on who’s around you, so if you’re spending time with friends or family members, the Diary can use Bluetooth to detect that and send you a notification to add them to your diary.
Watch this: What I’ve Learned Using Apple’s Journal App
Aside from annoying notifications, if you don’t keep a journal, you might not like that the Journal app has access to all that data. Not only that, but this personal information can be shared with other journaling apps that use Apple’s Journaling Suggestions feature.
According to Apple, all information collected is treated as outlined in Apple’s privacy policy, which includes end-to-end encryption and other privacy features, but you may prefer that the Journal not have access to your information in its entirety.
To prevent the Journal from accessing your data (which would also stop notifications), go to settings > Magazine > Suggestions for journaling > Proposal privacy settings and hit Turn everything off at the top of the page. A pop-up will appear asking you to confirm that you want to turn off all journaling suggestions.
At the bottom, you may notice that one setting is still on. If you want to prevent other people from discovering your phone or tagging you in their own log entries, turn off Others may discover.
This will prevent the Journal from accessing your data and stop the app from sending you notifications.
How to stop receiving notifications about journaling suggestions
Now, if you want to use Journal and don’t mind the app having access to your data, you can still keep Journaling Suggestions on, but turn off notifications so you’re not bombarded with reminders to record your thoughts and feelings.
To go settings > Magazine > Suggestions for journaling > Suggestion notification settings and simply turn off Allow notifications.
You can also configure notifications to only receive notifications on the lock screen or in the notification center instead of receiving banner notifications, but if you want to remove notifications completely, turn off Allow notifications.
Note: This only disables notifications, but allows Dnevnik to still have access to your data, and you’ll still see suggestions if you go into the Dnevnik app.
For more, read all new features in iOS 17.4 and 17 hidden features and settings of iOS 17.