Don’t let the drama of the holidays wear you down. Vent to your iPhone instead.
There are plenty of things to like about the latest iOS 17.2 update. For one, iPhone 15 Pro users are getting telephoto camera improvements and can finally use the titanium-shelled hardware to shoot spatial videos for the Vision Pro. There’s also a new Action button shortcut for real-time translation. But the most helpful bit of this software update is the official debut of Apple Journal, which comes just in time for the emotionally challenging holiday season. Journal can help keep all those inner thoughts you write out shielded from the people you want to avoid peeking over.
I’ve been using the Journal app since it went into public beta weeks ago. I don’t use it daily, and I’m relieved it’s not one of those things constantly nagging me to update—I hate that about wellness-minded apps. Apple certainly delivers a tinge of that with its marketing about this app. “Journal makes it easy to preserve rich and powerful memories and practice gratitude by intelligently curating information that is personal to the user, right from their iPhone,” writes the official Apple blog.
I’ll give it to Apple: Journal is password-protected, unlike that list of people you’ve been keeping in the Notes apps. You can optionally choose to lock away your Journal entries behind Face ID. The only drawback is that you can’t hop devices to update your Journal since the data is encrypted directly on the device.
