Enable Journal Suggestions in Settings

If you haven’t gotten into the habit of journaling, starting with the Journal app might be tough at first. You might not even know where to start or what to write about. If that’s the case, you can ask your iPhone for help.

When you first open the Journal app, you’ll be asked if you want to turn on Journaling Suggestions. This feature looks at your daily activity — how you use other apps — and offers ideas for what to write about. For example, it might draw from your recent photos, workouts, locations, or even the people you’ve been messaging.

For some folks, that might sound a bit invasive — and that’s fair. That’s why Journaling Suggestions is off by default, and you’ll need to enable it manually if you want to use it. You can also choose exactly which kinds of data the app can access.

It’s also worth noting that all the data handled by the Journal app — including your entries and Journaling Suggestions — stays private and is stored only on your device. You can choose to sync it through iCloud to keep your journal up to date across your iPhone, iPad, and Mac, but even then it’s protected with end-to-end encryption, so not even Apple can read or access it.

You should see a prompt to enable Journaling Suggestions the first time you open the Journal app. If you skipped or declined it, or just want to adjust your settings later, here’s where to find them:

1. Open the Settings app on your iPhone.
2. Scroll down and choose Privacy & Security.
3. Scroll down again and select Journaling Suggestions.
4. Under Include Suggestions From, choose the categories you’d like the app to draw from. To save time, you can tap on Turn On All.

Once enabled, the Journal app will offer writing prompts based on what you’ve done throughout the day — from workouts to conversations to recent photos. It’s a helpful way to inspire new entries, but you can go back to the settings if you’d like to limit the activities that are used for suggestions. There’s also the option to Clear History if you want to delete all your previously collected data.