The EnshAIttification of Day One

I had written about this before but pulled it down. Tired of the folks who will not only ditch something good they've been using for a decade, but who are willing to cobble together some inferior Frankenstein App, simply because there is some minor change they don't like. The Daily Chat button is annoying. I expect it will probably disappear. But nothing else about the app has changed and nobody is forcing this guy to upgrade. He complained about the name change of the pricing tier for gods sake.

With JK on this one. Stuff like On This Day is one of the main reasons I stick with Day One. It's such a nice feature, and 90% of the app remains nice to use. Giving that up and just shoving everything into a Notes app seems like a far worse hassle than just ignoring the upsell on the AI junk.

I despise it too, and I definitely am wary of what comes next, but I've already stopped noticing the Daily Chat prompt since early on in its lifespan, and I would constantly notice the headache of having to search a folder of loose notes (or even one gigantic note) to see what I wrote on this day X years ago.

I agree it's not the worst thing in the world, but still. I can't help but think it's a little worse when it's apps doing this which are specifically about promoting mental health.

Same thing happened to Headspace, but far worse. This entire space seems rife with irony of people manipulating FOMO, notifications, upsells, etc etc to sell mental health.

bart - totally get what you're saying but not sure I consider the Daily Chat feature the same way. I tried it when they gave every Premium/Silver sub a few months of Gold to try out the new AI stuff. It's guided journaling. I found it totally useless but I've been journaling (in Day One no less) for years. I could see it being useful for someone who wants to journal but just has problems getting started. That said, it's really expensive and not sure I see much of a future for it at that price but I guess we'll see.

I Journal using paper and pen. I stick physical stuff on my journal (whine labels, team tickets, the wrapper from a Spam Sushi, leaves from a thousand year old tree that there's only one known member of.

I think it's a horrible idea to journal digitally. Stuffing important things into a platform you have no control over, run by people who might sell you like chattel to a corporation that don't give two shits about you.

All that's needed is a cheap notebook and a pencil.

Or you can fall down the lovely rabbit hole that is nerdy stationary.

The idea of putting your life into these bland middle of the road apps is sad.

I find digital journalling helpful, but never in a billion years would I send personal notes to some random company in the cloud. You can self-host Standard Notes, Notesnook, Trillian, or dozens of other tools, and your most intimate thoughts won't be sold to data brokers or used to train LLMs.

Given that I'm a daily Day One user who has no idea what "Daily Chat" is and has never seen such a button in my memory, I think there must be an easy way to turn it off.

Oh, and posting just to heap scorn and derision on people who consciously choose to use an app you wouldn't use yourself is not being a mensch. I've journaled extensively using pen and paper and journaled for a dozen years on a non-cloud app before deciding to try Day One.

I've used Day One since before it was a subscription app. I paid the "lifetime" price and was grandfathered in when they started the subscription stuff. The app used to sync to Dropbox, which I used at the time, and when they went with their own server I was suspicious. That said journals are encrypted and the key can be optionally stored on iCloud. I wouldn't pay what they want for subscriptions but that's me. I'm generally anti-subscription and they had a "free" sync option with Dropbox before deciding to roll their own.

All of that said, other than a small nag promoting the tiers that has since disappeared I haven't seen anything annoying. The app still works like it always did, no AI cruft and as said the nag box went away in the most recent releases. I'd love to support them by paying something but €60 or €80 per year ain't it.