iCloud

If you are having trouble enabling iCloud or syncing to your other devices, please try and verify these three items:

This should help alleviate iCloud sync problems until the next update. If you are still having problems, try these:

• Verify iCloud is enabled in Day One (Settings > Sync)
• Create a new test entry on both devices.
• Tap on All Entries.

If after trying these things and you are still not getting a sync, I suggest you use Dropbox for the sync option until we post an update. Please, let me know how it goes….

Restarting your device

1. Press and hold the Sleep/Wake button for a few seconds until the red “slide to power off” slider appears, and then slide the slider.
2. Press and hold the Sleep/Wake button until the Apple logo appears.

iCloud + Large Libraries

This initial release with iCloud sync works really great once it’s all in sync, but the initial load for existing journal entries is not perfected yet, but it does work.

My suggestion with iCloud is to be patient, let it sit open for a while, occasionally tap All Entries. It may seem like nothing is happening, but they will load in. It’s a bit fickle at first, but after the initial load it’s perfect and fast.

For 500 entries I would estimate about 10 minutes at least. They will suddenly all just appear.

I apologize for this inconvenience. We will continue to work on improving this process until it’s solid.

Feel free to Let me know how it goes.

If you feel like something went wrong, you could delete the app from the iPhone, re-install, then try again… Just make certain that your data is backed up before removing the app!

Open URL scheme

Day One iOS 1.5.5 adds support for Launch Center and http://applookup.com/. Below is the URL scheme:

Open Day One	dayone://
Start an entry	dayone://post?entry=“entry body”
Open Entries list	dayone://entries
Open Calendar	dayone://calendar
Open Starred	dayone://starred

Keyboard Commands

Command	Function
Command-Shift-D	Menu Bar Entry customizable in Preferences
Command-N	New Entry
Command-1	New Entry
Command-Enter	Save and Close Entry works in Main app and Menu Bar entry
Command-2	Days View
Command-3	Starred List
Command-4	Reminders
Left / Right	Previous / Next Day

Dropbox vs. iCloud - which should I use?

iCloud is enabled by default, both are excellent options, see this blog post for more information: iCloud vs Dropbox for Day One

Frequently Asked Questions

If you need help, please review the items below, otherwise, feel free to email support.

Dropbox Sync on the iPhone or iPad is not working?

If you have logged into Dropbox on the iPhone and the loader never stops spinning and things are not syncing properly you may have run into an uncommon bug with the Dropbox initial folder creation. For now there is a workaround that will get you running properly:

1. Log into the Dropbox website.
2. Notice if there is no folder named Journal.dayone
3. If that folder does not exist, click on New Folder and enter Journal.dayone
4. Quit and re-open the iPhone app and you should have proper syncning. If this does not work, please contact me.

Forgot my passcode on the Mac

If you lost the password on the Mac app, you can follow these steps:

• Find the Journal.dayone (or Journal_dayone if using iCloud) folder.
  • Open Day One, and open the Preferences (Day One > Preferences)
  • Click on “Sync” to determine where your data file is being stored.
    • iCloud: ~/Library/Mobile Documents/5U8NS4GX82~com~dayoneapp~dayone/Documents/
    • Dropbox: ~/Dropbox/
    • Standard (no sync): ~/Library/Application Support/Day One/
    • Note: ~ represents your “user folder”, mine is called “paulmayne”
  • Use Finder to navigate to this directory
    • Note: Lion OS 10.7, now hides the “Library” folder in the user folder. To see this folder:
      1. Open Finder, Navigate to your user folder.
      2. In the Menu Bar, click on “Go” > then “Go to Folder”
      3. Type in “Library”, press “Go”
      4. Now navigate to /Application Support/Day One/

• Right-click (or Control Click) on Journal.dayone and select “Show Package Contents”

• Delete the security.plist file.

• Now you can re-open the app and set a new password if you like.

Forgot my passcode on the iPhone / iPad

• The easiest solution is to try and remember, maybe spend a while guessing possibly combinations.
• The next easiest solution only works if you are certain that your data has been synced to Dropbox or iCloud. If that’s the case, you can delete the app from the device and re-install it. Then re-sync your data back on from Dropbox or iCloud.

If that’s still not working you may follow these steps, which are a bit more complicated and involved:

• First, you need to get the plist file off your device

  1. Download iPhone Explorer (Windows and Mac versions available)
  2. Connect your iPhone or iPod Touch via its USB cable, and run iPhone Explorer
  3. Browse to Device -> Apps -> Day One -> Library -> Preferences, and copy the file com.dayonelog.dayoneiphone.plist to your Desktop

• Now you need to convert your plist file to a readable XML format. If you are on a Mac:

  1. Open Terminal
  2. Run the command plutil -convert xml1 ~/Desktop/com.dayonelog.dayoneiphone.plist -o -
  3. Your passcode should now be displayed on the screen (screenshot below)

• If you are on Windows:

  1. Download and install this free software: plist Editor for Windows
  2. File -> Open -> find the file com.dayonelog.dayoneiphone.plist on your Desktop
  3. Your passcode should now be displayed on the screen

The Inspirational Messages are gone! How do I bring them back?

1. Click on New (in the left nav).
2. In the top Menu Bar, click on View then Inspirational Messages

How do I set a password on the Mac?

1. Open Day One
2. In the Menu Bar, click on File, then Preferences
3. In Preferences, click on the 3rd item, called Security

Why is the entry time set to 12:00PM?

New entries created from the the Calendar view and the Day view are intended for creating an entry on a past date, so the default time is set do a standard 12:00 (which may be adjusted as needed from there). When creating a new entry from these sections on the current date it should default to the current time but doesn’t in version 1.2 Mac. We will fix this in the next update.

For now, if you want a new entry from the current time, use the New Entry button int he main navigation.

How do I print?

Version 1.5 Mac adds Printing for individual days. We are working on more advanced options including a date range selector.

How do you remove Day One icon from the Dock?

You can remove it from the dock just like you can with any other application after you quit the app, just drag it out of the dock. The Menu Bar (Quick Entry) application will continue to run without Day One in the Dock in enabled in Preferences.

Preferences > General > Check “Show Application Icon in Menu Bar.”

Where is the Day One data file stored?

• In iCloud: /Users/(your username)/Library/Mobile Documents/5U8NS4GX82~com~dayoneapp~dayone/Documents/
• In Dropbox: ~/Dropbox/Day One/
• Default location: ~/Library/Application Support/Day One/

The file format is Journal.dayone.

Can I have multiple Journals?

We don’t currently support the use of multiple journals in Day One. This is a feature we are planning for a future update.

Can I store my Journal file in a Dropbox subfolder?

Absolutely.

On the Mac App:

1. Open the Preferences, General, under ‘Data File’ select ‘Move…’, find your Dropbox sub folder and select ‘Move To Selected folder’

On the iPhone App:

The iOS app auto detects the Journal.dayone folder wherever you have stored it in Dropbox. So manually move the folder using your Computer or the web interface. Then:

1. Quit the app (Double-click the home button to display the recently accessed applications. Press and hold any of the icons shown, then navigate to the application you want to quit and tap the red circled minus button.)
2. Re-open the app and Day One will scan your Dropbox folder and automagically detect where you are storing the file.
3. If the iPhone app has any problems finding your data file, try un-linking the Dropbox connection and re-link it.

Do I need to buy 2 licenses to this app to install it on my desktop and my laptop?

No, you only need to purchase once, as goes for any app in the Mac app store. Just open the app store and click on “Purchased” and you can re-install on several machines.

You can install Day One on multiple computers. Just open the app store and click on “Purchased” and you can re-install on several machines.

Markdown, what is it?

Markdown syntax is available on Day One and it’s toggled On by default.

Markdown is the technology we chose to use to allow rich text within your journal entries. Basically italic and bold, but also several other simple formatting options that can be written using plain text, but display properly in Read views.

Useful Markdown Articles:

• Markdown Primer
• Why Markdown? A two-minute explanation
• Basics of Markdown (a screencast)

Please see this Day One Blog post regarding Markdown for more information.

Also, you may paste these sample entries into your journal to see how they render in Markdown:

• Day One Markdown Simple (.text)
• Day One Markdown Advanced (.text)
• Markdown Official Basics Page (.text)

The basics of using Markdown to add rich text in Day One work like this:

Italic:     *single star* or _single underscore_
Bold:       **double star** or __double underscore__

Links:      A inline link [example](http://url.com/ "Title")

# Header 1 #

## Header 2 ##

1. Numbered
2. Lists

* Bulleted
* Lists

What file format is used for the data?

Day One stores each entry as an individual file in the folder titled “Journal.dayone”, double clicking this icon will open the journal in the Day One app. If you right-click, you can select, “View Package Contents” to reveal the folder / files contained inside.

Inside the /entries/ folder is where the data files are stored. These .dayone files are a plist formatted XML file. This format allows for efficient syncing via Dropbox as well as easy parsing as seen below in the export to PHP script.

How is the file name generated for each entry?

It’s really a UUID-a number guaranteed to be universally unique in both space and time . It uses a combination of precision time and mac address to guarantee a unique number.

Day One doesn’t really care what you use as long as it’s unique, so the MD5 approach will work as long there aren’t duplicate timestamps in the journal. A user that wants to do some custom importing can generate a UUID in exactly the form Day One uses with the following command:

"uuidgen | sed s/-//g"

New Features

Day One launched with a solid set of core features, but we are far from complete. There are a lot of great features planned that will be released as regular updates to both the Mac and iPhone applications. Feel free to email us your ideas and requests.

Encryption

We are working on encryption options that will further protect your data. We plan to roll out an update with the iOS apps and the Mac app together later this year. Sorry for the Delay.

Import

We are adding several import functions that will import your data from other popular journal apps as well as other standard formats. Until that is ready, you can roll your own import script using the [CLI][#commandlineinterface].

Export

We now have Export to text file in the Mac app and we plan to expand these options and formats to include PDF and several others, including options for date range and tag set.

Photos

We are planning to add photo support to Day One.

Text Formatting

Day One supports Markdown and MultiMarkdown for rich text formatting. Bold, Italic and auto Hyperlinking of URLS in the text. We are adding support in the Mac app in an update coming soon.

Tags

We are working on a tagging solution that will allow you to mark, categorize and navigate your entries via custom tags.

Additional Updates

We are continually looking at ways to improve the user experience using Day One while keeping the application simple and beautiful. If you have feature requests feel free to let me know.

Command Line Interface

The Day One CLI (Command Line Interface) makes it possible for programs and scripts to interact with a Day One Journal from the command line.

The CLI tool is an executable located within the application bundle. In most cases this executable is found at /Applications/Day One/Day One.app/Contents/MacOS/dayone

To see available options and examples, use the --help argument.

$ ./dayone --help

Presently, there is one supported command: “new”. The “new” command allows users to write scripts to import entries from another program or to write utilities that allow for automated entry creation.

The CLI automatically uses the Day One Journal that is configured in the Day One Preferences window. You can specify a different Journal using the --journal-path option.

When creating a new entry, the current time is used by default as the entry creation date. To specify a different date, use the --date option. This option accepts dates in most formats, including some natural language strings such as tomorrow or yesterday. The system’s locale is used when deciding how to parse a date.

Examples:

$ ./dayone new

Waits for input from stdin then creates a new entry in the default journal

$ echo "an entry from yesterday" | ./dayone -d="yesterday" new

Creates a new entry using yesterday’s date with the specified text

$ ./dayone -d="03/03/2011 5:30PM" -s=true new < ~/Desktop/note.txt

Creates a starred entry using the contents of note.txt

$ echo "an entry in my other journal" | ./dayone -j=~/Documents/WorkJournal.dayone new

Creates an entry in a journal other than the default

Here’s a sample Ruby script that imports entries exported from MacJournal in a single text file. https://gist.github.com/977766

See these post by Brett Terpstra on additional scripts:

• http://brettterpstra.com/logging-with-day-one-geek-style/
• http://brettterpstra.com/system-service-clip-to-day-one/

Advanced

What made you decide to use XML over a database?

It wasn’t really a question of XML vs. a database. ÊIt was a question of single files vs. a monolithic database. It was a pretty simple decision because of our synchronization needs. Doing synchronization over Dropbox doesn’t give us anything in the way of locking or conflict resolution, so we need to reduce the chance of collision as much as we can. Making each entry an individual file accomplishes that, as well as reducing the amount of data that has to be transferred. The choice to use XML as the actual file format was just because the Apple frameworks provide a dead easy way to serialize back and forth between XML and it makes it very portable for other platforms and applications.