Merging Day One Accounts

This guide covers two situations involving multiple Day One accounts: combining the content of two accounts into one (a merge), and changing your account’s email when the address you want is already in use by another Day One account you own (an email swap). Common signs you have more than one Day One account include different User IDs on your devices, different email addresses showing on different devices, or trying to change your account’s email and being told the new address is already in use. Having multiple accounts can also cause devices to appear out of sync, since each account has its own separate data. If you’re unsure whether you have multiple accounts, check your User ID on each device – if they don’t match, follow the steps below to pick the right path.

Accidental multiple accounts is most common when you use the Sign In With Apple feature. When using an Apple ID to sign in, you can use the feature Hide My Email—Apple’s private email relay service—to create and share a unique, random email address that forwards to your personal email. That way, you can receive useful messages from us without sharing your personal email address. Because we don’t have the email address you use with your Apple ID, we can’t double-check for a duplicate account. This makes it is surprisingly easy to have multiple accounts with Day One, one that uses your email with an Apple ID and one that uses your email with a Day One account.

Before you start: pick the right path

Two different situations bring most people to this guide. Pick the one that matches yours so you don’t do more work than you need to:

You want to use an email that’s already on another Day One account you own. Often this comes up after you try to change your account’s email and get a “Notice of Attempted Email Change” email saying the address is already in use, or you simply want to move an email address from one account to another. If the other account has nothing in it you need to keep (typically just the default welcome entry), don’t merge — jump to When NOT to merge: email swap alternative below.
You have real journal entries in two different Day One accounts and want to combine them into one. This is what merging is for. Continue to How to Merge Your Account content below.

If you’re not sure which situation applies, check whether your secondary account has any journal entries beyond the default welcome entry. If it doesn’t, you almost certainly want the email swap path.

Don’t merge if your “old” account is a legacy/CloudKit-only account. If your old Plus account is from before Day One had its own sync system (sometimes called a “legacy” or “CloudKit-only” account), and signing in on a new device creates a fresh empty account instead of opening it, you don’t need to merge — you need to migrate the old account to the modern Sign in with Apple. To do this, sign into the existing account (on the device where it’s already working) and trigger the update: in the Day One app, go to Settings > tap the name at the top > tap Update on the Sign in with Apple line. Or on the web, go to https://dayone.me/settings and log in. You will see an error the first time, but try again — the second attempt typically completes the migration. After that, you can sign in normally on all your devices. See the Update from CloudKit section of the Sign in with Apple guide for full details.

When NOT to merge: email swap alternative

If you just want to use an email address that’s currently on another Day One account you own, and the other account has no content you need to keep (for example, only the default welcome entry), don’t merge. Merging is for combining journal entries between accounts; for simply moving an email address, it’s overkill and adds extra cleanup. Instead, swap the email between the two accounts:

On a computer, go to https://dayone.me and sign in to the account that’s currently using the email you want. Open Settings > Account and change its email to a different address you own (for example, a Gmail account or another personal email). Save and verify via the email Day One sends. This frees up the email you want.
Sign in to your main account (the one with your journal entries) at https://dayone.me or in the iOS app, open Account settings, and change its email to the now-freed address. Confirm via the verification email Day One sends.
After verifying everything is in order, delete the now-empty secondary account if you no longer need it.

This is the right path if you received a “Notice of Attempted Email Change” email because the email you tried to switch to is already in use by another Day One account you own, or if you want to move an email address between two Day One accounts you own without combining their content.

If you can’t sign in to one of the accounts, or the email-swap steps don’t work for you, see If you need help from support below for what to send our team.

Before any account changes, save your encryption key. See Keeping Your Day One Encryption Key Safe.

IMPORTANT: Skipping the backup steps before merging account content may result in permanent data loss. Always complete ALL preparation steps before proceeding with the merge.

How to Merge Your Account content

�️ CRITICAL: Data Backup Steps (Required)

If you have accidentally created multiple Day One accounts or want to merge content between accounts with different emails, you MUST complete these backup steps before proceeding:

Before you begin, export your data as a JSON file on each device. This can be re-imported if necessary. See here. This is just a precautionary measure and may not be needed.
Save a copy of the encryption key from Day One > Settings > Sync > Encryption Key (iOS) OR Day One > Settings > Journals > Show Encryption Key (macOS) if not already saved.
Download All Media: Day One > Settings > Sync > Storage > Download All Media

The next steps to merge account content vary depending on platform, however, you only need to do the process once. Then you can log in with the consolidated account on all devices.

Note: You do not need access to the email address on the account you are merging from. As long as you are signed in to that account on one of your devices, you can use the merge feature to copy its content into your other account. This is helpful if you no longer have access to the old email address.

Merging account content on iOS

Open Day One
Go to Settings
Tap on your profile
Tap Advanced
Tap Merge content into another account
Sign into your second account

Merging account content on MacOS

Open Day One
Go to Settings > Sync
Click the ... on the top right of your profile picture
Choose Merge content into another account
Sign into your second account

Merging account content on Android

Open Day One
Go to Settings
Tap on your profile
Tap Merge content into another account
Sign into your second account

Next steps after merging account content

After completing these steps, all devices should show the same User ID.

If all devices are not showing the same Account Status for syncing, please try these steps to Restore Purchases on the platform where Silver or Gold was purchased.

Deleting the duplicate account

Note that merging content from one account into another only copies the content to the chosen account. The accounts themselves are not merged, so the duplicate account still exists and still contains the content that was merged.

To avoid any further issues, once you’ve verified that your chosen account now contains all of your merged content from both accounts, you can go ahead and delete the duplicate account if you no longer need it.

If you need help from support

Reach out to our support team if any of the following apply:

The merge feature returned an error.
The email-swap steps above didn’t free up the address you wanted to use.
You have multiple email addresses or Apple IDs involved across your accounts.
You can’t sign in to one of the accounts and need help recovering or removing it.

Please include the following in your message to support:

The Day One User ID from each account involved.
The exact error message you saw, if any.
Which platform you were using (iOS, Android, Mac, or Web).

The User IDs are the first thing our support team uses to look up the accounts and confirm details like which email is attached to which account. Without them, we can’t begin the investigation. To find your User ID on each device, follow How to find your Day One User ID.

Please note that the Account Deletion process takes ~5 days (to avoid accidental deletion). If you would like to link your Apple ID to the Day One account again to prevent duplicate accounts in the future, please wait about 5 days after completing step number 4 and then sign into your account at https://dayone.me/settings and link the Apple ID.