Accessing the Settings in Day One for iOS

To access settings, tap the profile icon in the upper-right corner.

The Settings have many options to enhance your journaling experience! You can make adjustments like the following:

Sign in to a Day One account for syncing and online backups (Silver or Gold)
Adjust Appearance settings, including fonts, Dark mode, and font size (entries only)
Access Book Printing
Add reminders
Enable Text Messaging (Silver or Gold only)
Set up Templates
Create a passcode
Import and Export data
Create or restore local backups
Access Email to Journal settings (Silver or Gold only)
Contact our support team

Appearance settings: fonts, font size, and theme

Font, font size, and the light/dark theme all live on one screen in Day One for iPhone and iPad: Settings > Appearance. Tap the profile icon in the upper-right corner to open Settings, then tap Appearance. This is the screen to look for if you want to change the font, make your entry text bigger or smaller, or switch between light and dark.

The Appearance screen contains:

Theme – choose System, Light, Dark, or Scheduled. See Dark Mode.
Font and Font Size – the typeface and text size used for your entries (see below).
Auto Expand URLs and Auto Title First Line – editor options. With Auto Title First Line on, the first line of an entry starts out as a title and remains one until it is longer than 100 characters.
Show Photos in Calendar, Show Timeline Scrubber, and Show Maps In Read View – display options for the calendar, timeline, and entry views.

Changing the font

Tap the profile icon in the upper-right corner to open Settings.
Tap Appearance.
Under Entry, tap Font.
Tap a font to select it. A checkmark marks the font you are using now, and each font name is shown in its own typeface so you can preview it.

Day One for iOS includes 20 fonts: Anonymous Pro, Avenir, Baskerville, Courier New, Futura, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica Neue Light, Ideal Sans, Lato, Lato Light, New York, Open Sans, OpenDyslexic, Roboto, Sanchez, San Francisco, Sentinel, SF Mono, Snell Roundhand, and Whitney. Lato is the default.

To use a font that isn’t on the list, tap Custom… at the bottom of the list and choose from the fonts installed on your device.

Note about custom fonts:
If you’re using a custom font, you may experience a limitation depending on the font you’ve selected. Some fonts don’t include an italic variant, so italicized words will appear in bold instead. To use italics, select a font that supports italics.

Changing the font size

Tap the profile icon in the upper-right corner to open Settings.
Tap Appearance.
Under Entry, tap Font Size.
Choose System Font Size to follow the text size set on your device, or tap Custom and enter a number between 5 and 99.
Tap Save.

System Font Size follows the text size set in the iOS Settings app under Display & Brightness > Text Size, so your entry text grows and shrinks along with the rest of your device. A custom size stays fixed at the number you enter.

Font and Font Size apply to your entry text. They do not change the size of the app’s own interface, such as menus and buttons.

Does the font apply to every journal?

Yes. Font and Font Size are app-wide settings rather than per-journal ones, so changing either one updates your entries in every journal.

They are also set per device and are not synced. If you use Day One on both an iPhone and an iPad, set your font on each device separately.

Journal Themes change the entry font

There is one exception. If you apply a Journal Theme to a journal, most themes set their own font for that journal’s entries, and your Appearance > Font choice no longer applies there. Of the nine themes, Classic is the only one that leaves your chosen font in place. The other eight (Notes, Solarized, Tokyo Night, Everforest, Rosé Pine, Catppuccin, Nord, and Ayu) display entry text in Avenir.

So if you change the font in Appearance and one journal’s text stays the same, check whether that journal has a theme applied. Setting that journal’s theme back to Classic lets it follow your Appearance font again.

Your Font Size setting still applies in every journal, themed or not.

Do I need a subscription to change the font?

No. Changing the font and the font size in Appearance is available on all accounts, including free ones.

Themes work a little differently. Two of the nine Journal Themes, Classic and Notes, are available on all accounts. The other seven require a Silver or Gold subscription. Note that Notes is free and still sets its own entry font, so it overrides your Appearance font even without a subscription. Classic is the only theme that keeps the font you chose.