Switch from Apple Journal

Bring what you wrote in Journal.

Your entries come across with their titles, their days and the moods you logged. In One Question they sit on your timeline, come back On This Day, and are read for the chapters of your life from your first day.

Free on iPhone and iPad. Importing is free.

1. Export from Journal

1. Open Journal on your iPhone. Tap All Entries to bring everything, or choose one journal.
2. Tap the More button (⋯) at the top of the screen.
3. Tap Export, then Export again.
4. Choose where to save it, like iCloud Drive or On My iPhone, and confirm.

Journal saves your entries as AppleJournalEntries, a folder or a zip. Either works. On a Mac with macOS Tahoe, choose File › Export in Journal, then Export. These are Apple’s steps, from the iPhone User Guide’s Print and export entries in Journal.

2. Bring it into One Question

1. In One Question, tap the gear on Today, then Bring in another journal.
2. Choose Apple Journal, tap Choose AppleJournalEntries, and pick the folder or the zip. Can’t find it? Look in Recents.
3. Before anything is saved, One Question shows what it found: how many entries, from when to when, and how many have a mood.
4. Tap Bring in. Then see your chapters, or open On This Day.

Saved it to iCloud Drive? If some of it hasn’t downloaded to your iPhone yet, One Question says so. Bring the folder in again once it has, and nothing already in your journal is added twice.

What comes across

• Every word, with each entry’s title.
• The day each entry is on in Journal, even if you moved it to another day.
• How you felt. A State of Mind you logged with an entry becomes its mood.
• The rest of each entry: workouts, music, links and the State of Mind in full. They’re kept with the entry, though One Question doesn’t show them yet.

What doesn’t, yet: photos and videos. One Question keeps a note of each one with its entry, but not the file. Journal exports a picture of each map rather than where it was, so places can’t go on your map. And an entry with no words in it stays behind.

What your years become

Imported entries arrive like the ones you write here. One Question reads them for the stretches your life fell into, a town, a season, a person, and each becomes a chapter, named and dated. On This Day sets today beside a week, a month and a year ago, and Memories finds any entry by words, places or people.

From then on, there’s one question a day to answer, in a sentence or a page.

Good to know

• Your Journal entries stay as they are. Exporting makes a copy; nothing is removed.
• Bringing in a newer export. Entries already here, unchanged, are skipped. One you’ve edited in Journal since comes in again, beside the first. To start fresh from a newer export, take the first import back, then bring the new one in.
• You can take it back. Every import is listed in One Question’s Settings, under Your words. Remove one and only its entries go; what you wrote in One Question stays.
• Entries are sealed. One Question keeps every entry the way it was written, imported ones too. You can delete an entry, but not rewrite it.
• You can leave, too. In Settings, Export everything gives you every entry, imported ones included, as one plain text file that any computer can open.
• Moods are read in English. From an iPhone set to another language, each State of Mind is still kept with its entry, but doesn’t show as its mood.

Private, start to finish

• Your export is read on your iPhone or iPad, and never uploaded to be read. There is no One Question server to send it to.
• Imported entries join your journal in your own iCloud account, like everything you write.
• Chapters are found on your device. With Apple Intelligence, they’re written there too.
• The app’s analytics count how many entries came in, and from which app. Never what they say.
• AppleJournalEntries stays in Files until you delete it, photos and all, so delete it once your entries are in if you don’t want a second copy lying around.

The privacy policy has the details.

What it costs

Importing is free, and so is writing. Your list of chapters, the map, On This Day and Memories cost nothing. One Question Pro opens what’s inside each chapter. Prices are in the FAQ.

Your years, read here.

Free on iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and Apple Vision Pro.

Coming from Day One? Switch from Day One

Journal is an app by Apple. One Question isn’t affiliated with or endorsed by Apple. Steps checked against Apple’s iPhone User Guide in November 2026.