Import from Apple Journal

Export your journal on a Mac

1. Open Journal and choose File > Export in the menu bar.
2. Pick a destination. Journal writes a folder named AppleJournalEntries, holding an Entries folder and a Resources folder.
3. Right-click that folder and choose Compress. AppleJournalEntries.zip appears beside it, and that is the file to import.

Export from an iPhone or iPad

1. Open Journal. Under the Journals heading, tap your journal to open it (it is called Journal unless you renamed it, and shows how many entries it holds).
2. On the list of entries, tap the … button in the top right, choose Export, and confirm with the Export button.
3. Save it to your phone.
4. Open the Files app and find the folder it wrote, named AppleJournalEntries.
5. Press and hold that folder and choose Compress. The .zip that appears beside it is the file to import.

What comes across

Every entry lands in Journals rather than Notes, dated the day Journal shows above it, so your history keeps its shape.

Photos and Live Photos import as pictures, videos and voice memos as attachments. Apple ships photos as HEIC, which most browsers cannot display, so PrivacyNotes converts each one to JPEG on the way in. That is the slow part of a big import: a few hundred photos can take several minutes, and the progress line counts them for you.

Bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, text colors, bulleted and numbered lists, and block quotes all survive.

Photos, videos and your storage

A journal full of photos is far bigger than a journal full of text, and it counts against your storage the same way anything else does. The import preview totals it up before you commit, and refuses to start if it would not fit.

Where your locations go

Journal records where an entry happened, and PrivacyNotes has no map of its own, so each place becomes a link in a Places list at the end of the entry.

Places Journal recorded with coordinates open a pin on that exact spot on OpenStreetMap. Places it only named open a search for that name instead. Nothing is sent anywhere until you click one.

State of Mind

If you logged a State of Mind, PrivacyNotes fills in the mood and emotion trackers on that entry wherever Apple's wording matches one of ours. Anything it cannot match, and the life areas you tagged, are kept as a line of text so nothing is lost.

What does not come across

Journal's suggestion cards for workouts, contacts and media you played keep their text but not their artwork. Voice memos come across as recordings, but not with Apple's transcript of them: the exporter strips every space out of it, so what it writes is one unbroken run of characters. It is left behind rather than imported unreadable.

Voice memos from a Mac export are CAF files, which no browser can play. They import and download fine, but you will not hear them in the app. An iPhone export writes the same recordings as M4A, which plays inline, so use the phone if you have the choice.

Import into PrivacyNotes

1. Open PrivacyNotes and go to Settings > Import & Export.
2. Pick Apple Journal as the source.
3. Drop in the file you just exported (or click to browse) and start the import.
4. Imported notes arrive tagged with their source, so you can review or bulk-edit the whole batch afterwards.