Apple Journal is a great tool for quickly capturing thoughts on iOS, but many users look for a more feature-rich, cross-platform, or locally customizable home for their diary. If you are transitioning to Euthy Journal, you can bring all of your reflections, photos, videos, voice memos, locations, and even mood logs with you.

Euthy Journal values your absolute privacy. Because Euthy Journal is offline-first, your database lives entirely on your physical device. The import process runs 100% locally in-app—your exported files and personal thoughts are parsed locally and never touch our servers. Here is your step-by-step guide to migrating your logs from Apple Journal to Euthy Journal.

Quick Summary: Importing Apple Journal into Third-Party Apps

Since Apple does not support a direct sync, you must migrate your entries into a third-party application. Euthy Journal features a built-in, local-first Apple Journal Import tool designed to solve this.

How to Import: Open Euthy Journal, navigate to Settings > Data > Import Data (.zip, .csv), select Apple Journal (ZIP), and select your exported Apple Journal zip archive.

What Gets Migrated?

Euthy Journal's built-in Apple Journal parser handles all elements of your export package. When you import your archive, Euthy Journal preserves:

Entry Text & Formatting: Your paragraphs, headings, and styling (bold, italics, underline, strikethrough, and text colors) are cleanly converted.
Reflection Prompts: Any default prompts or reflection templates you selected in Apple Journal are preserved and highlighted at the top of your entries.
Photos & Videos: Full-resolution images, Live Photos, and video attachments are extracted and copied directly to Euthy's local media folder.
Voice Memos & Audio: Audio recordings are mapped to Euthy's built-in audio players.
State of Mind: Emotional states and mood logs (e.g., "pleasant", "very unpleasant", "calm", "neutral") are mapped directly to Euthy's mood indicators (happy, excited, thinking, sad, overwhelmed, angry).
Locations: Map embeds and geographical tags are geocoded to populate location names and coordinates.
Metadata: Workout details, motion activities, music, podcast logs, and referenced contacts are converted into search tags.

Step 1: Export Your Data from Apple Journal

Apple Journal allows you to export your data directly from your iPhone as a folder containing your entries in HTML format and a resources subfolder with your attachments. Here is how to obtain the export:

Open the Journal app on your iPhone.
Ensure you are in the All Entries view (or select a specific journal filter if you created multiple).
Tap the More button (•••) in the top-right corner of the screen.
Tap Export Journal, and then tap Export to confirm.
A share sheet will appear. Choose to save the file using the Save to Files option. Save the folder to a convenient location on your iPhone (e.g., in the On My iPhone directory or iCloud Drive).

Important: Compress to a ZIP File

Apple Journal typically exports your journal as a standard folder (often named AppleJournalEntries). Since Euthy Journal imports backups as archives, you must compress this folder into a ZIP file before importing:

Open the iOS Files app, navigate to the folder, long-press it, and tap Compress. This will create a .zip file in the same directory (e.g., AppleJournalEntries.zip). This is the file you will select in Euthy Journal.

Step 2: Import into Euthy Journal

With your compressed Apple Journal ZIP file ready on your iPhone, follow these steps to import it:

Open Euthy Journal on your device.
Tap the Settings tab in the bottom-right corner of the app's main navigation.
Tap on the Data section.
Under the Backup & Export section, tap the Import Data (.zip, .csv) button.
An Import Journal wizard will slide up. Scroll down and select Apple Journal (ZIP) from the list of sources.
The system file picker will open. Navigate to the Files app and select the compressed .zip file you created in Step 1.
Confirm the import. Euthy's local parser will run, unpack the ZIP archive, extract the entries and media, and report the progress.
Once the import completes successfully, confirm the restart prompt. Euthy Journal will reload to apply the local database changes, and your timeline will populate with your imported Apple Journal history!

Troubleshooting Tips

"Selected ZIP is not a valid Apple Journal backup" Error: Make sure you compressed the folder containing the actual Apple Journal export structure. Inside the ZIP, there should be an Entries folder with HTML files (like index.html) and a Resources folder with your photos and media. If you compress an outer folder by mistake, Euthy Journal won't find these paths.
Missing Photos or Videos: Large journals with many high-resolution files might take a few minutes to compress or copy. Ensure your phone has sufficient storage space, and do not close Euthy Journal while the import progress bar is active.
Time Stamps: Apple Journal exports timestamps based on your device's local settings at the time of export. Euthy Journal converts these to standard UTC ISO format. If some entries appear shifted, verify your system clock matches the timezone of your export.

Start Writing Your Next Chapter

Migrating your memories to Euthy Journal gives you complete control over your journaling experience. With high-speed local database operations, beautiful graphs, strict local sandboxing, and secure cloud backups to your private storage (iCloud on iOS and Google Drive on Android), your personal diary is safe, offline-first, and entirely yours.

If you run into any issues during the import process or have feedback on the migration tool, please reach out to our team at [email protected].

Disclaimer: Apple Journal, iOS, macOS, and Files are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. Euthy Journal is an independent application and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Apple Inc.