Most journaling apps either overwhelm you with features you'll never use or give you nothing but a blank page and good luck. Journly is a journaling app for women built around a simple premise: the app should make it easier to journal, not harder.
Here's how to use Journly's features without getting lost in settings menus or productivity theater.
Mood Tracking (And Why It Matters)
When you open Journly, the first thing you see is a mood check-in. Ten options, each with a clear emoji: Happy, Excited, Grateful, Calm, Confident, Sad, Tired, Anxious, Frustrated, Overwhelmed.
You swipe through, tap one, and move to your journal entry.
This takes about three seconds, which is intentional. Mood tracking works when it's fast enough that you'll actually do it. The goal isn't to force deep emotional analysis before you've written a word—it's to give you a data point you can look back on later.
Over time, patterns emerge. You might notice you're consistently anxious on Sunday evenings or that your mood dips every time you have a particular type of meeting. Sometimes just seeing the pattern is enough to address it.
The mood tracker also helps when you can't figure out what to write. You've selected "overwhelmed," and now the journal prompt is tailored to that. The app isn't guessing what you need—you've told it.
How to Set Up Reminders (Without Making Them Annoying)
Journly app features include four types of reminders, and you can toggle any of them on or off:
Morning Reflections (6 AM - 12 PM): A reminder to journal sometime in the morning. You can set the exact time.
Evening Reflections (6 PM - 12 AM): Same concept, but for winding down at night. Also customizable.
Positive Affirmations: Random messages throughout the day. These are optional and honestly not for everyone. If notifications stress you out, skip this one.
Streak Maintenance: A gentle nudge if you're about to break your journaling streak. This one only activates when you've been consistent and then suddenly aren't.
To set these up: Go to the "More" tab, tap "Reminders," and toggle what you want. If the app asks for notification permissions and you haven't granted them yet, you'll need to do that in your phone settings.
The key here is that these aren't aggressive. Journly won't send you five notifications a day insisting you journal. It's more like a quiet reminder that the app exists if you want it.
Daily Prompts (The Actual Reason You'll Use This)
The biggest barrier to journaling is the blank page. Journly solves this by giving you one prompt when you open the app. Not a menu of 50 prompts to choose from—one. It rotates through a collection of questions designed for the kind of thinking that happens when you're stressed, overthinking, or just mentally tired.
Examples of Journly app features prompts:
- What's taking up the most mental space right now?
- What would I do if I trusted myself to handle hard things?
- What am I trying to control that I can't actually control?
These aren't generic "what are you grateful for" questions. They're specific enough to give your brain direction but open enough that you're not just filling in blanks. The prompts are designed specifically for journaling for women who tend to overthink, ruminate, or carry mental load that's hard to articulate.
If a prompt doesn't work for you on a given day, you can skip it and write freely. But most of the time, having the prompt there removes the friction of deciding what to write about.
Rich Text and Media Options
Journly lets you format your entries: bold, italics, lists, headers. You can also add images, GIFs, stickers, and voice recordings that get automatically transcribed.
Realistically, most people don't use all of this. The formatting is useful if you're writing something structured. The voice recording feature is useful if typing feels like too much effort. The stickers... exist.
The point is that the options are there if you want them, but you're not required to use them. A plain text entry works just as well.
Privacy and Encryption
Your entries are encrypted twice—once on your device and once in the cloud if you choose to back up. Journly doesn't access your data. There's no AI analyzing your journal to sell you targeted ads. What you write stays private.
This matters if you're going to write anything honest. Knowing your entries are actually secure makes it easier to use the app for what it's designed for: getting thoughts out of your head without worrying about who might read them.
Progress Tracking and Streaks
Journly tracks how often you journal with a calendar view and a streak counter. You also unlock achievement badges as you hit milestones.
This works for some people and stresses out others. If seeing a streak counter motivates you, great. If it makes you feel guilty on days you don't journal, you can largely ignore it. The app will still function fine.
The calendar view is more useful than the streak—you can see at a glance which days you journaled and which days you didn't, which helps you notice patterns without the pressure of maintaining a perfect record.
Customization (If You Care About That)
The app is unapologetically pink—it's designed specifically for women and doesn't pretend otherwise. You can switch between light mode, dark mode, or system default, but the pink aesthetic stays consistent throughout. You can change the background. You can even change the app icon to one of several pink alternatives.
None of this affects functionality. It's purely aesthetic. If you care about how your apps look, the options are there. If you don't, the defaults work fine.
Templates for Different Needs
Journly includes templates beyond the daily prompt. There's a vent session template for when you just need to get everything out without structure. There's a gratitude template. There are others.
These are helpful when you know what kind of entry you want to write. If you're feeling overwhelmed and need to vent, the vent template gives you permission to do that without worrying about being "productive" with your journaling. If you want to practice gratitude, that template guides you there.
Most of the time, the daily prompt is enough. But having templates available means you're not stuck with one approach.
What You Actually Need to Know
To start using Journly:
1. Download the app
2. Grant notification permissions if you want reminders
3. Open it when you want to journal
4. Select your mood
5. Respond to the prompt or write freely
6. Close the app
That's it. Everything else—formatting, media, templates, customization—is optional.
To make Journly app features work for you long-term:
- Set reminders for times you'll actually journal (not aspirational times)
- Don't stress about streaks
- Use the mood tracker even on days you don't write much—the data is useful later
- If a prompt doesn't resonate, skip it
- Journal when you need to, not because the app told you to
Why This Setup Works
Most journaling apps fail because they're either too complicated (15 features you'll never use) or too simple (just a blank page that you'll never fill). Journly sits in the middle: enough structure to make starting easy, enough flexibility to use it however you need.
The mood tracker gives you a quick entry point. The prompts remove decision fatigue. The reminders help with consistency without being pushy. The encryption means you can be honest. The templates give you options when you need them.
Nothing about how to use Journly requires you to change your life or commit to a perfect routine. It works whether you journal every day or three times a week. It works whether you write paragraphs or bullet points. It works whether you use all the features or just the basics.
The app is designed to fit your life, not the other way around.
