Location History

I always loved the idea to track my own location to see, years later, where I went during that day. My main concern is how all that information is handled by the companies that could have access to it. I wanted this feature and to be the only one that could know the places I went. That's why this feature is now implemented in Hibi Journal.

Hibi Journal uses the same location data that the device is already tracking so it doesn't have any impact on the battery life, and saves it alongside the entries, on the device and iCloud, only accessible by the user, so it's completely private.

Map View

Remember the places you went and look back to your entries exploring the full-screen map.

All the entries from the region currently visible will be grouped and ordered by day. On iPad, it will appear on the right side of the screen. On iPhone, a filter button will open a sheet. Tap on a day to see it completely. It's also possible to select a pin to open it.

Custom Location Name

There are places, like home, that are not just a postal address. Places where we journal from regularly. Now you can name them and have it automatically applied to past and future entries with the same and nearby location.

Some more things

We added some appearance options. From Journals > Settings > Appearance you can now select the number of texts, photos, draws, and audio entries that are shown on the Hibi Journal home page. And, the text editor can now show a title by default.

Coming next

Next update will focus on iOS integration.

Because all your data is saved on your own iCloud, to log in to Hibi Cloud, you need to sign in with Apple ID. All your journals and entries stay on your browser, everything stays local, nothing is sent anywhere.

For now, you can read, look and hear your entries but they are not editable. The edition and creation of entries from the web will be a feature added later.

This Day

It's easier than ever to review your past entries. Once you launch Hibi Journal, when there are entries from the current day created in the previous years, a preview of This Day will appear. In a tap, This Day view will open and you can revisit not just your entries but also all the photos from your camera roll and a map with the places you went.

It's also possible to have this feature right on your device's home screen via a beautiful widget!

You can also pick a day from the calendar and have This Day view from the top right corner.

Reminders

It feels good to relive our memories by reading our thoughts and seeing photos. But it's difficult to get in the habit of journaling and to stay in it. That's why we added reminders.

To create a new reminder, go to Journals > Settings > Reminders. You can choose the time, recurrence, to which journal, what kind of entry, and even have a custom title and message appear.
When the reminder appears in your notifications, tap on it to start the entry.

Some more things

Besides the reminders, Today widget lets you keep track of the entries created in the current day. It displays the entries count and a tap will start a new entry. This widget can be a big help to stay in the habit.

Diverse reasons can make us want to hide some entries without deleting them, so now it's possible to do it. Hidden entries will not appear anymore on the app home screen or the widgets.
You can hide or unhide from the entry's options (the "..." icon on the bottom right).
To see them back, tap on Hidden from the top right corner of the Day view (the one that appears once you picked a date or an entry).

And the last thing (for now). Entries created in different timezone now show the time when it was created in its timezone as well as the current one.

Coming next

Next update will focus on location.

Rich text formatting with markdown

You can now make your text entries more alive. Apply a wide range of styles with just a tap. Add headers, bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, highlight, quotes, bullet and numbered lists, and checklists.

You can also manually type using Markdown and the text will convert to Rich Text automatically. For example, type --- and a line separator will appear. Markdown shortcuts make it easy to format the text while typing.

# Title
## Heading
### Subheading

**Bold**
*Italic*
==Highlight==
∼∼Strikethrough∼∼

*, -, + Bullet List
1. Ordered List

> Quote

--- Line Separator

Import & Export

Besides being able to export all your journals and their entries, you can now apply filters. The journals to be exported, the date range of the entries, whether or not to include media (images, audio), and the export format - for now only in JSON.

Currently, it is only possible to import the data from Hibi Journal as JSON. It will be possible to import data from other apps in the near future.

App icons

As you may have already seen, Hibi Journal icon has a new design and we hope you love it! But we didn't stop there. If you go to Journals > Settings > App icon, you can choose the one that will fit the best in your home screen. There are six so far and others will come later.

Coming next

Next update will bring Reminders and Widgets.

You'll find this new feature in Journals > Settings > Passcode. The passcode does not sync between devices, so you can use different ones for each device.
Once activated, you can also use Face/Touch ID - useful if you forget the passcode, otherwise, if you are certain that your data is synced, you would need to delete the app from the device and re-install it.
You can also select the time to automatically lock Hibi Journal once you leave the app.

Passcode feature is part of Essential upgrade. As a reminder, if you already purchased this upgrade, you get this new feature for free! And if you haven't, you now have one more reason to do so!

Coming next

Next update will bring a rich text editor and French, Japanese, and Portuguese languages.