Narrato Journal is a journal for everything.
I used to keep a handwritten journal. I wrote about everything and anything that happened throughout the day. My first experience with e-journaling was with Live Journal. It’s wasn’t so bad, but the social aspect of it sort of creeped me out. The journal was for my private thoughts and I found myself having to censor my thoughts that I wanted to get out. So, I stopped the journaling process for a time. When mobile apps started taking over the marketplace, journaling apps started to appear. I didn’t try one right away because a lot of them are ‘pay for’ apps. Narrato Journal is free (with in-app purchases).
Narrato Journal is simple and elegant – just what I was looking for. When you first start the app, you are asked to create an account. This is so all your devices can sync. There is a web interface, but it’s not for journaling purposes. It’s for record purposes. It shows you a profile with stats like how many entries you’ve had and when your last sync was. Narrato makes it easy for users to connect with other services – like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. – to build a larger picture of your life story. You can bypass the social networking connection and just use your personal, private information instead. This is the route I opted for.
Narrato Journal automatically creates a journal called “Day by Day”, but you can create other journals if you want to break it out into different subject matters. I could see this being useful for say, new parents. They might want to keep their own personal journal, but also one about how their newborn child is developing.
Some of the journaling features included with Narrato Journal are:
- Universal app for iPhone and iPad
- Optimized for iOS 7
- Background sync support with iOS 7
- Automatic step counting with the iPhone 5S
- Share your journal entries to your social networks
- Full landscape support
- Accessibility and dynamic font sizing
- Cloud Sync & backup
- LifeStream integrates with the services & apps you already use
- Works whether you have signal or not
- Create multiple journals
- Shows local weather
- PIN Lock
- Camera + Integration
- Post moods, photos & locations
- Mood tracking
- Organize your entries by day
- Reminders to journal
- Entry date selector
As I mentioned, Narrato Journal is free with in-app purchases. The purchases include subscription pricing for monthly upload size. It’s free up to 60MBs per month. Then there are Pro subscriptions for different time periods. One year of pro (uploads to 250GB per month) is $4.99. This is something I’m not a big fan of. I’d much rather see it be free with support to sync through Dropbox or other cloud-based service that doesn’t require a subscription.
Narrato Journal is a solid, simple, fun journaling app for iOS devices. I recommend it to anyone who likes to journal and is looking for an easily transition from pen & paper to touchscreen.
Robyn, I enjoy your reviews. They are concise and practical and you do a great job of pulling the reader in. Noticed that you have sensor when I think you meant censor. Just a heads up, 🙂 I’ve also had good luck with a journalism app called Day One you might want to check out some day..
Thanks for the heads up. Those darn homophones get me sometimes. I appreciate the feedback and thanks for reading! I will check out Day One, too.