What’s New in Auto Journal

2026-10-26 — Ask questions in Search or Siri, and Auto Journal on your Mac

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• Ask questions about your visits and more. From the timeline, click search. Type your question about visits, places, trips and days and Apple Intelligence answers with links to any referenced items. It can also answer anything the Insights screen covers, like your busiest day. Search also suggests sample questions to try, and tapping the clock icon shows your last 10 questions. Excluded places are not searchable.
• Use Siri to ask Auto Journal about your visits, or add a visit note or Bucket List item. Invoke Siri and say “When was the last time I visited a place in Auto Journal” and Siri tells you the day, time and how long you stayed, then opens that visit. “Add a note in Auto Journal” adds to your most recent visit, or to today’s journal, below what’s already there, and “Add to my Bucket List in Auto Journal” confirms with you first.
• Build your own automations using Apple’s Shortcuts app. Launch the Shortcuts app and select Library → Apps → Auto Journal, you can find visits by place, person, label or dates, get your Bucket List, and open places, visits, trips and days.
• Swipe through your photos in the large preview, and pick them from there. Long-press a thumbnail, swipe left or right, and tap the circle in the top-right corner to select or unselect the one you’re looking at. It works wherever you choose photos: a trip’s photos (Settings → Import → “Choose photos”), a visit’s photos and videos, and a day’s journal entry.
• Add visits for any day straight from Apple Photos. Select up to 50 photos, tap Share → Auto Journal, then “Add visits from N photos” to review them before you tap “Create visits from N photos”. The photos are linked from your library, not copied.
• Photos you add yourself no longer use your iCloud storage. When you add photos to a visit or a day’s journal entry, Auto Journal now links to the photo in your iPhone’s photo library instead of copying it, and day-journal photos you added before are converted where the original is still in your library. If you delete a photo from your library, it also disappears from the journal.
• NEW - Auto Journal is now on your Mac. Install it from TestFlight on your Mac (macOS 15 or later) and sign in to your iPhone’s iCloud account. You can browse your Timeline, Places, Trips and Insights, search, and edit visits, places, notes, labels, people and day journals, and edits sync both ways. Your iPhone still does all the automatic visit recording; the Mac has no location features. It can’t add photos (add them on your iPhone) and shows only photos copied into the journal by older versions, not the ones linked or matched from your iPhone’s photo library or videos (it says “5 photos on iPhone” instead), and doesn’t show steps, workouts or calories from Apple Health. It doesn’t use your Contacts or Calendar either, so you type a person’s name instead of picking it, and there are no calendar suggestions.
• Ask Claude, Claude Code or ChatGPT’s Codex about your journal, from the Mac app. In Settings → AI Assistant, turn on “Let assistants on this Mac read your journal”, then ask things like “What gyms have I been to, and how often?” or “Summarize my October.” They get every Insights figure except steps, workouts and calories. Assistants can only read, and excluded places and the addresses of Home and Work are never shared.
  • Claude Desktop: click “Add to Claude Desktop”, click Allow in the window that opens, then quit and reopen Claude Desktop.
  • Claude Code (Terminal): click “Copy setup for other assistants”, then run claude mcp add --scope user auto-journal -- "PATH" --mcp, replacing PATH with the path in the copied text. Start a new session; /mcp shows it connected.
  • ChatGPT: regular ChatGPT chat can’t reach your Mac, but Codex can. In the ChatGPT desktop app’s Codex, go to Settings → MCP servers → Add server, name it “auto-journal”, choose STDIO, enter the path from the copied setup as the command and --mcp as the argument, then save and Restart. In Terminal, the Codex CLI equivalent is codex mcp add auto-journal -- "PATH" --mcp.
  • Cursor and others: paste the copied setup into the assistant’s MCP settings.
• Search now finds words with accents when you type them without. Typing “cafe” finds “Café”.
• Split one visit into two, even when your phone didn’t notice you moved on. Edit a visit, tap “Split into two visits…” and set when the first visit ended and the second began, already filled in when your phone noticed; the second visit then opens so you can choose its place.
• Fixed: a short walk to a second place no longer hides the visit there. After a brief pause, say a minute at a train station, then a short walk to somewhere you stay for an hour, that hour now gets its own visit, named like any other, whenever your phone noticed the walk. If the pause was shorter than your minimum stay, the visit is at the second place only, and photos from the first place stay out of it.
• Fixed: the same photo is no longer attached to several neighboring visits. Each photo now goes to only one visit, the one you were at when you took it or the nearest in time; duplicates already attached are cleaned up automatically. Photos you added yourself are never removed, and nothing is deleted from your photo library.
• Fixed: the On This Day widget now shows a photo from the visit, instead of a memory with no picture. It uses photos you added yourself first, otherwise the ones Auto Journal matched to the visit from your iPhone’s photo library; photos stored only in iCloud aren’t downloaded just to refresh the widget.
• Fixed: clouds in weather icons have more contrast.
• Fixed: opening a visit from your Bucket List, Siri or the calendar now shows the whole card. The top of it is no longer hidden.

2026-10-20 — Browse a trip’s map and details, easily remove trip visits, better photo thumbnails

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• Pan/zoom/edit your trip visually. Tap the map at the top of a trip to open it full screen and pan, zoom and tap your visits, numbered by order you visited them. A pin for a visit with photos has a small camera badge, and tapping a pin shows its name, day, times and number of photos, with a “Details” button to open the visit. From there you can edit the visit as needed or return to the trip’s map
• Remove a visit from a trip right on its map. Tap a pin, then “Remove from Trip” (also in the visit opened from the map); the visit stays in your journal and the map updates in place. A trip’s last visit can’t be removed. To do so just delete the trip itself.
• Long-press a photo or video thumbnail to see it large before you add it. When choosing a trip’s photos (Settings → Import → “Choose photos”), or when adding photos or videos to a visit, or when adding photos to a day’s journal entry you can long-press to better view it. You see the timestamp, the city and a small map if the photo has a saved location; a video shows its still frame. Tap anywhere to go back.
• Sending feedback is now one screen. In Settings, tap “Give Feedback” and choose “Send with location data”, “Send without location data” or “Send feedback without logs” to open your mail draft in one tap. Nothing is sent until you press Send, and logs are attached only if you pick one of the first two.
• Places on a university or college campus are now typed University, with the graduation-cap icon. This covers buildings, quads and ponds that Apple Maps lists without a category, which showed as “Place”; a café or bank on campus keeps its own type, and existing campus places are corrected over your next few launches. A type you chose yourself is never changed.
• The new and edit Visit form has been reorganized so that core visit details are easily viewable.
• Fixed: the “Add” button for photos and videos on a visit is now always visible. When editing a visit, it now sits at the start of the Photos and Videos rows instead of the end, so it no longer scrolls out of view once you have four or more.
• Fixed: adding a skipped visit from the Activity Log now completes both Arrived and Left times. In Settings → Diagnostics → Activity Log, tap a row like “too brief” and the “New Visit” form opens ready to add the visit with complete details.

2026-10-18 — Document your past travels by importing visits and trips from your photo library

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• Add travel from before you installed Auto Journal, using your photos. In Settings → Import, tap “Choose photos” and you will see a list of trips identified by scanning your photo library. Pick a trip, select the photos you want to associate with the trip’s visits, then tap “Create visits” to have Auto Journal add a visit for each place, with the photos attached. A summary then lists the new visits. Tap “View visits created” to jump to the first one in your Timeline and correct any locations as needed. You can also view the Trip directly which will include a map, summary of each city visited, and allow you to share it.
• By default, 5-minute visits are no longer logged automatically. “Minimum visit” in Settings → Rules now defaults to 15 minutes instead of 5, so a red light or a quick chat on the sidewalk is skipped. If yours was set below 15 minutes, it moves to 15 once, on all your devices; if needed you can change it back anytime and it stays.
• Fixed: The “Allow Always” button for background processing now works better. The button now opens Auto Journal’s page in the Settings app, and setup tells you to tap Location and choose Always.

2026-10-16 — Share your Bucket List as a PDF or text, improved distance tracking with Apple workouts, other fixes.

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• Share your Bucket List as a PDF or as text. In Trips → Bucket List, tap Share in the header. The PDF has a map with numbered pins and tappable links for each place, and it respects your filters, so filtering to National Parks shares just those parks.
• While in an Apple workout, a walk, run or hike between two visits now shows the distance you actually covered. When Apple Health measured more than the Apple Maps route, Auto Journal uses Health’s distance, so a walk out and back with no visit will no longer show an incorrect distance walked.
• Fixed: a visit named from a calendar event at a shared street address now asks you to check the name. When several businesses share the address, such as an office park, you get the “Other businesses were just as close” notification and “Wrong place?” on the visit card, instead of a plain “Saved:” notification.
• Fixed: choosing the right place with “Wrong place?” no longer will leave a contact at the previous address. If you visit a home address of a Contact “Fred” and later change that visit to a different location, Fred will be removed from the visit.
• Fixed: “Log this visit” while you’re still walking past it now starts the visit right away. In the “Here now” card’s ⋯ menu, a visit logged by you stays short and the walk before it is recorded properly.
• Fixed: a visit you log with “Log this visit” no longer ends up inside Home. The next place you arrive at can’t be dated earlier than the visit you logged, so the Timeline keeps them in order.
• Fixed: a visit is no longer deleted if you manually logged it or if you set the start/end time to be the same. Cleanups are also now recorded in Settings → Diagnostics → Activity Log.
• Fixed: website links in shared place and trip PDFs are now tappable.
• Bucket List rows are shorter and clearer. A place of your own saved by sharing a post now reads “Via YouTube · 3,312 mi away”, and every unvisited row says “mi away” (still measured from Home).
• Fixed: Work addresses are no longer used to add contacts to a visit. Contacts are only added to a visit if you visit their home address.

2026-10-14 — Track your Bucket List, keep any short visit on demand, and much more

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• Add places you want to go to your Bucket List. In Trips → Bucket List, tap ”＋” to add custom places to your Bucket List or choose from several lists including UNESCO World Heritage Sites, US National Parks, or Wikipedia Top 500 most viewed locations. Tap the (i) icon to learn more about these locations. A pin and the year appear beside places you’ve already visited. Visited places show their date and a photo and tapping will open that visit on the Timeline. Tap the ↑↓ button in the header to drag and prioritize locations on your Bucket List. Tap the button in the Bucket List header to open “Filter & Sort” to filter by source, or sort by distance away and more.
  • Share a post or a place to your Bucket List, and the places it names are added. On iPhone, tap Share → Auto Journal from Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Google Maps or Apple Maps. Auto Journal adds the place to your Bucket List with a link back to the original post.
  • Visiting a place on your Bucket List notifies you. e.g. “Congrats on visiting #3 on your Bucket List. That’s 8 of 23 visited.” You can turn it off in Settings → Notifications → “Bucket List places”.
  • An orange bucket marks any 1st visit to a Bucket List location. Look for it on the Timeline card and in the Places list. Opening a visit or place shows where it was on your Bucket List.
  • Track your Bucket List items on the Insights tab. Tiles for “Bucket List visits”, “US Nat. Parks”, “World Heritage”, “Wikipedia 500” and “Custom” show what you reached in the period; tap a list tile to see its places, visited ones first.
  • Filter your timeline or places list by Bucket List visits. Toggle the “Bucket List” switch in the Timeline’s filter, or in Places → Filter & Sort.
  • Your first visit to a UNESCO World Heritage Site now shows a special card, with the site’s name and UNESCO description. The card is also on every place that is part of a site; a wrong match can be undone with ”⋯ → Not a World Heritage site”.
• Keep a short visit with “Log this visit”. Auto Journal automatically creates a visit anywhere you stay for your “Minimum visit” (5 min unless you change it), and now you can add shorter visits on demand too. On the “Here now” card, tap ⋯ → “Log this visit” and the badge reads “Here now - visit will be logged”; the visit joins your Timeline when you leave.
• Open the app and the “Here now” card shows where you’re standing, even if you’ve only paused on a walk. The visit is not added to your Timeline unless it lasts your “Minimum visit” or you log it.
• Exclude a place, an address or a whole city, even somewhere you haven’t been yet, to keep it off your Timeline. In Settings → Excluded, tap “Add a place, address or city”, search or tap the map, then choose “Just this spot” or “All of <City, ST>”. Excluded places are left out of your Timeline, the Places tab, search and the visit count (except a visit you’re at right now). Their visits stay hidden and saved, so removing an exclusion will show their visits again.
• Split a visit around the visit inside it. When a visit like Home runs straight through an errand or a walk, the Timeline flags it with an orange “Overlaps” label; open that visit, tap Edit, then “Split into two visits…” to end the first half when your iPhone recorded you leaving and start the second when it recorded you returning. Where it didn’t record one (an older visit), that side uses an estimated trip instead, and you can adjust either time in each visit’s editor afterward.
• A walk or run in a park or beach is now saved as a visit even without stopping. It works wherever Apple Maps knows how big the place is. Start and end times are estimates, and it must be longer than your “Minimum visit” in Settings.
• When two of your places are equally close, Auto Journal asks which one you meant. The visit is saved with “Wrong place?” on its card, and a notification asks “Is this Il Casale? Butternut Bakehouse is just as close.” — tap it to open that day on your Timeline and answer on the card, or swipe it away if it’s right.
• A visit’s photos and videos now appear right under the place’s address. Open a visit and they’re near the top, and in the visit editor “Photos” and “Videos” come straight after the arrival and departure times.
• Large places like a hospital, university or park can now be found in a busy area full of shops. Auto Journal now asks Apple Maps for large places only, and also looks for museums, convention centers and golf courses where Maps has measured them.
• Fixed: Home and Work now cover about the size of a house, so a visit down the street is no longer named “Home”. A walk past your house no longer leaves several visits all named Home.
• Fixed: “Wrong place?” no longer offers a school, hotel or marina you weren’t at. When no business is right beside you, a large place is offered only if Apple Maps’ outline of it reaches where you were; without an outline, only a hospital, university, airport, park or beach is offered, and otherwise the visit is saved under its address.
• Fixed: “Wrong place?” goes away by itself on a name that has proven itself. When Auto Journal suggests the nearest business but isn’t sure, the prompt now disappears if it stands clear of the other categorized businesses nearby and you’ve visited that place at least twice before, or, on a first visit, three separate location readings agreed. A name you set, confirmed or corrected is never changed.
• Fixed: arriving at a place you go often is preferred over nearby but not visited places. When several businesses are nearby and it can’t tell which one you’re at, a place you’ve visited at least twice before, within about 400 ft, can now take the visit instead of the guess.
• Fixed: a small landmark you pass on the way in, like a statue or an EV charger, no longer is recorded as a visit over a larger venue. Auto Journal now treats a listing as covering the area around it only when it is a park or a large place such as a campus, hospital, museum or big-box store, so a theater a few hundred meters on is no longer lost to a statue.
• Fixed: a visit to a movie theater, store or other business is less often named for a charging station nearby. When your location is too imprecise to tell the two apart, Auto Journal now names the visit for the business. When your location clearly puts you at the charger, the charger keeps the name, and it applies to new visits.
• Fixed: a visit with a calendar event is named for the business the event names, even if it isn’t where the visit began. When a visit ends, Auto Journal checks your calendar around the places you were during it, and around where your photos were taken, but only renames a name it had guessed itself. It applies to new visits.
• Fixed: a visit to a business is named for the business, not one part of it. A visit is now saved as “Bank of America” instead of “Bank of America Mortgage”, or “Star Market” instead of “Star Market Pharmacy”. It applies to new visits, and you can still pick the narrower listing from “Wrong place?” or “Correct place”.
• Fixed: one evening at a place no longer shows up as two visits covering the same hours. The second visit, named after a nearby place you never went to, is no longer saved, and you no longer get a notification asking about its times. It applies to new visits; any duplicate already on your Timeline can be deleted by hand.
• Fixed: a walk around a place you’ve named is saved as one visit, with that name and its full length. When iPhone splits one walk in two, Auto Journal joins the pieces instead of saving a street address and a late start time, and adds them up before checking your “Minimum visit” in Settings.
• Fixed: walking on from one place you’ve named to another now ends the first visit and starts the next with its real arrival time.
• Fixed: a visit between two of your places across the street from each other is now filed at the right one. Auto Journal uses the street address of where you were, then the place you’ve visited more often, instead of whichever pin was a few feet closer.
• Fixed: a place you only walked past is no longer saved as a short visit. If you were still walking a block away after the arrival time iPhone reported, the visit is counted from when you actually got there — and if the next visit’s arrival then leaves it shorter than your minimum stay, it’s left off your Timeline. A removed visit can be restored from Settings → Diagnostics → Activity Log; a visit you’ve added a note, people or a label to is never removed.
• Fixed: pausing in a large park, then walking on, no longer loses the visit. At a place Apple Maps lists as large — a park, campus, station or hospital — the visit now stays open until Auto Journal sees you somewhere else, so it isn’t dropped for being shorter than your “Minimum visit” setting.
• Fixed: a walk, run or hike you record as a workout no longer leaves a park visit cut short. If you start the workout at the park, the visit now runs until the workout ends, once Auto Journal next reads Health (when you open the app) — not just to your first pause.
• Fixed: walking out of a park and back in within the hour no longer drops your return as too short. It rejoins the same visit, as long as you didn’t drive or visit somewhere else in between.
• Fixed: a pause at a park gate is no longer named after a nearby school. When nothing right at your door fits, Auto Journal now prefers a large place you’re inside, or one you’ve named or confirmed before, over one whose pin is merely closer.
• Fixed: a park you’ve saved is now recorded more accurately when you visit it.