This is where I write my Journal on my iPhone

2025 Sep 23.

There is a small corner on my iPhone that I really love, a place I think most people overlook or sometimes even forget exists. To me, it is an interesting little corner where you can store all kinds of thoughts, and might make you smile unexpectedly, or just leave you deep in thought when you stumble upon it or remember it later. The spot I'm talking about is the Caption field - the part you can see and edit when you swipe up on a photo or video in the Photos app.

That’s where I write my journal entries. It might sound a little odd since I haven’t seen anyone around me do this or even use this feature. Most people would probably choose better-suited things like a dedicated journaling app (Day One, Apple's Journal, etc), a note-taking app (Apple's Notes, Notion, Obsidian, etc.), email, or just pen and paper. But for me personally, I love writing here for several reasons:

• Natural and simplicity. It feels just like writing something on the back or underneath of printed photos . It’s also similar to what most people do when they post something on social media, write caption.
• No extra apps needed. It fits perfectly with the experience of looking back at photos and videos.
• Character limit. As far as I know, it’s about 250 characters or up to 2000 depending on the standard. However, I always keep myself to no more than three short paragraphs, it helps me a lot distill my thoughts and feelings better in some ways.
• No distractions from formatting or decoration. Just plaintext.
• Private as secret. There’s something fun about how it’s in such an easily overlooked spot, even by myself. Imagine you have 10,000 photos, and a word of love is written on one of them in a place that is even often being ignored.
• Remembering without remembering. It’s anchored to a photo, to a moment that was captured. I’ll remember it for a long time, remember what I wrote down, but I’ll also completely forget about its existence until one day I suddenly recall it or come across it by chance.

Once, when I was browsing through some old photos, I accidentally opened the photo’s metadata and found a caption I’d written years ago. I didn’t even remember writing it, and certainly not at the time the photo was taken. The description made me feel good, and it made me remember “me” of that time, so happy and peaceful. That’s when I realized just how delightful this feature is.

I know there’s a lot of debate out there, but for me personally, Apple’s Photos app is always better than any other photo app out there (in terms of UX/UI, speed, privacy, and reliability), even though it’s changed its interface three times in the last five years. Photos is also the reason I write captions on my pictures more often.

• File Over App ¹: Because photo caption is part of a common standard, you can view and edit it using any app on any platform. Photos isn’t vendor-locked, you can export photos and videos with all their metadata in the most popular formats. In the end, photo viewers are just ephemeral, and the important thing is your data (photos/videos/metadata).
• Backup/Sync/Offline-first: It’s easy to back up, sync, and access from anywhere, even without Internet. Apple also encrypts everything (end-to-end encryption if you turn on Advanced Data Protection with iCloud+) included caption.
• Easy search: Apple Photos indexes everything you write in the caption, so you can easily find it again especially helpful for videos. Most other media viewers also support this.
• Great UX/UI: Mostly just swiping. Quick and easy when you want to write or look back.
• Safe and reliable ²: Take advantage of the inherent features that photos and videos have such as albums, memories, maps. On the other hand, Photos app contains important data and is considered a sensitive application, so it is protected at the OS level, you can control it better than a third party app.

That’s the best place and best way for me when I think about where I want to write journal.

Let a photo or a video not only save the moment but also include the words you write down, whether at that time or later. Swipe up and just "Add a Caption". All in one place.

The flow of journaling feels effortless and light. Take a few photos, record a few videos, jot down a few thoughts underneath, put the phone down to fully enjoy the moment, come back later and write down some new feelings or thoughts, then move on with life. What’s important is to be honest with myself and live in the moment.

Hữu Phong.

#journal