A gratitude journal on Apple Watch

A gratitude journal and a smartwatch are an unlikely pair. One is a slow, reflective thing; the other is famous for interrupting you. But there is one specific job the watch does better than the phone, and it is worth knowing about.

The case for writing on your wrist

The good moments in a day are mostly small, and small things are exactly what you forget by 10pm.

You are halfway up a hill and the view opens up. Someone says something kind in a corridor. The thing you were dreading takes four minutes. By the evening, when you sit down to write, the specific version of that has usually gone and you are left with “work was fine”.

The watch closes that gap. Raising your wrist and writing six words takes about as long as noticing the thing did, and it does not involve unlocking a phone and passing three apps that will happily take the next twenty minutes off you.

What the MindHappy watch app does

• Write an entry without reaching for your phone.
• Add to today’s entry through the day, rather than filling all three slots in one sitting.
• Sync through your account, so what you write on the watch is in the same journal as everything else.

It is deliberately not a full copy of the phone app. Reading a year of entries on a 40mm screen is not an improvement on anything.

How the sync works

Both apps talk to the same account. Write on the watch, and the entry is in the iPhone app; write on the phone, and the watch sees it.

If you are somewhere without a connection — a run, a flight, a basement — you can still write. The entry syncs the next time the apps are online, which also means a lost or replaced watch does not take your journal with it.

When the phone is still better

Reading back. On This Day memories, a year of entries, the Reflections feature — all of these want a screen you can actually look at.

The evening habit. If your routine is three things before bed, the phone is the right device and the watch adds nothing.

The honest summary is that the watch is a capture tool and the phone is a reading tool. Most people who use both write a line or two on the wrist during the day and finish the entry at night.

Getting it

The Apple Watch app installs with the iPhone app — there is nothing separate to buy and nothing to enable. It is included in the free version, along with the daily reminder, the streak and On This Day memories.

If you are new to the habit itself, how to start a gratitude journal is the practical guide, and Three Good Things explains the exercise MindHappy is built around.