The journal is the heart of InnerPulse. One entry per day is enough. The flow is deliberately short: ten seconds on tough days, longer when you want to reflect.
Create an entry
Tap the plus icon in the Journal tab. The editor has four sections.
1. Pick your mood
Drag the color slider from red through orange and yellow to green. The slider snaps to whole steps from 1 to 10. A small emoji next to the value helps with orientation. The animation has a light spring effect and subtle haptic feedback, so setting it feels physically noticeable.
2. Set influence factors
Tap factors that shaped the day. InnerPulse actively suggests factors that match your weekday, your time of day and your recent entries. These suggestions are not random; they come from six dimensions like frequency, recency and co-occurrence with other factors. How exactly that works is explained in the chapter Factors.
You can tap Same as yesterday to take over all factors from the last entry. Handy on days when little has changed.
Intensity instead of just yes or no: For factors where you've enabled the intensity slider, a five-step slider from low to high appears instead of the simple selection. That way you tell apart a light walk from an intense workout, or a little from a lot of coffee. You enable the slider per factor, see chapter Factors. How the app later compares high and low intensity is in the chapter Analysis & Patterns.
3. Write a note
Below the note field you'll see up to three writing prompts. They are short questions that match the chosen mood, e.g. "What weighed on you today?" at low values or "What felt easy today?" at high values. You don't have to answer any of them. They are an offer, not a requirement. Each prompt is held back for seven days after use, so the app doesn't keep asking you the same question.
Dictate instead of typing: In the note field you'll find a microphone button. Tap it to dictate. Speech recognition runs fully on-device via Apple Speech Recognition. None of it is sent to a server. The live transcript appears as you speak. When you stop, you choose whether the text replaces or is appended to your note. The first time, iOS asks for microphone and speech recognition permission.
4. Check the date
The app sets the current date. You can change it if you're recording a past day.
Tap Save. A brief checkmark confirms the entry.
What happens when you save
Behind the save tap, the app quietly works in the background:
- Factor statistics are updated (frequency, weekday affinity, co-occurrence with other factors).
- The reminder logic checks whether a pending notification still exists for today and cancels it.
- If you have Apple Health connected, the mood value is written to your Health app as State of Mind. How that works exactly is in the chapter Apple Health & Weather.
The trend chart
At the top of the journal list you'll see a chart of the last 30 entries. You can drag the white cursor across the chart to inspect individual days. In Settings you choose between four styles: line, dots, area or bars.
Below that follows the chronological list of entries. Each card shows the mood score ring, date, time, a note symbol if a note exists and the most important factors as overlapping icons. Factor icons stack up to three; anything more is indicated as "+2".
Search the journal
At the top right of the journal list, next to the plus, sits a magnifier icon. Tap it and a small search field opens. The list filters live as you type, and searches three things at once: your note text, the factor names and the date. If you search for "Sports", all entries with that factor appear; if you search for a month, all entries from that period.
While you search, the trend chart at the top stays visible. The heading switches to "Entries (filtered)" and shows the hit count. If there are no hits, it reads "No results". The search field closes when you tap next to it, but the filter stays active. The magnifier icon then becomes a filter icon. A tap on it clears the filter again.
Edit or delete an entry
Swipe an entry left in the list to delete it. Tap it to edit. If you delete by accident, shake the iPhone within 30 seconds. The entry comes back with all factors and the note.
Multiple entries on the same day
You can make as many entries per day as you want. Each entry is saved with date and time and distinguished by the time of day. So you can record how you feel in the morning, at noon and in the evening, if that makes sense to you.
The one thing to keep in mind: if you make multiple entries on one day with very different mood values, the chart can look jumpy at that point. For a smoother trend curve, one entry per day is often enough.
Catch up on missed days
If you like, InnerPulse shows you days on which you recorded nothing. To do that, enable the option Show unlogged days in Settings under "General". In the journal list the empty days then appear as a subtle, dashed tile with a plus symbol between your entries.
A tap on such a tile creates an entry for exactly that day, with the date already prefilled. That way you catch up on a forgotten day in seconds.
The feature is deliberately kept friendly: no streak display, no reproachful tone, no push reminder about missed days. It is an offer to catch up, not an accusation. When a search is active, the placeholders are hidden so your results list stays clean.
What to know
- You can fill in past days at any time. Set an earlier date and the entry will appear at the correct spot in the chart.
- Multiple entries per day are allowed and are distinguished by time of day.
- The search via the magnifier icon searches notes, factors and date at once and keeps the trend chart visible.
- Factor suggestions get better with each entry. After several entries, the app picks up on first weekday patterns.
- Voice dictation also works offline. Apple Speech has run locally on newer devices since iOS 13.