At the end of 2023, Apple launched a new iPhone app called Journal, a one-stop shop for those looking to chronicle their daily lives.
It's a nicely designed and clean app that lets you write entries, with the ability to paste in images or videos, meaning it's really helpful for reflecting on your day or week.
However, it turns out that it has a couple of features that you might not have known about.
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Just like so many other apps on the market, when you first open it Journal will ask you if you're happy for it to send you notifications.
These mostly take the form of reminders and suggestions - to make sure you use the app regularly, and prompts to memorialize moments, photos or locations you've visited.
As pointed out by a recent CNet article, though, these suggestions mean that unless you change things, Journal has access to a whole lot more data than you might originally assume.
In fact, once you've used Journal, if you go to its settings you'll find a list of suggestion types that might surprise you.
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Within the Journal section on settings, tap onto Journaling Suggestions. In this menu, you can click on Suggestion Privacy Settings to see the full list, which includes Activity, Media, Contacts, Photos and Significant Locations.
That means that Journal is able to see a lot of things on your phone, which some people might find a little bit much - although Apple does have reassurance on that front.
Back when it launched Journal, it said that the suggestions your phone could give you about journal entries were generated in a secure way: "On-device machine learning provides private, personalised suggestions to inspire journal entries, and customizable notifications help users develop their writing habits".
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So, theoretically, while this data is shared with the Journal app, it shouldn't go any further - and Apple's record for transparency is very solid.
Still, if you'd rather keep your journal ideas coming from your own imagination, you can turn those suggestions off for peace of mind, and you're also in full control of whether the app sends you notifications of any sort.
Apple dedicated a good chunk of time to Journal during the last iPhone launch event, so it'll be interesting to see if it upgrades it with new features and formatting options over time.