Collections.
-
I have a few Macs and an iPhone. I made a new collection on one Mac. It does not sync to my other Macs. Entries sync. I’ve tried it over a few weeks and updates. No change.
So this is scary. Could I lose a whole journal? Is this intended to sync? What is expected behavior on iPhone?
-
Journal Collections are meant to sync across all your devices (Mac, iPhone, Android, and web), so what you’re seeing isn’t expected. On the “could I lose a whole journal” question: a Collection is just a folder that groups existing journals together, it doesn’t hold entry data on its own. Since your journals and entries are syncing and showing up correctly, a Collection not appearing elsewhere is a display or organization issue, not something that puts a journal or its entries at risk.
A few things that would help pin this down:
- What macOS and iOS versions are running on each device (not just the Day One app version)? You can find this under About This Mac, and Settings > General > About on iPhone.
- On a device where the collection is missing, does moving one of its journals out of the collection and back in make the collection appear, or does restarting the app change anything?
-
On the Mac (iMac Pro) not getting the collections, I am running 15.7.9 for the OS, 1783 for Day One (same as my other Macs). As part of the debugging process, I have (1) rebooted my Mac multiple times, (2) Logged out of Day One Cloud Sync, which deleted all my entries, and logged back in. The journals and entries downloaded from the cloud. Took 10-20+ minutes. (3) There are no collections even though I have many on my other two Macs synched to the same ID. (4) I can’t move a journal out of the collection on that iMac Pro, since there ARE no collections.
On the Macs that are working and the iPhone I have the latest released versions of OS 27. But I noticed this collection problem even before installing OS 27.
-
@stashpaul Thanks for confirming the OS and build details, that’s exactly what I needed to pin this down.
Your iMac Pro is on macOS 15.7.9, while your other two Macs and iPhone are already updated to the newest OS. That split matches a known syncing issue that affects devices still on macOS 15 (and iOS 18 on iPhone/iPad): those devices can’t properly receive collection updates that were created on other devices, while updated devices work as expected. That’s why your collections show up everywhere except that one Mac.
On the data question, your journals and entries themselves are not at risk. A Collection is just a folder that groups journals together, it doesn’t hold entry data on its own, and your account’s sync status looks healthy across all three devices. This only affects whether the Collection folder itself appears on that Mac.
We’ve shipped a fix for this. On the iMac Pro, please check for a Day One update (Day One menu > Check for Updates, or the Mac App Store’s Updates tab), and try again in a few days if nothing shows up yet, since it’s still rolling out. Once that Mac is updated, the collection should sync over on its own.
Let me know what you see once it’s updated, and yes, a collection created on any device is meant to show up on all your signed in devices, including iPhone.
