Opening app result in “An error occurred during persistent store migration.”

  • Unknown's avatar
    terrysmith3 · Member ·

    My Day One journal is stored locally on my Mac. It is not synced to the cloud and I want to keep it that way.

    Ever since I updated the app to later than 2025.18.1 (1688), I will get this error message whenever I open the app:

    An error occurred during persistent store migration.

    After clicking OK, the app closed.

    Upon checking the logs, I found this:

    /Library/Group Containers/5U8NS4GX82.dayoneapp2/Data/Documents/DayOne.sqlite: Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=134110 “An error occurred during persistent store migration.” UserInfo={NSUnderlyingError=0x9560c35d0 {Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=134100 “The managed object model version used to open the persistent store is incompatible with the one that was used to create the persistent store.”

    I can only open my journal if I run the Day One app with this version: 2025.18.1 (1688). If I update the app to the latest version, I will get the error message.

    Can you fix this problem

  • staff-bluejay · Staff ·

    Hi @terrysmith3,

    Do you have any backups of your Day One Journal entries, either on Time Machine, or exported as a JSON file? If you don’t, I highly encourage you to do so as safe keeping before moving forward with further troubleshooting steps.

    Data Loss and Recovery Options

    If you have a Time Machine backup, may I have you follow the steps to uninstall Day One on Mac here: https://dayoneapp.com/guides/troubleshooting/uninstalling-and-reinstalling-day-one-for-macos/

    Then reinstall the app and launch it. No need to sign in at this point, but just to get the app in a working state. 

    Then try the following: 

    1. Quit Day One
    2. Locate the 5U8NS4GX82.dayoneapp2 folder on your Time Machine backup. 
    3. Use that folder to replace the one that is currently in place at ~/Library/Group Containers/5U8NS4GX82.dayoneapp2
    4. Try launching Day One again. 

    If that doesn’t help, or if you don’t have Time Machine backups available, would you reach out to our support by sending the diagnostics from all devices that have Day One installed?  Please put “Attn: Ticket #10483542” in the subject line.

    https://dayoneapp.com/guides/day-one-diagnostics/

    You may receive an automated reply to the diagnostics email, which you can disregard. Thanks!

  • Unknown's avatar
    terrysmith3 · Member ·

    Unfortunately, it didn’t work. Same problem.

    What I did:

    • Copy ~/Library/Group Containers/5U8NS4GX82.dayoneapp2 to Desktop.
    • Move the Day One app to the trash can.
    • Reinstall the Day One app from the Mac App Store.
    • Launch Day One to ensure that it is working.
    • Quit Day One.
    • Copy everything in the 5U8NS4GX82.dayoneapp2 folder in the Desktop back to ~/Library/Group Containers/5U8NS4GX82.dayoneapp2
    • Launch Day One app again.

    The same error message appeared.

  • Unknown's avatar
    terrysmith3 · Member ·

    I had to delete the latest Day One app and replace it with the older version, 025.18.1 (1688) to access my journal.

  • Unknown's avatar
    terrysmith3 · Member ·

    Unfortunately, I can’t even run the latest version of Day One to get the diagnostic.

    After the error message appears, I can only click on “OK” and the app quits completely.

  • Unknown's avatar
    terrysmith3 · Member ·

    I went to the log file and found this which I think will be relevant to the Day One developers:

    E Error creating data model: Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=134110 "An error occurred during persistent store migration." UserInfo={NSUnderlyingError=0x7a9bfa2e0 {Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=134100 "The managed object model version used to open the persistent store is incompatible with the one that was used to create the persistent store."

    This is another part that is relevant:

    reason=Incompatible metadata after migration because the store version hashes didn't migrate., destination checksum=1XW0++mb1gHgkBbfeOltnXn+nBZAlbfuW2OVRCSfOCY=}}, reason=Failed to open the store}

    To reproduce this error, the developers can:

    • Run the older version of Day One app: 025.18.1 (1688) 
    • Create some journal entries.
    • Replace the older version of Day One app with the latest version.
    • Run the Day One app again.

    They will see this error message.

  • Unknown's avatar
    terrysmith3 · Member ·

    For the developers: make sure NOT to sign in when creating the journal entries.

  • staff-joey8 · Staff ·

    Thanks for all of the detailed information, @terrysmith3

    We’re looking into this and will revert back once we have an update.

  • staff-joey8 · Staff ·

    Hi again, @terrysmith3

    Our developers have been looking into this and suggested the following:

    1. While in 2025.18.1, do a full JSON export of your entries, as per https://dayoneapp.com/guides/tips-and-tutorials/exporting-entries/
    2. Reinstall Day One, using the steps we have at: https://dayoneapp.com/guides/troubleshooting/uninstalling-and-reinstalling-day-one-for-macos/ (important to empty the 5U8NS4GX82.dayoneapp2 folder as you did previously)
    3. Open the Day One app and attempt to import those entries back in from the JSON file: https://dayoneapp.com/guides/settings/importing-data-to-day-one/

    Please let me know how it goes!

  • Unknown's avatar
    terrysmith3 · Member ·

    There’s one BIG problem with doing a JSON export followed by an import.

    I got back all my journal entries in the latest version of the Day One app. But my journal entries contain links to other journal entries. All these links are broken after doing the JSON import.

  • staff-frank · Staff ·

    Hi @terrysmith3,

    You’re correct—when you import entries via JSON, new IDs are generated for each entry. Because of this, any links between your old entries will unfortunately be broken after the import. When I shared your feedback with our development team, they informed me that this is a known limitation of the current JSON import process.

    For now, the JSON import is the safest way to access your journal in the latest version of Day One while keeping your data intact, though linked entries will need to be manually reconnected if needed.

  • Unknown's avatar
    terrysmith3 · Member ·

    I have thousands of entries in my journal with thousands of links. So manual reconnection is not feasible for me.

    Is there anything the developers can do on their end? From the log files, it is simply running code to update the version of SQLite file. It’s quite a simple fix from the developers’ end.

  • staff-frank · Staff ·

    Hi @terrysmith3,

    Thank you for sharing your feedback about broken internal links after a JSON import. I have submitted a feature request to our development team to preserve these links during imports.

    While I can’t provide an exact timeline for when this feature might be implemented, your feedback has been recorded and will be considered for future updates.

  • Unknown's avatar
    terrysmith3 · Member ·

    The feature request is of secondary importance. This feature will not help me if the latest version of the app can’t even open my Day One entries. If I can’t open it, then I can’t export to JSON.

    What’s most important is the bug fix. There is some issue with reading/migrating the DayOne.sqlite file in the latest version of the app. The older version of the app, 025.18.1 (1688), was able to read the DayOne.sqlite file. So that means a bug was introduced in the subsequent version.

    Bug fixes is more important than new feature request!

  • staff-bluejay · Staff ·

    Hi @terrysmith3,

    I understand. Since this issue is not widespread and it’s been difficult to reproduce, we’d like to get more information from you to continue investigating. Ideally, we’d like to get some logs from your device.

    We’ll reach out to the email address associated with your forum account, and share further instructions on how to get those log files to us. Please be on the lookout for our email! Thanks.

  • Unknown's avatar
    terrysmith3 · Member ·

    I haven’t receive any email from you, let me post some of the logs here.

    When I launch the latest version of the Day One app, the error message appeared. I went to the log file and found these:

    2025-12-07 13:35:33:826 [com.apple.root.d] E Error preparing store at /Users/[Username]/Library/Group Containers/5U8NS4GX82.dayoneapp2/Data/Documents/DayOne.sqlite: Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=134110 “An error occurred during persistent store migration.” UserInfo={NSUnderlyingError=0x84c332fa0 {Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=134100 “The managed object model version used to open the persistent store is incompatible with the one that was used to create the persistent store.” UserInfo={metadata={

    …

    source checksum=jiBfadHzWbvu/au+8RrAzsvw1pRXY904Qi3RC8hMeig=, reason=Incompatible metadata after migration because the store version hashes didn’t migrate., destination checksum=1XW0++mb1gHgkBbfeOltnXn+nBZAlbfuW2OVRCSfOCY=}}, reason=Failed to open the store}

    Another part of the log file:

    2025-12-07 13:35:33:827 [com.apple.root.u] E Error creating data model: Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=134110 “An error occurred during persistent store migration.” UserInfo={NSUnderlyingError=0x84c332fa0 {Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=134100 “The managed object model version used to open the persistent store is incompatible with the one that was used to create the persistent store.” UserInfo={metadata={

    …

    source checksum=jiBfadHzWbvu/au+8RrAzsvw1pRXY904Qi3RC8hMeig=, reason=Incompatible metadata after migration because the store version hashes didn’t migrate., destination checksum=1XW0++mb1gHgkBbfeOltnXn+nBZAlbfuW2OVRCSfOCY=}}, reason=Failed to open the store}

  • staff-frank · Staff ·

    Hi @terrysmith3,

    We reached out to you via email (to the address associated with your forum account) on December 2nd. Please be aware that the email address we have for you is a randomly generated email address created by Apple’s “Hide My Email“ service. Please check your inbox (including spam/junk folders) for that message.

    If you don’t see the email, please zip up all the files in /Users/<username>/Library/Group Containers/5U8NS4GX82.dayoneapp2/Data/Logs/ and send those to us at (email visible only to moderators and staff).

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