Writing Entries

Ayumi provides a distraction-free writing experience with Markdown support and rich metadata.

Creating an Entry

• macOS: Click the + button in the toolbar or press Cmd+N
• iOS: Tap the New Entry button
• Quick Action (iOS): Long-press the app icon and select “New Entry”
• macOS Quick Entry: Use the global hotkey to open a floating entry window from anywhere
• Share Sheet (iOS): Share text or a link from any app and pick Ayumi to save it as an entry

When you create an entry, Ayumi automatically captures:

• Location — Your current location with place name
• Weather — Temperature and conditions via Apple WeatherKit

Entries saved from the share sheet capture location and weather too. Both are best-effort and time-limited, so a share still saves promptly when no location fix is available — in that case the entry is simply saved without them.

To turn a day’s videos, photos and recordings into one entry, see Import Media.

Write About a Recent Moment (iOS)

On iPhone and iPad, a new entry can start from a moment that Apple’s Journaling Suggestions picked up — a place you visited, a workout, photos, music you listened to, people you were with, or how you felt.

1. Create a new entry.
2. In the Attachments section, tap Write About a Recent Moment.
3. Pick a moment in the system picker. Only the moment you pick is shared with Ayumi.

The entry starts with the moment’s title and a list of its details (place, steps, what you listened to, who you were with, workout, feeling), followed by any reflection prompt as a quote. The entry takes the moment’s date and place, its photos are attached, and feelings logged with State of Mind become tags.

Tapping a Journaling Suggestions notification also opens Ayumi on that moment.

Talk About This Moment

Once a moment is picked, a card at the top of the editor offers Talk About This Moment. It opens the recorder, starting on your default profile. When the transcript is ready, it becomes this entry: the moment’s details on top, your transcript below, with the moment’s photos, time, place and tags.

Editing

Write in standard Markdown. The editor supports:

• Headings, bold, italic, lists
• Links and inline code
• Block quotes and code blocks

The entry title is derived from the first line of your Markdown content.

Editor Modes

The switch at the top of the formatting bar sets how the entry body is shown:

• View — Read-only, with the Markdown rendered. Handy for a quick look at how the entry reads.
• Rich Text — Editable, with headings, bold, italic, lists, checklists, quotes and code styled as you type. Tap a checklist item’s box to check it off.
• Markdown — Editable, as plain Markdown source in a monospaced font.

Rich Text and Markdown edit the same Markdown file, so you can switch between them at any time. Ayumi remembers the editing mode you used last and opens new entries in it (Rich Text by default).

Formatting buttons

While the body is editable, the formatting bar shows buttons for Bold, Italic, Strikethrough, Heading (Heading 1–3 or Body), Bulleted List, Checklist, Quote and Code. Every button writes Markdown, so it does the same thing in Rich Text and in Markdown mode.

Lists

• Pressing Return in a list item or quote continues it on the next line.
• When the cursor is in a list item, Decrease Indent and Increase Indent buttons appear at the front of the formatting bar.
• With a keyboard, Tab and Shift+Tab indent and outdent a list item.

Formatting shortcuts (macOS)

Shortcut	Action
Cmd+B	Bold
Cmd+I	Italic
Cmd+Shift+X	Strikethrough
Cmd+Option+1 / 2 / 3	Heading 1 / 2 / 3
Cmd+Option+0	Body (remove heading)
Cmd+Shift+7	Bulleted list
Cmd+Shift+L	Checklist
Cmd+'	Quote
Cmd+Shift+M	Code
Cmd+] / Cmd+[	Increase / decrease indent (in a list)

The same modes, formatting bar and shortcuts are available in the macOS Quick Entry window.

Selecting, Sharing and Copying Text

In the entry detail view you can select any part of an entry — the body, and also the title, tags, place and weather — and drag over it to select a range, then use the system Copy or Share menu.

The More menu in the toolbar acts on the whole entry:

• Share… — Open the share sheet with the entry text
• Copy Text — Copy the entry text to the clipboard

On iOS 27, Share… has its own button in the toolbar instead of a row in the menu.

To copy more than one entry, tap the copy button next to a date header in the entry list. It copies every entry for that day, oldest first, separated by a --- rule and preceded by the date. The whole day is copied even when the list is paginated, though any active search or filter still applies.

Tags and Favorites

• Tags: Add custom tags to organize entries. Use the tag field in the metadata section.
• Favorites: Mark important entries with the star icon for quick filtering.

Filtering and Search

On iPad and macOS, in the entry list:

• Search: Type in the search field to filter by title or body text
• Tag: Pick a tag to show matching entries
• Favorites Only: Show only starred entries

The More menu also opens the Entry Map and Time Travel.

Library (iPhone)

On iPhone, the Library drawer picks which entries the list shows. Tap the Library button at the top left, or swipe right from the left edge of the list. It lists:

• All Entries and Favorites, with counts
• Entry Map (available once entries have a location)
• Time Travel
• Tags — each tag with its count

The list then takes the name of what you picked. Tap the search button at the top of the drawer to search; the search field appears in the bottom bar, ready to type. Close the drawer by tapping the list, swiping left, or picking an item.

Entry List

Entries are grouped by date with the most recent first. The list shows:

• Entry title (first line of Markdown)
• Preview text (first 200 characters)
• Date and time
• Favorite and tag indicators

The list supports pagination (50 entries per page) for performance with large journals.

Map View

View all entries with location data on an interactive map. Each marker shows the entry title, and you can tap to navigate to the full entry.

The map opens around your current location when Ayumi has location access, and shows where you are. Without it, the map frames all your entries. Use Current Location and Show All Entries in the toolbar to switch between the two.

Deleting Entries

Swipe left on an entry (iOS) or use the context menu to delete. The Markdown file and its attachments folder will be removed.