Category: Technologies

A virtual private network, or VPN, protects you by encrypting your online communications — helping to keep your sensitive information away from prying eyes. But privacy isn’t the only reason to use a VPN.

One of the most popular reasons for using a VPN is to get access to movies and TV shows on streaming services you pay for, like Hulu or Max, while you’re traveling abroad or living in another country. If you create an account for Netflix in the US, for example, the library will vary depending on which country you’re in. And Netflix knows if you’re in another country by using your IP address to determine your location.

So how exactly does a VPN help in this situation?

Well, with a VPN, you can choose a specific server, in another country, changing your IP address to whatever the location is. If you’re in Poland, for example, but want to access the Spain library for Netflix, you can simply choose a server in Spain and you’re good to go.

Unfortunately, not every device you own can use a VPN. Although Apple TV running TVOS 17 can now natively support VPN applications, the options are very limited. If you subscribe to one of the major VPN services, like ProtonVPN or NordVPN, you’re out of luck — unless you use this workaround.

If you’re unfamiliar with Smart DNS, it’s a feature that allows you to access geo-restricted content on devices that don’t typically allow VPNs.

In this guide, we’ll show you how to use the Smart DNS feature in your VPN on your Apple TV. Here’s what you need to know.

For more, here’s how to set up a VPN on your iPhone and the best iPhone VPNs.

1. Access Smart DNS feature in your VPN

You can find tons of VPN services, and while many pretty much do the same thing, advanced features like Smart DNS are only offered on some VPNs. If you’re unfamiliar with Smart DNS, it’s a feature that allows you to access georestricted content on devices that don’t typically allow VPNs or have very limited VPN options.

Before choosing a VPN, make sure that it has a Smart DNS feature, or else you won’t be able to use this method. Popular VPN services like NordVPN, Surfshark and ExpressVPN all have Smart DNS available.

Here’s how to get started: While connected to your Wi-Fi network, go to your web browser on your computer, access the website of your VPN and find the Smart DNS settings. Smart DNS setup will vary from service to service, but essentially you’ll need to activate Smart DNS to produce a Smart DNS address, which you’ll then need to write down.

Note: Make sure you are not connected to your VPN service when setting up Smart DNS.

I used Surfshark VPN to test out this feature, but your steps should be similar.

On Surfshark, go to VPN > Manual setup > TV or console and then hit the Activate Smart DNS button. The website will determine your IP address, and you must the hit Activate Smart DNS again. A few Smart DNS addresses will then be generated for your devices; choose one for your Apple TV.

For help, here’s more on how to set up NordVPN and ExpressVPN.

2. Enter Smart DNS address into Apple TV

Now that you’ve written down your Smart DNS address, access your Apple TV, go to Settings > Network > Wi-Fi and click the network that you are currently connected to. Next, choose the option Configure DNS, click Manual and enter the DNS address you wrote down.

Once that’s done, your Apple TV should be able to bypass certain georestrictions to give you access to more content libraries in your streaming services.

Unfortunately, you can’t easily change your location like you can with a VPN. A Smart DNS address is locked to one location. Surfshark, for example, only provides Smart DNS addresses that are located in the US, allowing you to access streaming libraries in the US while you’re abroad. If your service provides DNS addresses in other countries, you’ll have to change them in Apple TV each time you want to access a different country’s library. Keep in mind that while VPNs are legal in most places, engaging in illegal activity online is still illegal regardless of whether you’re using a VPN and a Smart DNS feature.

Also, there are two things to note:

• A Smart DNS, unlike a VPN, doesn’t protect your privacy. Instead, it only really changes your location, so be aware. If you want protection, use the regular VPN.
• A Smart DNS may not work with every streaming service. You may get an error that shows you can’t access your service. If so, it’s best to remove the Smart DNS address from your Apple TV.

For more, check out 7 myths about VPNs you should know about and the best cheap VPN services.

Outfitting your device with the latest Windows OS will cost you a whopping $200 when you purchase the software from Microsoft directly. But if you’re building your own PC or are looking to upgrade your current one without breaking the bank, then you won’t want to miss out on this post-Cyber Monday deal at StackSocial. This offer knocks 88% off a Windows 11 Pro lifetime license, which drops the price down to just $23. But this discount expires Dec. 4, so be sure to get your order in before then if you don’t want to miss out on these savings.

This is a great price, but it’s important to note that not every computer out there is able to run Windows 11, so before you buy it, you’re going to want to ensure that your computer will meet the requirements for the operating system. Additionally, the listing says that if you have a PC that’s already running Windows 10, and Windows Update doesn’t let you install the free Windows 11 upgrade, your computer won’t be compatible with this version either.

The activation key that’s provided following your purchase can be used to install and activate Windows 11 Pro on one computer. To be clear, purchases like this are generally intended for advanced users — those who are building a new computer or who want to dual-boot an existing computer with a second OS. If you’re doing that, you will need a secondary PC to access and download the files, so be sure you can access everything from another computer in your home or you have a friend’s machine that you can use temporarily. Just note that you’ll want to have a USB thumb drive on hand to transfer the file.

For the past couple of months, Apple fans have been toying around with the new features that iOS 17 brought to compatible iPhones back in September. These new upgrades include some exciting additions, including StandBy mode and the Journal app. Among these new-to-iPhone features is NameDrop, a contact-sharing feature that allows you to share your number with just a tap of your phone.

The release of iOS 17, and NameDrop with it, follows the announcement of the iPhone 15 series, the Apple Watch Series 9 and the Apple Watch Ultra 2 at Apple’s Wonderlust event in September.

If you’ve got an iPhone running iOS 17, you’re in luck; NameDrop is simple to use. However, not everyone is sold on Apple’s latest contact sharing feature. Read on for everything you need to know.

What is NameDrop?

NameDrop is the newest way iPhone users can share contact information with each other. You no longer have to fork over your phone to strangers if you want to swap contact info. Simply tap your phones together to swap information.

When can I use NameDrop?

If you’re an iPhone user, you’re in luck. NameDrop is available to you right now, or as soon as you update to iOS 17 — that is, as long as you have a supported iPhone.

How does NameDrop work?

In a Newsroom post, Apple called NameDrop a “new AirDrop experience.” People with iPhones can “hold their iPhone near another to share their contact information with only their intended recipients.”

Recently, Forbes reported that law enforcement authorities around the country have been raising concerns about the privacy of NameDrop. These concerns are focused on the ease at which people could potentially steal your information.

However, when the feature was released back in September, Apple clarified that you’ll be able to select what information you share with other people, so you won’t have to worry about accidentally sending super-personal information to strangers.

Essentially, all you have to do is place your iPhone close to the intended recipient of your NameDrop, and you’re done. Once you’ve placed the phones together, a Contact Poster will pop up (that is, the image that pops up when you call someone). After that, you’ll have the option to just receive the contact or send your own back.

You’ll only be able to NameDrop with other iPhone users running iOS 17 or later and Apple Watch users running Watch OS 10 or later. If you want to get in on the contact-sharing action, you’ll want to make sure your device is running the right version of its operating system.

So… how do I turn NameDrop off?

If you still feel uncomfortable or unsafe using NameDrop, Apple’s got you covered.

All you have to do is open the Settings app, and then tap on General. After that, navigate to the AirDrop tab. Once you open the tab, simply toggle the Bring Devices Together option off. And just like that, no more NameDrop.

For more iOS 17 details, check out everything you should do before updating to iOS 17 and five hidden iOS 17 features we think you should know about.

Spotify Premium is great for people who want to choose from a huge range of music, while also being able to sample a bit of podcasts and audiobooks. Yet, Spotify gets tricky if you’re sharing a single account with others, especially with children, and this is most obvious during Spotify Wrapped. While you can manually delete songs from your Wrapped results, the long-term option is to add more users to your account. Here’s how to do it.

The type of accounts Spotify offers

While Spotify offers a free account, it is still quite limited, and you’ll obviously need to upgrade to add users. The main paid accounts are:

• Premium: $11 ( 11 or AU$12) per month for one person
• Duo: $15 ( 15 or AU$18) per month for two users (one primary)
• Family: $17 ( 18 or AU$21) per month for up to six people (one primary and five family members)

Note that whether you choose Duo or Family, every user becomes a Premium member with the same benefits. The only proviso to this is that only the primary gets access to the 15 free hours of audiobooks every month.

These are strictly “household” plans versus “friends and family” ones, as all users need to be registered at the same address. While Spotify also has a Student plan that includes Hulu, these aren’t eligible for the Family plan, nor is the grandfathered Spotify with Hulu plan. You’ll need to cancel these to start the multiuser plans.

Adding family members

Upgrading your Spotify account to Family isn’t a difficult process, but you can only make changes from a web browser. You can access some of these links from within the mobile or desktop Spotify apps, though.

If you’re an existing Spotify Premium or a free user, the process for upgrading to Spotify Family is the same.

• First, open your Spotify desktop or mobile app, or navigate to spotify.com from your browser, and log in to your existing account or create a new one.
• Next, go to https://www.spotify.com/premium/#plans. Alternatively, you can click your profile picture to reveal the dropdown menu and click Account. From the account overview page, click either Premium Duo or Premium for Family from the options available
• Click Get Started.
• Enter your payment information and click Start my Spotify Premium.
• Invite up to five other people to your Spotify Family account using the email addresses they use for Spotify, WhatsApp or Messenger. You can add users from within the mobile and desktop apps during setup, but you’ll need to use the web or desktop to add more later.

Adding and removing users

Managing users on your Spotify Family account also needs to be done from within a browser, and even though it can be accessed from the desktop app, it still sends you to the web. To add or remove users from your account, either go to Profile > Set up your Family Plan within the desktop app or go to spotify.com/account and click Manage Members under Subscriptions. If you have an available slot, you can invite someone using their email address, Messenger, WhatsApp or by sending them a direct link.

To remove someone to your Spotify Family account go to Profile in the desktop app, then Set Up Your Family Plan, and then scroll down to Plan Members. Selecting a member brings up a menu and you can then select Profile, head to Set Up Your Family Plan and scroll down to Plan Members. Clicking the individual member then gives you the option to “remove from plan”.

Accepting a Spotify Family invitation

Spotify has made the invitation process extremely easy for invitees.

If you’re on the receiving end of an invitation to Spotify Premium, you will either receive a link directly from the person inviting you or an email from Spotify notifying you that you’ve been invited.

Click the link to get started. Or, if you’ve been invited via email, click the button in the email that says Accept Invitation. Sign into your account or create one and click Redeem. Be aware that you will need to put in your address, and it needs to be the same as the person sending the invite. Now, when you download and log into the Spotify app on your phone, tablet or computer, you can enjoy (most of) the full benefits of Spotify Premium.

Whether you want to surprise someone with a big gift for the holidays or you are looking for an upgrade yourself, you can’t get much better than the Apple Watch Series 9. Released in September of this year, it’s already earned a spot on our list of best smartwatches of 2023. Of course, because it’s still a relatively new watch, there aren’t a lot of straightforward discounts yet. Instead, you’ll mostly find trade-in credit offers, or “buy one and get another one at a discount” deals. And if you buy the watch from almost any other retailer, you can get it for at least $9 cheaper than at Apple’s store (and right now, a good bit more). We’ll keep updating this page regularly as we find better deals, so be sure to check back.

Upgraded with a new S9 chipset, the first meaningful processor change since the Apple Watch Series 6, the Apple Watch Series 9 is faster than ever, while being even more power efficient. The S9 chip enables a new feature Apple is calling Double Tap, which allows you to operate the watch using just the thumb and index finger on your watch-wearing hand.

The 2023 Apple Watch is also the first to include on-device Siri commands, new Ultra Wideband capabilities and a brighter display for better outdoor visibility. A new pink aluminum color is available this year.

Best Apple Watch Series 9 deals

It’s one of the more absurd dilemmas of modern parenting — while everyone else is sharing their cool Spotify Wrapped end-of-year music recaps, you’re looking at a list of top songs filled with Little Baby Bum and the Encanto soundtrack. If you’re a Spotify user with young children, it’s possible that your kids’ favorite songs get played a lot more often than yours.

You can customize the appearance of your Spotify Wrapped presentation when sharing it on social media, but you can’t really change the content within. You can, however, tweak the related Your Top Songs 2023 playlist to delete stuff like the Poop Poop Poop Poop Song and the Bluey Theme Tune. When you’re finished, you can share that playlist online to take part in the Spotify Wrapped fun.

Read more: Change These Spotify Settings for the Best Listening Experience

Because the Your Top Songs 2023 playlist is created by Spotify, you can’t directly edit it yourself, but there’s an easy way around that restriction. Read on to learn how to turn your Spotify Wrapped playlist into something you’re not embarrassed to listen to or share. For more, check out our best music streaming services of 2023 and the best stores for buying digital music permanently.

What is the Your Top Songs 2023 Spotify playlist?

The annual Spotify Wrapped recap assembles your listening data from the start of year until October 31. It gives you all sorts of stats like total minutes listened and number of different artists played. It also includes details about which songs you listened to the most and then uses that information to create a personalized playlist called Your Top Songs 2023.

The Your Top Songs 2023 playlist contains the songs you listened to most in 2023, listed in the order of songs you played most frequently to least frequently.

You can find Your Top Songs 2023 playlist at the end of the Spotify Wrapped presentation, or by visiting the Spotify home page and looking under Made for You > Uniquely Yours. You can also simply search for “wrapped” and it should be the first or second result.

How do I edit my Your Top Songs 2023 Spotify playlist?

Since the Your Top Songs 2023 playlist was created by Spotify, you can’t simply edit it directly the way you would any of your own playlists. To get around that restriction, you simply need to make a copy of it.

On the desktop app, with the Spotify Your Songs 2023 playlist loaded, click the three dots to the right of the play and download buttons. Select Add to other playlist, then + Create Playlist in the sub-menu.

Spotify will then create a new playlist in your library that’s called “Your Top Songs 2023 (2).” On that new playlist, click the three-dot icon, and then select Edit details to rename it “Your Top Songs 2023” (or whatever title you prefer).

Once you’ve created that new playlist with the desktop app, you can then edit the playlist like any other on Spotify. Select and drag songs to change the order, or more important, select multiple tracks using the Control (Windows) or Command (Mac) keys, then right-click (or Control-click on Mac), and select Remove from this playlist to delete any songs you don’t want to include. (Bye bye, Bluey!)

The web-based version of Spotify works exactly the same as the desktop version for duplicating and editing playlists.

For both the iPhone and Android mobile app, the process is mostly the same with a few technical differences. Start by visiting your Spotify-created Your Top Songs of 2023 playlist and clicking the three-dot icon near the top. Scroll down the resulting pop-up menu and tap Add to other playlist.

On the next screen, tap the New playlist button, and you’ll be prompted to “Give your playlist a name” with “Your Top Songs 2023” already in place as the default. Leave it as is or rename, then hit the Create button to make the new playlist.

To edit that new playlist on the mobile apps, you’ll unfortunately need to remove any songs you don’t want one by one. Click the three dots next to any song you don’t want on the playlist, then select Remove from this playlist. Rinse and repeat until all the Bluey and Elmo are gone.

How do I share my new Your Top Songs 2023 Spotify playlist?

Once you’ve duplicated and edited your Your Top Songs 2023 playlist, it’s simple to share it on social media or elsewhere. On the desktop and web apps, visit your new playlist page, click that three-button icon yet again, and select Share > Copy link to playlist at the very bottom of the menu. You can now paste that link into Facebook, Instagram, X, Mastodon or whatever social network you prefer. And you won’t have to worry about your friends seeing all of your kids’ songs.

If an Xbox is on your holiday wishlist or maybe it’s basically already a member of your household, it’s a great time to keep your eye on amazing Xbox deals, with savings on consoles and game passes alike. Right now StackSocial is offering one-month of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate for $8, a discount of 46% over the usual monthly price of $15.

Ask any regular Xbox user and they’ll tell you that the Xbox Game Pass Ultimate is where it’s at. You get access to over 100 games on Xbox consoles –Xbox 360, Xbox One, Xbox Series X and S — as well as Windows PCs. The Ultimate membership includes Xbox Live Gold, Games with Gold and console multiplayer, as well as access to EA Play, which offers several dozen additional games from the Electronic Arts catalog. Other free perks include in-game content and being able to play games on your phone or tablet from the cloud (on compatible titles and devices).

Read more: Best Cloud Gaming Services: Xbox Game Pass, GeForce Now and More

Before you grab the deal, it’s worth noting that for brand new users, Xbox offers a $1, 14-day trial, which is arguably a better deal. However, the StackSocial deal works for new users as well as former subscribers whose pass has expired.The deal is not stackable and your account must new or already expired to redeem. The code must be redeemed within 30 days of use. It’s also key to note that after the one-month period, the subscription will automatically renew at the full monthly price.

If you’ve got a Google account, you probably know that you’ve only got 15GB of free space that you can use. And if you’re like most people, that storage is already full and now you’re seeing a message that says you’re out of room. To avoid upgrading to a paid storage plan and to make some extra room in your digital filing cabinet, read up on these tips to free up some space.

We recommend doing this on your desktop rather than a mobile device, as you’ll have an easier time sorting through and managing files, but we’ll walk you through both processes.

1. Delete large files first

If you want to keep the majority of your items in Google Drive and Gmail, you can free up space by sorting each service by file size and deleting only one or two large files instead of a few dozen smaller items. Deleting one or two videos that take up multiple megabytes of space is easier than sorting through hundreds of old documents of the same file size to decide which can be deleted.

Here’s how to delete files by size in Google Drive on your desktop:

1. Log in to your Google Drive account.

2. Once you’re logged in, click Storage in the menu on the left side of the screen.

3. The Storage page should list your files from largest to smallest, but if not, click Storage used on the right side of the screen. The files should now be ordered from largest to smallest.

4. Click large files you want to delete to select them, then click either the trash bin that appears near the top of the screen once items are selected or drag the large files to Trash on the left side of the screen.

5. Click Trash on the left-hand side menu to go to the Trash menu.

6. Click Empty trash in the top-right corner of your screen.

7. Click Delete forever and your files are gone.

You can do this in the Google Drive app as well. Here’s how:

1. Open your Google Drive app and log in to your account.

2. Tap Files in the bottom-right corner of the screen.

3. Tap Name underneath My Drive near the top of the screen.

4. Tap Storage used. This will arrange your files from largest to smallest.

5. Tap the three dots (…) next to the item you want to delete.

6. Tap Remove.

7. Tap the hamburger icon (three stacked lines) in the top-left corner of the screen next to Search in Drive.

8. Tap Trash.

9. Tap the three dots (…) in the top-right corner of the screen.

10. Tap Empty trash.

You can also arrange and delete files by size in Gmail on the desktop. Here’s how:

1. Log in to your Gmail account.

2. Type has:attachment larger:10MB, for example, into the search bar and hit Search. This will show you all emails that have attachments larger than 10MB, from largest to smallest. You can use this format to filter by other size files, not just 10MB files.

3. Check the boxes to the left of each email you want to delete, then click the Trash icon in the top-right corner of the screen.

4. Click Trash on the left side of the screento go to the Trash menu. If you don’t see Trash, click More and Trash should be in the expanded menu.

5. Once in Trash, click Empty trash now at the top of the screen.

Here’s how to arrange and delete files by size in the Gmail app:

1. Open your Gmail app and log in to your account.

2. Type has:attachment larger:10MB into the search bar and hit Search. This will show you all emails that have attachments larger than 10MB, from largest to smallest. You can use this format to filter by other size files too, not just 10MB files.

3. Tap into the email you want to delete.

4. Tap the trash bin icon in the top-right corner of your screen.

5. Tap < in the top-left corner of your screen.

6. Tap the hamburger icon in the top-left corner of the screen next to Search in mail.

7. Tap Trash.

8. Tap Empty trash now.

Note that once a file goes to Trash, it’ll automatically delete after 30 days.

2. Empty your Gmail spam folder

It’s easy to forget about emptying your spam folder, and it can take up unnecessary data in your Gmail account. Emptying your spam folder — and your social or promotions folders — is another way to make space.

Here’s how to empty your spam folder on your desktop:

1. Log in to your Gmail account.

2. Once you’re logged in, click Spam on the left side of the screen. If you don’t see Spam, click More and Spam should be in the expanded menu.

3. In your Spam folder, click Delete all spam messages now.

Here’s how to empty your spam folder in the mobile app:

1. Open the Gmail app and log in to your account.

2. Tap the hamburger icon in the top-left corner of the screen next to Search in mail.

3. Tap Spam.

4. Tap Delete all spam messages now or Empty spam now.

3. Clean up your Google Photos

Google also includes Google Photos in the 15GB of free storage it gives its users. Photos and videos can take up more space than text-based files, especially higher quality ones, so it’s a good idea to go through and delete old photos and videos to make room.

However, there’s no option to arrange your photos and videos from largest to smallest like in Google Drive and Gmail, so you’ll have to go through and delete items manually. You can check how much space a file is taking up by selecting it and clicking the “i” for information from the top menu.

Here’s how to delete photos and videos from Google Photos on your desktop:

1. Open and log in to Google Photos.

2. Scroll your mouse over photos and videos you want to delete and click the gray check mark icon in the top-left corner of the photo or video.

3. Click the trash icon in the top-right corner of the screen.

4. Click Move to trash.

5. Click Trash on the left side of the screen.

6. Click Empty trash near the top-right corner of your screen.

7. Click Empty trash again, and you’re set.

Here’s how to delete photos and videos from the Google Photos mobile app:

A heads up for Apple users: If your Gmail is linked to your iCloud account, the two digital storage spaces may be also linked. Meaning, when enabling the Backup & sync feature on Google Photos, all your local photos on your iPhone will be displayed on Google Photos. If you delete a photo on Google Photos, then the local photo on your iPhone will also be removed. And when the local photo is removed, it won’t show up on iCloud. You’ll be able to tell if this is you when you try to delete an image on Google Photos — a pop-up window will let you know you’re about to delete from both places.

1. Open and log in to Google Photos.

2. Tap the photo or video you want to delete.

3. Tap the trash can icon in the bottom-right corner of the screen.

4. Tap Delete.

5. Tap Library in the bottom-right corner of the screen.

6. Tap Trash.

7. Tap the three dots (…) in the top-right corner of the screen.

8. Tap Empty trash.

9. Tap Delete.

If you don’t click or tap Empty trash on either platform, the photos and videos you’ve deleted will automatically be deleted after 60 days.

Bonus tip: You can reduce the file size of some photos and videos in Google Photos. Doing so will allow you to regain some space, but it will reduce the quality of your media. You can learn more about this from Google Support here.

4. When all else fails, download your files

If your storage is still almost full and you can’t part with any more items from your Google Drive, Gmail or Google Photos, you can download your items and store them directly on your computer.

Here’s how to download your Google Drive files, Gmail messages and Google Photos for storage on another hard drive:

1. Open and log in to your Google Drive, Gmail or Google Photos account on your desktop.

2. Select the files, emails or photos you want to download.

3. Click the three stacked dots in the upper-right corner of your screen.

4. Click Download. Note that Gmail will download messages as a .eml file.

5. Once the items are downloaded and moved onto your hard drive, feel free to delete them from your account and empty your trash bins.

For more, check out these 10 Gmail tips and tools, nine Google Drive features you might have missed and five Google Photos features to try now.

Have you noticed that our iPhones have been trying to fix us? This little gadget in our pocket keeps track of so many aspects of our life, like our schedules, communications, money and health. It’s smart enough to suggest how to optimize our time spent using the device, remind us of when our music is too loud, or point out how much time we spend looking at its pretty screen while scrolling through TikTok.

Now Apple has another major selling point: Your iPhone can help you be a better you. There’s a new Journal app designed to help you reflect and practice gratitude by writing about moments in your day. I’ve been using it for the past month, and there are aspects of this app that aren’t what I expected.

Apple announced Journal back in June at WWDC. It’s part of iOS 17, but unlike other features, this app needed more time to bake and wasn’t included in the September release of the new iPhone software.

I’ve been testing it for a month, with the public beta version of iOS 17.2, and the Journal app is far more than just a place to jot down thoughts on blank pages. I have plenty of blank journals that I never write in (but for some reason I keep buying them). Obviously, when I’m burnt out after a long day, I don’t grab my paisley covered Moleskine.

Instead I do what any sane person does: scroll through my iPhone while in bed. Suddenly it makes sense to journal at night on my phone. I open the Journal app and click to make a post. There are personalized suggestions, called Moments, that give me something to write about. And when I say personalized, these suggestions from my iPhone get real detailed.

Reflections, suggestions, and that time I went to Wendy’s

Journal pulls from my recent activity, showing photos I took, people I texted with, a map of places I visited, music I’ve listened to, and, if I ever actually logged a workout on my Apple Watch, it would show me that too. It also weaves in photo memories from several years back. There are Reflections that present prompts, ideas and questions to reflect on. The prompts aren’t cheesy, and I find them interesting, which is, of course, the idea. These thought exercises help me zoom out to see the bigger picture a bit.

Scrolling through my suggestions, there’s one of a Friday night hangout with friends, a photo of my son when he was little from three years ago, a question prompt and a photo of my family picking out a Christmas tree from this past weekend. I see photos of my dad visiting New York in 2018 and I get a reminder that I ate at a Wendy’s last week. Not every Moment is worthy of a post, but the suggestions give you this little flashback that jolts your brain into replaying memories.

Some suggestions can be strange. It knows that I went to a specific Wendy’s location and wants me to write about it. So clearly your iPhone knows a lot about your life and your burger consumption habits. Apple says all of this is being done while protecting your privacy. The suggested posts from your activities stay inside your iPhone, and Apple can’t see them. The same limits apply to any third-party journal apps that use Apple’s journal suggestion tool API in their software.

Apple says no one but you can access your Journal. Even if your phone is unlocked and you hand it to someone, they can’t get into the app, because you can lock your Journal. I set it to unlock with Face ID. If you sync it to iCloud, it’s stored with end-to-end encryption.

My Journal always hits me with photo memories of my kids, trying to give me a dopamine hit with nostalgia. Like, “Hey, remember this cute moment?” I guess my problems today aren’t so big if I think about the nice stuff that happened in the past. It’s like having a therapist guide you to reset your perspectives.

Imperfect memories and limits

There are some imperfections. For example, once I got my nails done early in the morning and the app assumed I was having breakfast at a restaurant next door. I suppose it’s OK if it’s not perfect, since it’s meant to be a starting point for your little dear diary moment. You don’t have to write a post for every suggestion.

The Journal app lets you add photos, audio or videos to your entries, but there are limits. For instance, video files need to be under 500 megabytes. So I couldn’t add a two-minute video that I shot in 4K. Since your entries are stored locally on your iPhone, limiting the size of your media files in Journal entries helps save space.

On the surface all this makes sense: “Yeah, you got a fancy digital diary!” So what I’m about to share next may sound weird. There’s no way to share any of these posts. And it isn’t just no sharing, it’s no searching. I can’t go, “Oh yeah, I remember that nice Halloween post I made, let me pull that photo up and share it.” No: Nothing is shareable. You’re crafting what look like classic Facebook posts, but it’s just for you. No one will know about this post.

Too many years with an iPhone and being on social media has messed me up so I can’t fathom making content that no one else will see. I realize I have to rethink a few things about the value of writing about my memories.

The lack of a search tool in the Journal app is a bummer. Searching is just scrolling back. The best you can do is bookmark some of your favorite posts, because then you can narrow down entries by filtering what’s bookmarked, or having it show you just photos, audio posts or locations. I guess scrolling is kind of like flipping through the pages of an actual handwritten journal. But then what’s the point of journaling digitally?

There’s another wrinkle to the Journal app, which took me a while to realize. Journal is just another way to lock you into iOS and the Apple ecosystem. Imagine a year goes by and you made hundreds of posts, all of which are stored on your iPhone. Would you just throw away that diary and switch to Android?

I’m not the only CNETter who’s been testing out Journal in beta. CNET Managing Editor and iPhone reviewer Patrick Holland has also been playing with it. Here are his first impressions:

Journal’s secret sauce is triggering your emotions

Like Bridget, I’ve enjoyed the Journal app so far. But sadly, I haven’t had any prompts to relive that great frosty-and-fries experience I had at Wendy’s. What surprises me about Journal is how un-Apple it is. The star of the app is the suggestions feature, and how easily a suggestion can trigger a memory or make me relive a moment that at the time seemed mundane and now resonates with a bunch of feelings.

The experience of using Journal reminds me of the analog experiences I’ve had doing creative writing exercises or following the book The Artist’s Way.

What Journal does best is give me a space for my feelings and a way to organize my thoughts. The suggestions are very personal and private. One made me exit the app and call my family. While another prompt made me wish I still could talk to someone in my family who had died.

Final thoughts on Journal

I agree with Patrick and think the Journal app is worth trying out. Sure, there are things that could be tweaked, like adding a way to search for a post. But if the job of the Journal app is to help one’s mental health and fix some of the busy brain problems we have in this day and age, it does just that. It made me think about what really matters in my life and offered me a way to quickly switch my mindset. I don’t use Journal every night, but even opening the app and looking back helps put time into perspective.

CNET’s Patrick Holland contributed to this report.