[Updated for version 1.3]

Welcome to “Now and When” – your personal chronicle companion on iOS and iPadOS.

Common Tasks:

Sections:

Front Page

The Front Page is the first screen that you will see when starting “Now and When”. Swipe from the left-hand side of the screen to open the Day List, which contains all your entries for the month (the current month when you first open the app, and any month that you navigate to during your session). Swipe from the right hand side of the screen to open the Motivational Sidebar. 

You can include a stack of inspirational photos, from your photo library, if you wish, by tapping on the add photo icon on the upper right corner of the screen (iPad only). You can also hide the default wallpaper, or add a list of your benchmarks by visiting the Appearance section in settings, which can be accessed by tapping the gear icon beside the add photo one. Note: on iOS, benchmarks appear in their own section on the motivational sidebar.

Pinned and Remind Me entries will appear on the Front Page. You can find more information about these in the Day List section. Swipe from left to right to remove these items, or tap to go to that entry. 

Day List

The Day List is where you will find your entries for the selected month. To open an entry, simply tap on the item. 

To delete an entry, long press on the item, then choose “Delete Entry” from the pop-up list. You will be asked to confirm your action before the entry is gone for good. 

To favorite an entry, long press on the item, then choose “Favorite Entry” from the pop-up list. You can toggle a list of all of your favorited entries by tapping the Favorites Button on the toolbar. 

To quickly move to a previous month, “push up” at the bottom of the list until you see the “Load previous month” message, then let go. To move from a previous month to the next one, “pull down” at the top of the list. Alternately, you can tap on the specific month you want to load from the Lifeline. 

At the top of the Day List is the button bar, where you will find the following features: 

Go to Front Page — collapse the current layout and return to the Front Page. 

Go to Current Month in Lifeline — open the Lifeline view with the current month selected. 

Go to This Month — when you have navigated to a month in the past, return to the current month in the Day List. 

Add Entry — add a new entry for the current month. 

Show Favorites — show a list of entries you have tagged as favorites. Tap the icon a second time to return to the selected month’s list of entries. 

Search — opens the search tool. Type in your search criteria and then press return to see the results. You can use booleans to find what you want, for example, “new job” will find entries containing the phrase new job only, but “new AND job” will find all entries containing both new and job, while “new OR job” will find all entries containing the word new and all the entries containing job. (Note: AND and OR must be in all-caps)

To close the search results and return to the selected month’s entries, simply tap on the search button on the button bar a second time. 

Tags — opens the tags tool. Tapping on the icon will show a grouping of all of the tags that you have attached to your entries (see here). Tap on a tag button to see the list of entries with that tag. 

To close the tag results and return to the selected month’s entries, simply tap on the tags button a second time.  

Entry

When opening a new entry, tap on the “title…” placeholder to enter a title, and the “entry…” placeholder to start writing your entry. 

When you start typing your entry, a formatting bar will appear at the bottom of your screen (as part of your virtual keyboard or at the very bottom of the screen if you are using a hardware keyboard). The buttons are described below: 

Headings — tap to choose a heading style, Heading 1 (large), 2 (medium) or 3 (small). You can tap and then type (hitting return will return to the body style) or highlight the section you want to format. 

Insert Time — will insert the time at your cursor position. You can choose between 12 and 24 hour time in settings. 

Bold — Tap to start writing in bold, or select the section you want to format and tap the button. Shortcut: Control (a.k.a. pretzel key) + B. 

Italics — Tap to start writing in italics, or select the section you want to format and tap the button. Shortcut: Control (a.k.a. pretzel key) + I. 

Underline — Tap to start writing with underline, or select the section you want to format and tap the button. Shortcut: Control (a.k.a. pretzel key) + U. 

Strikethrough — Tap to start writing with strikethrough, or select the section you want to format and tap the button. Shortcut: Option + Control (a.k.a. pretzel key) + S. 

Large Quote — Formats text as a large, magazine-style breakout quote. Either tap the button and type your paragraph (return gesture back to body style formatting) or select the paragraph you want to to format and tap the button. 

Citation — Formats text as a citation. Either tap the button and type your paragraph (return gesture back to body style formatting) or select the paragraph you want to to format and tap the button.

Insert Separator — inserts a separator line at the current cursor position. Shortcut: Option + Control (a.k.a. pretzel key) + –.

Unordered list — formats an unordered list. Tap the button then start typing your list. A double hard return will return to standard body formatting.   

Ordered list — formats an ordered list (i.e., 1, 2, 3). Tap the button then start typing your list. A double hard return will return to standard body formatting.

Insert photo — insert a photo from your photo library at the current cursor position.

Photo Caption — format text as a photo caption (very small, right-aligned font).  

Remove Formatting — removes all formatting (bold, italics, underline, citation, large quote, etcetera) from the selection. Select the text you wish to reformat and tap the button. 

Add Bookmark/Snippet — adds a bookmark, including text, to the current entry to the Motivational Sidebar. You can select the specific text you wish to include in the snippet and tap the button, otherwise the whole paragraph will be included. 

Tap anywhere outside of the text area to hide the keyboard when you are finished editing your entry. 

Location information will be automatically added to your entry based on your current location (if you have allowed the app to collect this). If you wish to change the location of an entry, tap on the location text at the bottom of the entry to open the map. Tap the magnifying glass icon in the upper left corner to open search, find the new location you want, and then long press, on the map, to set your placemark to your new, desired location. Tap anywhere outside the map to close and update. 

Tap the info icon to make additional changes to your entry. 

At the top of the entry info pop-up, you can switch the entry to Milestone or Benchmark. Milestones represent major turning points of your life. Benchmarks are intended to represent other major accomplishments. It’s up to you how you define them, really. Both types will continue to appear in your Day List, along with your regular entries, but will also appear as items on your Lifeline (or on the Front Page, in the case of Benchmarks, if you have enabled this in settings). 

When selecting Milestone or Benchmark, you can include an alternate title that will appear in the Lifeline that is different from your entry so you can specifically highlight that milestone/benchmark without changing the entry’s title. 

You can change the date for the entry here, as well. The info popup will automatically open when you are creating a new entry in a past month. 

The Hide Day option will reformat the date as month-year, rather than a specific day-month-year. This is useful if you are writing an entry for a point in your life from the past that you are hazy on specific details for, like that summer job that you might have had around July 1995. 

Hide Title will hide the “title…” placeholder if you don’t wish to have a title for this specific entry. If you don’t want titles on any of your entries, you can switch them off in settings. 

Use Remind Me to choose a date in the future when you would like to be reminded of this entry on the Front Page, or Pinned to have a link to this entry appear there. 

Tags — type the tag you wish to add to this entry. If you have already made tags on previous entries, you can just start typing and they will appear as buttons below the import area.

You can add a Header Image to your entry. This will appear at the very top of your entry, either above or integrated with the title, based on the theme you have chosen. You can also override the theme for this specific entry. This is useful if there is a period of your life that you want to add a different tone to. 

Tip: you can tap on the journal entry’s date to jump to that month in the Day List if you happen to have navigated away from it. 

Lifeline

The Lifeline is your main interface for your whole life. Swiping from the left-hand side of the screen, while the Day List is open will reveal it. It should span the month/year of your birth to present day if you have correctly input your birthdate during first launch. If it doesn’t, you can double-check your birthdate in settings. 

Tapping on a month name on the Lifeline will load that month’s entries (if any) into the Day List. The number of entries should appear directly after the month’s name. Opposite the month buttons, on the left-hand side of the LifeLine, you will see your age for that year at your birthday month. 

Milestones (dark green) and Benchmarks (yellow) will appear in your Lifeline. Long-press and choose “Go to milestone entry” or “Go to benchmark entry“ to open that specific item. 

You can add Events that do not have a journal entry connected to them. Simply tap on the add event button in the top toolbar. In the popup window, enter the event name and choose a date. You can assign the following types/colors to events: personal (indigo), career (purple), fitness (green), romantic (red), travel (brown) or world (black).

To edit an event, long press and choose “Edit info”. To delete an event, long press and chose “Delete event”. 

Chapters are helpful to highlight important periods of your life. To add a new chapter, tap on the add chapter button on the top toolbar. In the popup window, give the chapter a name and choose the start date and end date. If the chapter is currently still in progress, tap the “in progress” toggle, which will set the end date as the current date until you toggle it off again. 

To edit a chapter, long-press on either the start or end of the chapter and choose “Edit info”. To delete a chapter, long press and choose “Delete chapter”.  

You can track your visual progress through life with Self-Photos. Tap the add self-photo button in the top toolbar, and choose your photo from the corresponding popup, then choose the month and year when you want it to appear in your Lifeline.

To edit (or view a larger version of) a self-photo, long-press on the self-photo and choose “Edit info”. To delete a self-photo, long press on the photo and choose “Delete photo”.

Swiping from the right-hand side of the screen (on either the Front Page or an entry) opens the motivational sidebar where you can keep photos, inspirational snippets of text, quotes, or a list of your future plans. 

Tap the add note button in the top toolbar to add a new, simple text note. Tap the add photo button to add a photo from your photo library. Tap the add quote button to add an inspirational quote. Snippets are added to the Motivational Sidebar within your entries, from the editing toolbar.

Tap the add plan icon to add a plan item (in a separate section at the top of the sidebar). You can assign a title to your plan item and give a brief description. You can also add a photo by tapping in the info icon, or mark the plan as achieved by tapping on the checkbox at the top (this will gray-out the  but not delete it). 

iOS only: if you have switched on “show benchmarks” in settings, they will appear here (on iPadOS, they will appear on the front page).

To reorganize items on your sidebar, long-press the item and choose “Move up” or “Move down”. Note: the Plans section at the top is separate from photo, text and snippet items. You can’t move a plan into this area. 

To delete an item, long-press and choose the delete option. 

When in landscape (or in portrait or landscape on iPad Pro), you can pin the sidebar open with your journal entries. Simply tap the pin icon on the far left-hand side of the toolbar. 

Settings

Tap the gear icon on the upper left of the Front Page to go to the app’s settings. 

Don’t use titles — hides titles (or “title…” placeholder) from the entry and Day List items. Toggle off or on. 

Time Format — choose 12 or 24 hour time for the insert time button while editing entries. 

Show  thumbnails — hide entry thumbnails (of images included in your entries) from Day List items. May improve performance on older iPads. Toggle off or on. 

Birthdate — choose your birthdate. This will be the starting point of your Lifeline.  

Theme — choose the default theme for your entries. The theme for individual entries can be overridden on the info popup. 

Paint it black — show dark mode for most interface elements all the time. Toggle off to match device settings. 

With dark cover — also swaps out the default splash image/plain background on the Front Page for dark mode. 

Blank front cover — hide the default front splash wallpaper and just have a plain cover. Ideal if you have added photos to your Front Page. 

Show Benchmarks — displays a list of your benchmark entries on the Front Page (iPad) / Motivational Sidebar (iPhone). 

Justification — choose left or full justification. Full justification may make typing slower on older devices. 

Entry font size — enlarge the font size for entries. All other interface elements remain the same. 

Require TouchID/Face ID — toggle on to require authentication for the app. 

Activate after — Choose when to prompt for authentication. Choose immediately for any time you leave the app, or 15 minutes, 30 minutes, or 1 hour. 

Discreet app switching — toggle this on to blank out the app thumbnail while switching between apps.

Import Day One JSON File — if you have been using “Day One” and wish to carry your data over to “Now and When”, choose the JSON export option for you entries from “Day One” (zip file, with images) and put the resulting file either in a local folder on your iPad or a remote location, like iCloud. You will be prompted for this file location when you start your import. All of your “Day One” entries should be imported, with images, tags and locations, when you are done, but you may lose some formatting for certain paragraph types that will need to be cleaned-up manually. 

Import Bear TXT format (experimental) — if you have been using “Bear” and wish to carry your data over to “Now and When”, you will, unfortunately, need to do a little extra work, as “Bear” doesn’t format entry dates with journalling in mind. In “Bear”, you will need to go through each of your journal entries and add the tag “#journal/yyyy/mm/dd” at the top. After you have done this, choose TXT as your export type in “Bear”. Once it’s done, manually compress (zip) the folder where “Bear” has put your entries and images. Finally, choose the resulting zip file when prompted in “Now and When”. All of your “Bear” entries should be imported when you are done, with images, but you may lose some formatting that will need to be cleaned-up manually. 

Import Now and When JSON — you can export (see below) and reimport specific entries in “Now and When”. Simply navigate to your file location when prompted. 

Restore Full Backup — likewise, all entries, chapters, events and self-photos can be backed up and restored. Choose this option to restore a backup that you have already created from “Now and When”

Export Now and When JSON — if you have a range of entries you wish to export, for whatever reason, select this option, choose your date range and a zip file will be prepared with your text and images. Note: your entries and images will not be secure in this format. Reimport them and delete the zip file as soon as you can, or store it in a secure location. 

Create Full Backup — this option backs up all  (with images), events, chapters and self-photos from “Now and When”. Motivational sidebar items or photos on the Front Page will not be backed up. Note: your entries and images will not be secure in this format. Restore and delete the zip file as soon as you can, or store the file in a secure location.