There are many charms worth celebrating in iPadOS 26, like a new design language, a vastly improved windowed multitasking experience, and an actual Preview app for upcoming documents and reading PDFs. The new feature that’s caught me by surprise, though, is Apple’s Journal app. It remains a stripped-down take on a personal journaling tool, but a really compelling experience if you have an iPad and an Apple Pencil.

Apple introduced Journal as an iOS-exclusive in iOS 17, and is finally opting to bring the app to the iPad and Mac with this year’s software updates. The app has been tweaked to fit those different screen sizes and includes several improvements over the iOS 18 version, but I’ve found the iPad-specific changes to make it a truly must-use app, and a pretty great illustration of what a tablet app can be.

The Journal app can tap into everything you do on or with your phone

Apple is betting big on its API

The Journal app launched on iOS 17 as a relatively stripped-down experience. It was primarily focused on text entries, though it also offered the option to add a photo or an audio recording if you wanted to. Apple’s big idea with the app was its Journaling Suggestions API, which could tap into apps and the things you use them for, and use that to suggest things you should write about. With the company’s own apps, Journal can suggest an entry based off a playlist you listened to on Apple Music, or locations you visited based on Apple Maps data, or a photo you took.

Third-party apps can incorporate the API into their apps to make their app activities become suggestions, so Journal could also suggest you write about a recent workout or a podcast you listened to. The fear at the time was that Apple was effectively cloning and eliminating apps like Day One by offering something similar for free. For the most part, that hasn’t played out, particularly because Apple spent a while bringing the app to its other devices.

As the center of most people’s digital lives, the iPhone works fine as a journaling tool, or at least the thing that prompts journaling. Once you actually try it, though, I think it makes far less sense. Typing on something so small feels weird when paired with the thoughtfulness journaling requires. The iPhone is also far more distracting than an iPad or Mac . And as someone who’s attempted to keep handwritten journals multiple times over my life, text typing with the iOS Journal app didn’t seem right.

iPadOS 26 combines the iPad, Apple Pencil, and the Journal app together

Handwritten entries and multiple journals make all the difference

My interest in handwriting my entries is explicitly catered to by the iPadOS version of the Journal app, which, among its other modifications, offers complete Apple Pencil support. All the features of Apple’s stylus and its PencilKit software are included, even the automatic spellcheck and handwriting cleanup features the company introduced in iOS 18. In my brief time trying the feature out during the public beta, it’s made a huge difference to how it feels to use the Journal app and I greatly prefer it.

Writing feels more intentional than typing, for one thing, and forces me to think about what I’m trying to put down on digital paper. The app’s support for multiple different journals also means I can split up entries based on topic — I still keep a sporadic dream journal, which now gets its own section — another meaningful quality of life improvement. The version of Journal on iPadOS 26, iOS 26, and macOS 26 just feels much more like the app Apple should have released from the beginning.

The big problem I’ve run into so far is that performance on my fifth-generation iPad Air (running an M1 chip) is far from ideal. I’ll be able to write smoothly and without issue for paragraphs at a time, but when an entry gets long enough, things start to lag. The Journal app will register one letter of a word and takes multiple seconds before it actually displays that I’ve written the rest. My iPad also gets concerningly hot during this entire process. I’m fairly confident all of this can be blamed on this being beta software, but it’s the only thing that’s dimmed what’s otherwise been a more than enthusiastic reception.

Apple devices have separate use-cases

They’re all screens, but they’re all unique

The big idea behind the new Liquid Glass design language and all of Apple’s operating system updates this year, is that if the company’s products are more similar to each other, they’ll be easier to understand. If you understand how to use an iPhone, you should be able to navigate an iPad or a Mac. Apple has pushed on this idea in years past, but iPadOS 26 really brings things to a head by lifting elements directly from macOS (the “stoplight” buttons in the top left corner, for example).

I think the Journal app is a good reminder that some devices are better at some things than others. The iPad can run the same apps as all of Apple’s other products, but they should feel distinct and some of them should feel better. You can try the new version of Journal app for yourself by downloading one of Apple’s public betas. If you’re interested in more ways an iPad can fit into your life, it really does excel at some specific tasks.