Journal
OterApp’s journal gives you a quick, low-friction place to write daily notes and reflect on how you’re feeling.
Writing your first entry
Open the Journal screen. If you haven’t written anything today, you’ll see a blank entry ready to fill. Every entry has:
- Title — what’s this entry about?
- Summary — your thoughts, highlights, or whatever’s on your mind
Below the summary you’ll find your configured questions — custom prompts you answer each day. Questions can be:
- Text — free-form answer (e.g. “What went well today?”)
- Mood — pick how you feel from a set of 25 mood types, each with an emoji
Mood types
Moods are grouped into five categories:
- Positive — Joy, Happiness, Excitement, Relaxed, Curiosity
- Negative — Sadness, Anger, Anxiety, Fear, Frustration
- Neutral — Ambivalence, Confusion, Surprise, Nostalgia
- Physical — Tired, Stressed, Overwhelmed
- Complex — Mixed emotional states
Each mood has a distinct emoji, making it easy to scan your emotional history at a glance.
Daily, weekly, and free-form entries
There’s one entry per day — you can’t create multiple entries for the same date. Entries are date-scoped: yesterday’s journal is separate from today’s. If you come back later and edit today’s entry, the changes are saved.
Browsing journal history
Browse past entries by date range. The history view lists entries with their title, summary, and date. Open any past entry to read it in full — including the mood and text answers you gave that day.
Tags and search
Search across your journal entries by text or date range to find a specific entry. Tags aren’t supported directly on journal entries, but the full text of titles and summaries is searchable.
Customising your questions
Configure which questions appear in each day’s entry. Create text prompts that are meaningful to you, and choose whether they should be text-based or mood-based. Questions persist across days — you only answer what you’ve set up.
Tips
- One entry per day keeps it simple: If you want to write multiple times, edit the existing entry — it’s the same day.
- Mood over time: Look back at your mood history to spot emotional patterns across weeks and months.
- Questions are reusable: Set up your questions once and they appear every day. Change them anytime.
Our approach
Oter’s journal is grounded in expressive writing research (Pennebaker & Beall, 1986), affective granularity (the ability to distinguish between emotional states), and the PERMA model of well-being (Seligman, 2011). Structured Q&A prompts guide reflection toward insight, and 25 mood types support emotional precision without judgment.