Apple Journal, introduced in December as part of iOS 17.2, has a feature called ‘Discoverable by Others’ that has been drawing attention on social media. Contrary to some beliefs, this feature does not share your name and location with everyone around you. Instead, it uses the presence of your device to improve the Journal app’s suggestions for people around you.
The ‘Discoverable by Others’ setting falls under ‘Journaling Suggestions’, which uses on-device intelligence to generate journaling suggestions based on your day-to-day life. This feature is opt-in and makes recommendations based on places you go, photos you take, music you listen to, and more.
When enabled, ‘Discoverable by Others’ allows others to detect you are nearby to help prioritize their suggestions. For example, if you hosted a dinner party at your house with friends who are in your contacts, the system might prioritize that in the suggestions, as it knows from the head count that there was something different about that event.
This feature is enabled by default, regardless of whether the ‘Journaling Suggestions’ feature is enabled. Apple explains that this is done so users get the benefits of the Journal app, regardless of whether their friends and people around them are using the Journal app or not.
If you prefer to disable this feature, you can do so by going to the Settings app, choosing ‘Privacy & Security’, then tapping ‘Journaling Suggestions’.
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