Journal, reminders and recordings

A notebook you carry is the right place for a daily page, a reminder to come back to something, and a recording of the meeting you’re in. This page covers the Journal and its calendar, reminders with their alerts, and recording audio into a note.

The Journal

Journal, a tile in the library to begin with, leads with the month as a calendar. A dot under a day means it has a daily note; today sits on a disc of your theme’s colour, and the day of the note you have open is ringed.

Tap a day to open its note, or to start one.
Tap a week number, at the start of a row, to open or start that week’s note.
Change month with the arrows, by swiping across the days, or with Today when another month is showing.

Below the calendar come Today’s Note and This Week’s Note (or Start… before they exist), then your daily and weekly notes, newest first, a month at a time, with each weekly note heading the days of its week.

The calendar shows even before your first daily note, with a button to start today’s.

Daily and weekly notes

Today’s Note opens today’s page, making it the first time; This Week’s Note does the same for the week, numbered the ISO way and running Monday to Sunday. You’ll find them in the Journal, in the menu when you touch and hold New Note, in Shortcuts, and on a keyboard as ⌃⌘T and ⌃⇧⌘T. There’s one daily note a day and one weekly note a week, on every device.

A new daily or weekly note starts with the date or week as a heading, or from a template: choose which in Settings › Journal & Review. A template that asks questions, such as a weekly review asking for the week’s focus, asks them before the note is made. The choice of template is kept on each device; the templates themselves sync. See Templates and daily notes.

Move between days and weeks

A daily or weekly note has a bar under it: Previous and Next either side of its date, such as Thu, Sep 24 or Week 39. They go to the nearest note of that kind that exists, skipping days without one, and never make a new one. Tap the date in the middle to open the month and jump to any day or week. The note’s … menu has the same commands, and a keyboard has ⌃⌘[ and ⌃⌘] for days, ⌃⌥⌘[ and ⌃⌥⌘] for weeks.

Reminders

A reminder brings a note back at the time you choose, and can point at one task or passage in it.

For the whole note: choose Add Reminder… from the note’s … menu.
For a task: while reading, touch and hold the task and choose Add Reminder…. While editing, put the cursor on the task and choose Add Reminder for Task… from the menu over the text.
For a passage: while editing, select it and choose Add Reminder for Selection….

The sheet offers Later Today (until 9 pm), Tomorrow and Next Week, or a Date, a Time and a Repeat. A reminder that already exists opens here to change, with Delete Reminder. Varlig asks to send notifications the first time you save one.

When a reminder is due, an alert appears with Complete, Snooze 1 Hour and Remind Tomorrow, which work without opening Varlig. Tap the alert to open the note at the task or passage, which glows for a moment so you can see it. Tick a task and its reminder completes itself.

The Reminders list

Reminders in the library lists everything you’ve set, in Overdue, Upcoming, Paused (notes in the Trash) and Completed, folded to begin with, which shows the 20 most recent. Tap a row to open its note; tap its circle to complete it. Swipe a row to complete it, delete it or snooze it until tomorrow, or touch and hold it for Open Note, Edit Reminder… and Snooze 1 Hour as well.

Also add to Apple Reminders

Turn on Also add to Apple Reminders in the sheet, and saving also adds the reminder to the Reminders app, with its title, time, repeat and a link back to the note — never the note’s text. It’s added once, and from then on it belongs to Reminders. The next new reminder remembers your choice. Varlig asks for access to Reminders after you save, and if you don’t allow it, the reminder is still set in Varlig. See Also add to Apple Reminders.

A reminder on a password-protected note shows Varlig reminder with no title or text, and so does every reminder while app lock is on.

Recordings

Record Audio… is in the note’s … menu and in the editor’s Attach menu. Tap Start Recording in the sheet. It then shows the time and the input level, with Pause and Resume, Finish, Add Recording Marker and Cancel, which asks before it discards what you’ve recorded. It rests at half height, so you can go on reading or typing in the note behind it, and Hide tucks the recording into a small bar.

Recording carries on with the screen locked. A phone call or Siri pauses it, and you resume it when you’re ready.

Mark a moment

Add Recording Marker writes a link with the time, such as [12:04], at the cursor — or on a new line at the end of the note when you aren’t editing. Tap the marker later to play the recording from that moment. See Mark a passage while you record.

On the Lock Screen

While you record, the Lock Screen and the Dynamic Island show the time recorded and the note’s title, with Add Marker and Stop, so you can mark a moment or finish without opening Varlig. Stop adds the recording to the note, as Finish does. Tap the Live Activity to open the note. A protected note’s title shows as Protected note, and every title as Varlig note while app lock is on.

The Live Activity ends when the recording does. If Varlig stops running while it records, the Live Activity says Not recording. Open Varlig to recover it., and what was recorded waits in Recordings to recover. The first time you record, iOS asks whether to allow Live Activities from Varlig; without them, recording works as before.

Listen

Finish adds the recording to the note. Tap it, or a marker, to play it in a bar along the bottom of the note, with a button to go back 15 seconds and a list of the markers, each with the passage it was dropped in.

Recordings to recover

Recordings are saved in 30-second pieces as you go, so an interruption — the app closing, the battery running out — keeps everything but the last few seconds. A notice at the bottom of the note list says so, and its Review… button opens Recordings to Recover: attach each one to its note, save it as a new note, or discard it. A recording can be up to 100 MB, the limit for any attachment. A protected note’s recording stays encrypted until you unlock the note.