What you need to know
- Users started to notice low resolution images earlier this week.
- Initial customer support responses suggested no fix was available and no backups were in place.
- Day One has now confirmed that a bug has been identified and a fix is on the way.
Day One has made a name for itself as the go-to journaling app on iPhone, iPad, and Mac. It's a great app with a back-end syncing service to keep everything updated across devices. But it's that service that caused quite the stir earlier this week when one user took to the Mac Power Users forum to report data loss. Not something you want from an app you trust to keep all of your memories safe.
The data loss on this ocassion related to photos. Or to be more accurate, high quality versions of photos. As the user points out they noticed that Day One was displaying low resolution versions of their photos instead of the high quality ones that were originally added to their journal entries.
I was looking through some old entries in DayOne when I noticed all my photos were quite pixelated, and in the corner of the photo there was a circle icon with a line through it.When I contacted DayOne supported, they told me this was an instance of the server not having a copy of my photo and that I'd have to replace it with a copy in my own photo library.This was strange, as this was an entry from three years ago and I was pretty certain I'd seen non-pixelated version of this photo in DayOne before. I began checking all my old entries and discovered that any post prior to 2017 was affected.
Being a concerned user, they went to speak with Day One's customer support. And it didn't go well at all.
After speaking with the "server team" the representative said that an app bug "replaced some photos with the thumbnail image" and that the affected user "would have to replace" the missing images.
That's....not good. But as is so often the case, someone with a ton of Twitter followers was able to get the attention of someone who could help. This time it was Mac Power Users co-host and Relay FM co-founder, Stephen Hackett.
After tweeting about the problem Hackett received a reply from the Day One Twitter account and yes, they were looking into what CEO Paul Mayne called "an all-hands-on-deck event."
Fast forward a day or so and there's some good news. A bug has been identified and a fix is on its way through App Store's review process.
We found a bug that temporarily affected <1% of our users. We are releasing a fix that restores the original photos. It should clear the App Store at any time. Much thanks to our users for raising this issues.We found a bug that temporarily affected <1% of our users. We are releasing a fix that restores the original photos. It should clear the App Store at any time. Much thanks to our users for raising this issues.— Day One Journal (@dayoneapp) October 24, 2019October 24, 2019
What we have here is a three act story. The initial data loss is obviously a concern for Day One and its users – including me! Then the poor customer service response is something that the Day One team will undoubtedly want to look into as well. Telling customers that their data is gone and there's nothing they can do about it is bad enough. Doing it when you clearly can do something about it is even worse.
Thankfully the third act is where everything works out. Day One had a bug that was identified and then fixed. And most importantly, no data has been lost. And that's the most important thing here, surely?
