What do you use to journal with?
The recent PKM thread had me thinking about what folks are using as journaling app/portal. I do use Obsidian for my second brain right now and genuinely love it. But I find the mobile app on Android to be a bit clunky, if I'm honest. Seems slow to open even with very few plugins. For jounaling I've used DayOne for years. I started back when it was iOS/MacOS only, but then switched phone to Android and haven't been back. But now they have an app and web app for that. What I don't like is the somewhat goofy format it saves in and it's on their servers. They used to allow you to at least leverage your own Dropbox, but no longer.
For the past several months I've tried several FOSS options. Main criteria is that I could host it myself, supports offline entries stored in an open file format (preferably MarkDown), and had either multi platform app or a decent web app. That lead me to try these:
Memos
Pros:
- Great persistent web app
- Slick UI that is light and snappy
- markdown support
Cons: - Stuffs the .md inside a database file so can be a bit cumbersome to export data
- No offline support. There is a 3rd party app that hopes to implement it
Flatnotes
Pros:
- Incredibly simple
- Another easily deployed app
- Flat Markdown files
Cons: - Web app on mobile is almost unusable as in it doesn't scale well to smaller screens
- Very early development, but very likely to stay as minimalistic as it is now.
- No offline and very unlikely to ever have it
Joplin
Pros:
- Multi platform apps that perform well
- End-to-end encryption supported
- Could replace both DayOne and my To-do solution (Google Keep)
- Offline support
Cons: - More database stuff instead of flat markdown files
One solution I've been testing lately is using IAWriter to write to a 'Journal' folder within my Obsidian vault on Google drive Obsidian Vault > Journal > 2023.... for example. This works surprisingly well. Of course IAWriter is a bit spendy at $29 for Android and then more $ for other platforms as they're sold separately.
So I'm curious what other people are using for just simple daily journaling, random thoughts, etc. If there's an approach I've missed I'd love to hear it. Joplin is so dang close but not having the structure of plaintext files is a no go for me as I don't want to be trapped by any one product should something happen to the development down the road. Doesn't have to be free, but I want control of the entries either on my own server or cloud storage.
I'm not trying to be a wiseass here, but I actually use a typewriter to journal. Completely distraction free, and there is some kind of weird rhythmic flow state that I get into when I'm pounding out words on manual typewriter.
I'm a big fan of a decent notepad/journal and a fountain pen.
I've been journalling since 2003/2004 and there's something deeply satisfying about seeing them all on a shelf in my little library. Bit weird going back and looking at;
1 - My edgelordness
2 - My GODAWFUL handwriting
A nice (non-smudging) pen + good notebook for me. Channelling my inner teen, I'll splurge on an extra pretty notebook and cool pen colours when I know I have stuff on my mind to get out, but am feeling demotivated to write them down.
I've tried purging my thoughts electronically and it's just not the same for me.
You're not alone. I use a cool little Japanese word processing machine called a Pomera. It is super rad, e-ink, and portable.
I'm a big fan of analog tech as an almost meditative routine. I have a record player with a pile of LPs and just setting everything up and spending the time to listen to an album kind of jives with what you're saying. Very cool.
I feel ya, but I actually use steno books and a G2. I used to use "expensive" stuff, but . . . I wreck my notebooks and the steno book with black ink seems to work best with my OCR (GOCR) to digitize things.
It's funny, I'm literally a "the" Database buy, but I still really have a brainstem function to write everything down on a piece of paper when I start to do a thing, and then move it into a DB to frontend to excel or something (I swear, I can sketch out an accurate table in about half the time I could do one on a computer).
I’ve also really struggled to find a good tool to let me mock up database structure ideas. I end up using a drawing tool on my iPad (an app called Concepts — I like that it has an infinite canvas)
I think the biggest issue I run into is that when I’m mocking up database ideas, I always want to write down examples of content that might go in each field. Basically pre populate a few example rows. None of them give me a structure to quickly capture that.
I really miss Hanx Writer for iOS. Essentially Tom Hanks had a company develop a note taking app with typewriter keyboards you could interchange. It had haptic feedback and made all the cool sounds of a real typewriter. I wrote in that thing for hours just getting out my thoughts and switching typewriters out to fit my immediate mood or journaling purposes.
For some reason the developers just dropped the app and never updated it. So now the UI doesn’t quite fit the screen dimensions of the newer iPhones and thus made the app unusable. Real shame :/
It might be worth writing to Hanks about that - preferably by typewriter. He does tend to respond to mail from fellow typewriter nerds, although it might take six months.
I've done the whole gauntlet of trying out all PKM tools and ended up just using markdown, plain wiki links, sprinkle some tags and mainly try to just write what I want.
https://acreom.com/ is what I use to sync with mobile and write in a daily doc easily, while still being markdown.
An alternative would be acreom + Syncthing for syncing.
I started using Acreom at work because of its Jira integration and I'm really impressed by that. It doesn't have that many features but what it does have is relatively polished and very useful since Jira is cornerstone of organizational task management.
I actually didn't notice that they have a Linux app. I might use it for personal use as well.
A very future-proof solution. Acreom looks very nice, thank you for sharing. I'm assuming you're using Synching and a local directory?
acreom is local first, so yes it's all text in a local directory!
Syncthing for syncing. Because the notes are so light( I don't have huge assets), I host a Syncthing always-online-thing on Fly.io
Hmm, I do have a VPS just sitting there doing nothing... Might have to look at syncthing from that perspective. Thank you.
I bullet journal https://www.thelazygeniuscollective.com/blog/how-to-bullet-journal
In a notebook: https://www.leuchtturm1917.co.uk/notebooks/all-formats/medium-a5/
And I use org-mode in emacs: https://orgmode.org/
I did handwritten journal for years. But as I got more proficient at typing, my penmanship suffered. Damn near unreadable now. So digital for me, I think
For me the therapy is writing not in returning back to read it. My handwriting is awful too!
Obsidian has a daily note feature. For now, it's enough for me. I created a volume in VeraCrypt and it's synced via OneDrive. Given the extremely personal nature of a journal/diary, I wouldn't feel comfortable keeping it online without decent encryption. Even if it's probably overkill.
I agree with you on the privacy aspect for sure. I'll check out the daily note with Obsidian. I'm already using it for my "brain bucket" so makes sense to look at it again.
I've sang its praises many times, but here goes again: text files in VS Code. It looks beautiful, and it's dead simple. It also comes with the benefit of not being tied to some specific application or environment - if Microsoft decides to fuck with VS Code, I can just move on to another text editor.
I tried Joplin, but the interface is an eyesore on Windows.
I’m also an enjoyer of plain text files. Sprinkle in a little Markdown and what more could you need, baby
I use a tool called dendron, it’s a vs code plugin. It’s not getting a lot of love lately, but it’s just some helpers around markdown + vs code.
This is going to sound pathetic, but if I do this on my computer, I use notepad or notepad++. It has served me well, because I am able to type quickly with no distracting UI, etc. On the fly and nothing to distract me, as I don't care about making it look nice. It's as plain and boring as it can get.
That's what I was doing before Obsidian. And it worked. What pushed me over was the robust search function because Windows search function is hot garbage. But I know where you're coming from but worked and as plain text, can be opened by anything.
Interesting. Obsidian sounds like it's worth looking into (maybe I don't know what I'm missing out on). Yeah, Windows search sucks indeed. I started using Agent Ransack to mitigate this issue. (It's a standalone program for searching your file system.) You can use regular expressions / pattern matching to find certain text, and can limit the search to certain folders, etc. You might find this useful even in addition to Obsidian (if you are annoyed by the limitations of windows searching), so throwing it out there in case it's helpful.
That said, I did not put much research into alternatives. Agent ransack was just the first thing I came across that could solve the problem, so there are likely better alternatives. (it's not open source either, as far as I am aware, fwiw).
Hey, worth giving it a shot. It's definitely not for everyone or every use case. The big draw to it for me was simple markdown files I can take anywhere, a nice UI (can be modified with plugins), aforementioned search, and the wonderful backlinks. Love those so much! But to be fair, in the context of journaling I doubt I'll use that. But for Personal Knowledge Management and keeping track of projects I'm working on, it's amazing.
I do miss markdown. I love a simple text file, but it does get annoying not being able to organize thoughts with headings. Markdown would probably be a huge improvement.
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned logseq yet. I started using it to replace my home-grown system of text journals and notes, and I'm surprised by how consistent and useful it is.
Caveat being that I just started using it, but just putting it out there as the open source alternative to Obsidian.
Managing sync with Syncthing.
I tried logseq, but I don't remember why I didn't stick with it, tbh. Which is why I didn't include it in my original post. I'll take another look.
You mentioned the UI of obsidian is clunky. So is logseq. Logseq is also an electron app, which is a negative in my book. However, I can't deny that it's way better than just syncing text files, so I'm using it anyway.
Yes, and that's why I want to push for something similar. It's the mobile app at least on Android that seems slow and cumbersome. But either it was recently updated or perhaps it was my phone. Ive been messing with it this weekend and it seems better so I may just incorporate journaling into my obsidian workflow.
The reasons why I went with logseq over obsidian are:
I think part of the turnoff was the apk for Android was from their Github rather than the Play store. Silly worry on my part at the time. The other is that in my use case, I use it exactly the opposite of you, from the sounds of it. Well, Obsidian in my case. With regards to this topic, I specifically want a journal app so to me that means a free form to spill my guts, so to speak. Bullets or hierarchy wouldn't fit me for that purpose. I will absolutely give it another look because it does sound promising.
I use Joplin and have been using it for quite a few years not only as a journal, but also as a general notebook and scratchpad - consolidating all of my notes from Evernote and OneNote into Joplin. The biggest draws for me were that it's FOSS, multi-platform (I have windows, linux, android and ios devices that all use it), and e2ee. The software is a little clunky (although better than a lot of FOSS programs), and text-entry isn't snappy, but it works consistently, and the web-clipper feature on the desktop works really well.
It doesn't have the polish or the bells-and-whistles of some of the other conventional alternatives, and the "to-do" functionality is bare-bones. But I like it because it's stable and I feel like I can journal in it securely. I don't worry that one day the service is going to die and I'll lose everything I own, and I don't worry that their cloud back-end is going to get compromised and all of my information is exposed. In the end, I'm willing to make trade-offs in UX for the stability and security that Joplin provides.
I used to use Joplin, but I switched to Obsidian a while back because I just couldn't get past how clunky and buggy the UI for Joplin is - I still feel secure using obsidian because I can sync it via GitHub
I'm thinking about swapping again to silverbullet.md since it's open source and I have issues with the Obsidian commercial license, but silver bullet has to be self hosted
All valid reasons. Perhaps I should rethink my perception of Joplin. What I saw, I did like. It just rubbed me the wrong way regarding the format it saves your entires in. I was mostly thinking 10+ years down the road. Or if something happens to me, can my family get at my journal easily? Markdown would do that. But if it has to be extracted from a database that puts another hurdle in the way.
When using synchronisation, it stores that in nearly plain markdown (some metadata in the top that could easily be stripped with
sed).Mind you, it still draws from that into the local SQLite db, so you’ll always have both.
Try syncing to a local folder or something to see.
I’ve been using S3 sync for a years time without issues, and it’s stored in the format mentioned above.
Joplin is my absolute favourite and go to notes application.
For straight journalling I use a little A6 bullet journal which lives in my pocket for jotting down notes and short form ideas. I also have a bigger A5 journal which I use semi-frequently for long form journalling. (mainly just how I'm feeling or brain dumping ideas out)
THEN I have Logseq as a PKM solution using Syncthing to sync between phone/server/pc/laptop etc.
AND THEN just to make things extra complicated I use nb which is a command line note taking program which I use for more public note taking on my wiki. (like I recently bought a steam deck so I've got a troubleshooting page in there which I can search and stuff but also publishes out as a static website so others can find it)
I use Google Keep a lot. It is on every device I use and helps because if I wait to get to my computer I'll forget what my thought was, but even I write one sentence, I can come back to it later and the words will flow. I've written several stories of the wild things that have happened throughout my life and I'd love to eventually make a book out of them.
I do just the same thing! I feel fairly optimistic that Google will not kill Keep, since it must be such low maintenance app for them. What sucks about this solution is that there is no way to sensibly create a link between multiple notes, apart form giving them the same tag. Also I feel some metadata is not as easily accessible like it should be - creation date being one of them.
I actually also keep a tag "Good Stories" that I fill with all the stuff that happens to me or friends during our time on this rock in space, and I find myself frequently revisiting them and having a lough about the absurdities that life holds in store sometimes.
I'm a bit curious now - would you like to share a tale or two?
Absolutely! This first one I call: Camaro and Wine. You'll find I'm not shy with profanity.
The first car I bought on my own was a white 1987 Chevrolet Camaro. Not an IROC. Not a V8. Not a T-Top. A simple V6 that I loved to death. I felt like I was driving a tank (which coincidentally relates to this story). Fun fact: tall person with a car with long doors? Yeah, they don't work well. I think my knees are still bruised.
One night (morning? I don't know. I worked at a movie theater, so my concept of time was skewed), I'm headed home when a Saturn comes flying off of the freeway and directly into my lane. There were cars to my side, so I had nowhere to go. I plowed into the side of that Saturn and we both stopped about 100' later. Remember when Saturn boasted about dent resistant panels? Whelp, they are not shatter resistant. His car was totalled and I was able to pull out my fender and drive home. He told the cops he didn't see me, but the other cars stopped and gave a report supporting my side. Didn't see me? Canary yellow is the new paint job.
That car served me well for years. I once made a 360 mile drive on a single tank of gas. It defies logic. Over time, the repairs became costly and my commute needed something more practical. It broke my heart to put her in storage. Years later, the time came that I knew she needed to go. I donated her to charity and watched her get loaded onto a tow truck. Man... That sucked. Then my day made a wild change.
When I mentioned the tank before? Well, I have a friend that was a tanker in the Army at the time. A few months before, he came to visit and became a wine club member at Mario Andretti's winery. So, here I am, crying my eyes out, when Dustin messages me that Mario is at the winery doing signings. Would I go get a bottle signed? Fuck. I'm in Sacramento, and Napa is far. And I only have 3 hours? Fuck it. Challenge accepted.
I don't know how fast I drove, but it certainly wasn't legal by any means. Traffic was terrible and I was so pissed off. Eventually, I made it to the winery with 15-30 minutes remaining in Mario's time there. Immediately, I bought a bottle and went to seek out the legend. Nowhere. Fucking nowhere. Damnit. I screwed this up. I head to the bathroom, and upon my exit, I see Mario sitting at a table with two people. I'm not a complete asshole, so I stand to the side, bottle in hand, just waiting for the right moment. Ultimately, it wasn't my choice.
Mario steps up from the table and heads straight to me. Had I not just been in the bathroom, I'd have pissed myself. He grabbed the bottle out of my hands and I start telling him in a panicked tone that I was there for my friend in the Army and you're awesome and I'm so happy to be here and meet you. Basically, I fan-girled out. This man then starts telling me how he loves doing USO tours and writes "SALUTE" on the bottle. No idea how my legs held me up.
The whole experience was incredible. I watched my baby go, but I also got to meet a legend. You can't beat that.
This one is called: Tell that bitch I said...
Nathan. Fucking Nathan. There may be German words to describe him, but there isn't shit in English. Dude is an enigma wrapped in sun beams flying in on the back of a unicorn. If you know him, don't bullshit me and say I'm wrong. You're a dirty fucking liar.
One day in July I heard a knock at the door. When I open the door, I see no other than Nathan on the other side of the screen door.
Me: Hey, dude! What's up?!
Nathan (calmly): Hi. Can Kevin come hang out?
Me: Dude... It's me. What's going on?
Nathan (still calm. Keep in mind he can clearly see me): I just wanted to see if he could come hang out.
Me (slightly irritated): Nathan. It's me. What do you want?!
Nathan (now excited): Hey! How's your penis?! Wanna go drive around? (He had recently restored a Nova and would drive to his neighbor's)
Me (laughing): I'd fucking love to, but it's my mom's birthday and I'm working on dinner.
Then it happened. Perhaps the greatest moment of my life. It may not sound like a compliment, but if you ever hear me use any variation of this, know I am being sincerely positive.
Nathan: Well, tell that bitch I said... Tell your mom I said, "What's up?!"
I don't know how long we stood there in silence, but I think he left out of embarrassment (he totally would have been allowed for dinner). After closing the door I went through several laughing fits. "Tell that bitch I said..."
I told my mom and she laughed her ass off. Best present he could have given her and the world.
Beautiful, just what I like: small vignettes that allow for a glimpse in another persons life!
I've been journaling for 5 years now. I'm a huge fan of the app Daylio. It's a mood tracker as well as a journaling app. Initially I actually did not like the fact that I had to choose a mood, but the more I used it, the more I gained value from checking in with how I'm actually feeling at different points in the day. It does not have a desktop/web app which isn't ideal, but for me, getting into journaling was about convenience first and foremost, so it made sense to just journal on my Android. You can back up to Google drive if you want to, but I might not recommend that for privacy. Data is stored locally otherwise and is encrypted. I love its stats features as well, and the streaks really keep me going (1813 days and counting).
I started writing a journal last year as a year-challenge-thing and quite enjoyed it. I searched around the web a bit for apps to fit the purpose, and in the end I actually ended up writing in the iOS native Notes app. I have a note that is stickied, so in times where I skip writing for a few days it's still kept at the top. It syncs with my phone and the note is kept stored online which is handy. The format is very basic, but at the same time, it's pretty much all I need. Whenever I make a new entry, I simply start at the top right above the previous entry. I've copied the full journal into a regular rtf file as a backup just in case.
Same, actually. I had been doing it regularly when I first started using DayOne. Then when I moved away from their ecosystem, I stopped entirely. But I've restarted with renewed vigor and it's honestly helped with my mental health drastically. Such a simple thing too. Even though I'm not in the iOS realm anymore, I am curious to see how Apple's new journal app works and how well it's received.
Spiral-bound, college-ruled notebooks.
Black Bic Cristal pens.
Bluefish editor.
xhtml 1.0
I used the bullet journal in a physical notebook. But I bought a Supernote and I love it. It's my go to for personal notes, bullet journaling, meeting notes for work, etc.
But for creative stuff and more of a knowledge base, I use Obsidian.
Might be weird but i've just been using Vim. Really like terminals and dont journal as much so its good for me.
I use Evernote. Been using it for years now. Recently though, it's become a pain in the ass (since the ver 10 update). Also, the price has gone up to £8.99 per month now. Back when I started using Evernote, it was just £3.99 a month.
The thing is, I've tried so many alternatives over the years, but nothing organises my stuff and displays it the way Evernote does.
The one that I've been using consistently is Diarium. It has an app for all platforms, on Android, Apple, and Windows, and it supports cross-platform journaling. The one downside is that you have to purchase the app on the different ecosystems, but once that happens you are able to sync them all together. It's been nice to journal before bed on my phone, and then be able to pull it all up on my desktop and look back at it.
It also allows you to tag entries with different things like contacts, as well as embedding pictures or videos into the entry for that day. It also supports cloud backups through onedrive.
All in all, I've been really happy with using this one. I find myself using the 'On This Day' feature just to see what I've been up to over the years and sort of put myself back into that place.
That looks a lot like DayOne, actually. Many of the same features as well but looks like they have multiplatform as a selling point as opposed to DayOne who views anything no Apple as an afterthought.
I journal on my laptop using jrnl.sh. It is very practical to open a terminal window and simply type an entry. The organization features, including tags and filtering options, allow me to easily find anything I've written. Additionally, the ability to encrypt journal files is crucial for me as it ensures the privacy of my thoughts. Unfortunately, I am not aware of any Android app that can read or add entries to this software; however, I sync my jrnl files with Google Drive and use Termux occasionally to read my entries. The sync mode is one-way only, meaning I can only access what I've written on my laptop and not create entries with Android. I've been using this method for a little over a year, and it works great for me!
I actually tried this at work. I must just not be as comfortable in command line/terminal as I thought and felt very unsure if my entries were being captured. It is a remarkably well thought out app though. So lightweight.
I actually use neovim a lot for editing my entries because some special characters can mess with the terminal. This requires no effort at all; just using "jrnl --edit" opens a neovim instance with all my entries. However, I tend to filter first, something like "jrnl -on today --edit" or "jrnl @personal -on today --edit," which opens neovim with only the relevant entries.
Just typing "jrnl -on today" will show you if the additions you made recently were registered correctly or not. You can use "jrnl -on today --delete" to quickly remove any incorrect entries. It may take some time to get familiar with the basic commands and workflow of jrnl.sh, but I think it is worth it in the long run due to its agility in adding and retrieving entries.
Furthermore, the information is stored in .txt format, so you are not dependent on any company going bankrupt and leaving the app you use to store your personal thoughts behind. I believe I will continue using jrnl for decades to come because it has made journaling relevant and accessible for me.
Fair points. That was part of the allure to markdown for me. Still viewable in plaintext but can be rendered into a "prettier" output. I did really like the tag functions of jrnl though.
How long is a typical journal entry for you? All of the documentation only shows one-sentence example journal entries, so I'm having a hard time imagining what a filled-out journal is meant to be.
Is the intended use-case meant to be just to quickly capture very short thoughts?
Depends on how I'm feeling at the time, honestly. I have an alert go off every morning to remind me to write in my journal. Some days it's a quick 2-3 sentence entry, other days I can put down several paragraphs without too much effort. I'd like for the entry point to be as frictionless as possible while still being ready to write in. That means opens quickly, ready to write immediately. That being said I don't want to get locked into one company's "walled garden" again, which is what let me to solutions that leverage Markdown.
Thanks! I ended up installing Logseq because I like that it seems like a lighter weight version of Obsidian (markdown based), but I might also give this a try next.
Depends on the tag, I guess. Sometimes I just want to capture some quick insights; sometimes I make lists to organize my thoughts, and sometimes I make full-page entries as to summarize a situation or to define a concept. My longest entry has 696 words, and it is no bother at all to add and retrieve long entries either. Maybe you should use an external editor when you're writting them though.
I grew up in the age of Xanga, LiveJournal, and alla that, and that's what I still do! I'm on Dreamwidth nowadays; they have markdown support in beta but it's usable. For the polished braindumps, they turn into Outward Voice entities and go on WordPress.
I also keep drafts and mobile thoughts with Joplin (formerly Evernote), and a good ol' pen and paper when none of the electronic options are available... Or I just need to feel the pen and paper format.
I really wanted to get into Obsidian what with all the positive things I'd heard about it, but it still doesn't have WSL support, so I wasn't able to give it a try.
Instead I use Chat Journal, which is a journaling app structured like a one-sided instant messenger. You have multiple "chats" which serve as different journal categories, and because each journal entry just looks like a chat message, it encourages smaller entries, which has always helped me to journal more often.
However, I have a hard time recommending the app because... well... it's been silently removed from both the Play Store and the developer's Github account. Old posts on the dev's Twitter account still exist documenting updates about the app, but aside from that I could barely find any reference to the app even existing. If the app had been removed for violating Google's ToS, surely they would have sent out some kind of notification to all its users, right? Right?
In any case, there are probably apps with a similar look-and-feel if you want to give the chat-as-a-journal concept a try. I like it a lot.
I use Joplin for now, but am looking for alternatives that do not add extra cruft and I can use anything to read the notes. All my devices run on Linux so that's a big factor to it.
Before that I used Kate editor and folder of markdown files. Worked well, but I like tagging features.
What I'd like most is a note taking app that also can use reminders. Joplin has that, albeit it's not very good and on Android it's completely broken.. :/
That was my hangup as well. I understand that it's not too terribly difficult to pull the contents of your entries out of database housed markdown like Joplin and Memos uses, but I don't think I should have to do that in order to exit that app and move on to something else.
Take for example my existing relationship with DayOne. In order to convert my entries to flat markdown, I ended up leveraging Bear on MacOS since they have a DayOne import function specifically. Then export to Markdown. A silly middle step, imo. With Obsidian and some of the other PKM apps, you can just grab those .md files and move them wherever you want.
I really wanted to like Joplin. But that is a non-starter for me, unfortunately.
I am currently testing out Logseq. Will see how it goes.
Update: I liked logseq so much I switched to it completely. Instead of making new notes and losing track, i can just type stuff down and search for things.
Last year I built a journal app for myself called TIME THIEF. The goal was to turn journaling more into a spur of the moment activity to replace other less productive time wasters on my phone. It's open source and stores data locally on device, with an exporter and an optional self-hostable sync server. I'd love to hear what you think of it!