Ask HN: What is the best personal journaling solution? - iamjk
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amorphous
Do yourself a favour and write in plain text. I'm keeping a journal (on a
computer) since 2003 and have lost many entries due to app crashes, moving
between OSes and so on.

There is no need for a proprietary data format in 2018 anymore. Using plain
text as the basis, organise your files in folders if you like, encrypt and
sync using some cheap (or free) cloud storage provider, and _on top of that_
choose your favourite editor (I use iaWriter because of nice UI + the ability
to simply drag images into a file).

You may get hooked on keeping a journal (as I have - one of the best decisions
I made) and you will not only amass a lot of text (I have written the
equivalent of 4000 book pages) but also want to do this for a long time
(speaking decades), far longer than the life-span of most if not all
journaling apps.

If you use a proprietary format, at least make sure that the app has a decent
export function that creates a result that doesn't require manual changes by
you.

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oriolgg
+1 to plain text + encrypt and cloud sync as @amorphous said. I want these
files to stay with me during my lifetime.

I do the same thing, except that I recently made a simple editor UI that shows
me the entries of the same day of previous years when I'm writing today's
entry.

I've only been journaling this way for a couple of years, but for me this is a
good way to review how were my life and thoughts in the past. Reading previous
entries gives me more chances to reflect. Many times I feel I've grown, many
other times I detect I still suffer from the same issues and this prompts me
to take action to correct them.

You don't need a UI that does it, but I suggest reading back some of your
previous entries from time to time.

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vinylkey
I'm a fan of a notebook and a pen.

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swatcoder
I've written maybe 100,000 words to Day One over the last several years.

It has a ton of functionality that I don't use, but it's reliable, has
effective syncing across devices, and a clean export process. There may or may
not be better, but I'm very happy with it.

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cholmon
[http://jrnl.sh](http://jrnl.sh) is great for minimalism, if you're
comfortable with the command line.

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akulbe
another vote for Day One

