Alternatives to Day One
Hi. Many years ago I found a critical issue with Day One and informed them. As a thank you I was granted a lifetime Premium subscription. Now after all these years they have downgraded it to Silver (whatever that is). I don't really mind, they must of course make their business choices, even though it wouldn't cost them much to honour their promise. But the good thing is that I now get a chance to try any other application or service. I don't really need the functions in Day One. I am on MacOS, and Apple Journal works in iOS and iPadOS aswell. I also have heard of other alternatives, among them Dearly, Diario (which has no MacOS app) and Diarium. There is also Moleskin Journal and you can build a journal in Apple Notes with Forever Notes. Now, to me a solution that is native (non-Electron) and can import from Day One would be great, but if there isn't one that is OK aswell. But more than one journal (one for personal and one for work at least) "On this day" (not important but nice) and possibility to add images and coordinates and such. It does not have to be free, but preferably currently developed and updated to new OS:es There is Apple Journal of course. So what is your recommendations to try out to begin with?
Collected discussion
Diarly looks great for you if you are in the Apple ecosystem. Apple native apps Local first (sync optional in Premium) Encryption (Premium) Markdown support European company (GDPR) Font and theme customisation It reminds me of Bear but focused on journaling. If you want to try a more general purpose app for journaling, try Bear or Anytype. Or just use Apple Journal. For a more private solution, apart from Anytype, try Cryptee, although it’s a PWA (not native).
Thanks. Yes I downloaded Diarly and Diarium now. Both seem good. Diarium has Swedish language, Diarly has in my mind a better UI. Both did import from day One very well. I'll try them both for a few days and see which one fits my brain best. Thanks for your feedback 🙏
100% Diarly!!
Diarium is fantastically feature-rich (especially formatting!), with far less clutter than Day One. Unfortunately, it lacks a lot of basic, standard keyboard shortcuts, and some key features require several clicks to reach them. Haven't played with Diarly in a while, but I recall it being quite good for a markdown app. Best feature: You can change the end of your day to 02:00 instead of 00:00. Why you can't "choose your own midnight" instead of hardcoding it at 02:00 is beyond me, but at least the devs understand that some people are night owls. 😄
Totally appreciate taking this as an opportunity to try out other alternatives, but just in case you were otherwise happy with Day One I thought it worth mentioning that Silver isn’t really a downgrade and you won’t have lost any features you had originally. Essentially they renamed Premium to Silver and added an additional Gold tier above that which includes some extra AI features.
Hi. No my main problem isn’t really Gold or not. I can live without that. It’s more the fact that I never got informed of the change and I suddenly just had a free trial version. So it took a few days-aweek-and eventually proof of their promise (I archive old emails sp I could send them a copy of thecoriginal email. Just a lot of hassle. At the moment one of the two I an trying (no need to mention which one) charged me for one year subscription when I had a seven days trial if I undubscribed within that timeframe. But they charged me. I’m not a big fan of such business ideas. So that service is a no-no to me now.
Aha, right. Thanks for the extra background info!
I tried daily journalling with many apps for decades but never really got anything to stick past using them to log events I may want to refer back to. But I've managed to log everything I do daily for many years using a less well known app called 'Daygram'. https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/daygram-one-line-a-day-diary/id977949232 . Confusingly there is (I think a newer) photo journal app called DayGram on the App Store too It's a minimal design, focused on text, which why it stuck with me and has lots of nice little features hidden until you turn them on in settings, It has a way to add images to your entries, but think can only come from photos... I don't use images, just the text journaling. The dev has stuck at it and kept updating for many years. In the past year they've added a bunch more little features and have got the Mac App working in close parity to the original iPhone App. It's also on Android. Anyway, it's one of my favourite apps. I recommend giving it a look.
Just tried Daygram. What a gem. Thanks for the recommendation.
Well, this seems to be the second time I see this today, but I would give you the same recommendation I did there. I would go with Mini Diarium which is free and open source and can import from Day One
Yes I posted but it was deleted by modbot and I was adviced to try this group. No intentional spam.
Honestly given what you described, Diarium is worth a serious look even without a native Mac app. It hits most of your requirements and is actively developed. But if native macOS matters, Journaling app Momento is worth trying. Day One import, multiple journals, location and photo support, on this day feature, and it actually feels like a Mac app. Reflect is another one people don't mention enough in these threads. More note-focused than pure journaling but handles multiple notebooks well and the Mac app is solid. Apple Journal is fine but still pretty limited, no multiple journals, no real import story, feels half finished. If you can live without native for now, Diarium plus a good iOS app for mobile might actually be the most complete package. The Day One betrayal thing is unfortunately common, they have been quietly walking back lifetime promises for a while now. You are right to move on.
I'm enjoying Everlog right now. Simple and clean. Replaced Apple Journal for me.
I was with DayOne for over 15 years. Found DayOne to be very unresponsive to customer ideas. Tried Diarly and after back and forth with the developer I had the almost perfect app within a couple of weeks at most. Wish I had found Diarly years before.
After more than a decade as a Day One user, I’m also looking for an alternative. Please let us know what you end up choosing. I’m currently trying out Diarium and Prilog, and I’ll also try some of the other options mentioned in this thread, especially those that offer a one-time purchase.
Diarly is the one I'd push for your use case. native, actively maintained, and the Day One import actually works properly unlike some others I've tried. the multi-journal support is solid too. one thing worth knowing: the map/location feature can be a bit finicky if you're adding location manually rather than letting it auto-tag on entry. but for personal + work journals with images it ticks all the boxes.
If you're down for trying a self-hosted option, Journiv is the best out there IMO. A lot of the features you're asking for is already there if not on the way. The developer is great and it's been seeing a lot of great features being introduced in recent times with more to come. One of the best ones recently was the Immich integration which i also use as another self-hosted option for your photos, but you can use any thing else of course. They do have native iOS and Android apps as well. All in all a great app and team, highly recommend it.
For journaling apps, I think import/export and trust matter almost as much as features. If someone has years of entries, local-first storage, clear sync behavior, and a reliable migration path become huge decision factors. Diarly and Diarium seem worth comparing closely since you already care about native apps and Day One import.
MacJournal 7
Checkout ZenJournal: - open and type, no creating new entry button, no mood surveys, prompts, titles, nor staring at a blank compose page - everything happens on a timeline, or multiple timelines - lock or unlock by double tap the timeline, so you can literally type in public while having your timeline still locked and hidden. - adjacent logs are grouped if typed within five mins, it’s like chatting with yourself, except no extra noise like profile image or chat bubbles. - iCloud sync, no account needed I couldn’t stand many of the DayOne like journals, eg: Journey, Apple Journal etc because there are too many taps and ceremonies before you can put your thoughts down, created this app 8 years ago, this year updated it to be Liquid Glass with iCloud sync and multi-timeline.
Why do people seem to love coordinates/location tracking for journal entries?
I find it useful as I like to see the places I visited like hotels and different restaurants. It’s also a flex to show people like yeah I journaled in every single European country how cool is that 😍