Day One App (and Life Journal for Windows users)

I started using the Day One App a while back and really wanted to develop the habit of creating journal entries of daily reflections, random thoughts, my feelings, interesting pictures I took, milestones in my life and/or career, etc. And it has been a very useful tool for those things.

There are of course many ways in which the app can be used. I use it to suit my needs – which can sometimes be all over the place. To remind myself to pen a few words from time to time, I have set up 4 reminders – 9am, 1pm, 5pm and 9pm – so that I can do quick point in time notes in case I have been pre-occupied with other things. I use the 9am and 9pm reminders to write my gratitude entry and reflection entry respectively. The Day One app also lets you publish some of your journal entries via their Publish web site.

Day One has come out with v2 with support for multiple journals and multiple images per entry. But they have also made the move to proprietary sync with their own servers, dropping Dropbox (and iCloud) sync support. For me the functionality updates are not big enough and the loss of Dropbox sync is a huge issue (I like to keep my journal data close). As such, I still continue to use Day One Classic (and have not yet made the jump to the new Day One v2). A lot of other people are similarly worried about aspects such as data security, lack of Dropbox sync and lock-in.

Life Journal – A Windows client for Day One:

One of the things I really wanted was a journal application that could work on my Windows desktop PC. Today, Day One only works on iOS and Mac (both have to be purchased separately). If you want to use Day One on your desktop Windows PC, you are essentially out of luck. I spend a lot of time in front of a Windows PC and wanted to have a tool to maintain my journal – especially when creating verbose entries (which is hard to do on the phone).

I now use Life Journal – which lets me use the app on a Windows desktop PC. Life Journal is a journal app for Windows that allows me to both read and create entries that are fully compatible with Day One (entries I create in Day One can be read and edited by Life Journal and vice versa). It lets me maintain continuity of my Day One journal on my PC (via Dropbox sync). It is a simple, beautiful, yet powerful and full featured application. It is also encrypted by default to keep your journal private. Best of all, I get to control what happens with my data.

Very responsive support team and always looking to improve the product – I highly recommend giving it a try.

If you like to maintain a physical journal (especially a gratitude journal), I would highly recommend the Five Minute Journal by IntelligentChange. If you are looking for a cheaper alternative, the folks over at Beautiful Life Apps have created an Adapted Five Minute Journal Template (PDF) that can be purchased and printed at home to create your own gratitude journal.

(Some images of the Life Journal software below from the Beautiful Life Apps website)

A beautiful journal interface

Set it up to your liking

Multiple skins to make it your own

View image information

View the location on a map

I love Day One and Life Journal – and find them to be useful tools to aid my journaling workflow and document things that I would otherwise experience and forget. Having access to a journaling tool on iOS and on a Windows PC means I can journal whenever I want, with the device I am most comfortable with. Which increases the chances that I *will* journal – and that is what is important to me…

How do you use Day One? Do you use Life Journal?