Show HN: Minimalist offline journal app with a chat interface

Why make another journaling app when there are so many other Day One look-alikes? Because it’s unique in the following ways:

- Offline only, no cloud, no tracking

- Easy to export to JSON (you own your data)

- Minimalism design taken to it’s logical conclusion

- Open and type, no step 2

- Type “?” to search, no step 2

- Type “#” to use hashtag to organize

- Double-tap timeline to hide and keep logging in discreet

- Pull up the timeline to see a 100 day GitHub like heatmap

Also it tries to avoid the following anti-features:

- journal titles (my pet peeves, way too much info up front)

- Sparse timeline with main/detail layout that forces you to drill down to see your full journal entry

- Notifications/reminders

I try to expand the answer in this post too: https://thezenjournal.com/why

Feedback and suggestions welcomed. Thank you!

[1]: https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/1303812935773556736

I personally a) dislike writing _anything_ on touch screens b) live in the terminal anyway. So I wrote a script called "n" that appends a timestamp to a text file, then: If there are command line arguments, it appends them to the file verbatim and exits. Else it opens vim, in edit mode just under the timestamp. For example:

  # n 'Hello, world!' # Writes a quick timestamped note and exits.
  # n # Adds timestamp, opens vim. For bigger notes.

Here's my scripts. I think I got the idea on HN somewhere, if it was you, feel free to set the record straight. Also I'm bad at shell scripts, so any suggestions welcome.

~/bin/n (add note):

  #! /usr/bin/env bash
  cd ~
  echo >> notes.txt
  echo -n '# ' >> notes.txt
  date '+%a %d %b %Y %T %Z' | tr -d "\n" >> notes.txt
  echo ' #' >> notes.txt
  if [[ $# -ne 0 ]]; then
    echo $@ >> notes.txt
    tail notes.txt
  else
    vim "+normal Go" +startinsert notes.txt
  fi

  #! /usr/bin/env bash
  less +G ~/notes.txt

  #! /usr/bin/env bash
  vim "+normal G" ~/notes.txt

Edit: After playing around with the app, I see that the backup is a zip with a json file and images. That is great for archival.

I found that my personal favorite solution so far is actually a chatroom with just myself in KakaoTalk. It also has the extremely simple input, which is critical to make sure capture and journaling actually happens, and fast search using substrings and tags, which make recall simple.

EDIT: Also, automatically timestamped input! Which puts both your app and my solution a step above a plaintext file

It's not without its warts, which your app does away with. However, I personally find the ability to post photos, videos, and audio recordings very useful, and for that reason will likely stick to my existing solution for now. Regardless, it's really great to find others share similar values in journaling, and I'll be following closely! Thank you!

Then I realised that form in the middle of the page was just an image. I also thought the light/dark mode toggle in the middle was real as well.

Good luck, we need privacy oriented tools!

One small thing that got me confused. Typing ? in my SO's Android (MS SwiftKey) automatically adds a space after it: "? ". No idea why it does that, but it stops search from working. Maybe skip leading whitespace?

Show HN: ZenJournal – Fast journal app with chat interface - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21876939 - Dec 2019 (25 comments)

(Reposts are ok after a year or so: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html. Links like this are just for readers who may be curious for more.)

Also I want to keep a few different "threads". I guess the workaround is the hashtags.

Today however it seems like something I can definitely use.

I've been thinking in the same direction a few times (I.e. a personal Twitter) but never came around to it and always fell back to saved messages on Telegram.

Now however this seems to have become what I want.

We'll see, I might still fall back to Telegram but I have at least signed up for the trial without immediately unsubscribing like I usually do; the service is that promising and the price is that good.

Are there apps for this?

general note-taking and text editing has been well-solved for decades now

though I do respect the attraction of trying to reinvent and monetize the wheel