Diurnal: Daily Journal & Diary

Diurnal is a private place to write your life down.

Some days you want to write a page. Some days a photo and three words is
all you have. Diurnal is built for both, and it never nags you about the
difference. The whole app is free.

WRITE HOWEVER THE DAY GOES
Add photos, video, voice recordings, PDFs, and sketches you draw by hand.
There is no limit on how much you attach on your own device. Place images
inside the writing where they belong, not stacked at the top. Tag entries,
set a mood from fifteen, sort them into notebooks, and keep the place you
were.

FOCUS, OR JUST TALK
Zen mode clears everything but the page. Or dictate, and the words appear
as you speak. Stuck on what to say? Open the prompts and pick one, whether
you need to get thoughts out, work through a choice, let pressure out, or
pick up something unfinished.

ENTRIES WORTH REREADING
Your writing is set like a page from a book. A drop cap opens the entry,
the text sets in a proper column, and the date, time and place are
recorded without you typing any of it.

KEEP IT, HIDE IT, OR LET IT GO
Not everything you write is meant to be filed away forever. Hide an entry
and it stays out of your feed until you want it back. Lock one until a
date you choose, a letter to whoever you will be by then. Or open release
mode, which saves nothing at all. Write it, let it go, and it is gone.

YOUR JOURNAL STAYS YOURS
Entries are encrypted on your device and you hold the recovery key. Lock
the app behind your fingerprint, your face, or a passcode, and hide its
contents from screenshots and the app switcher. Diurnal collects no
personal data and works completely offline, so nothing has to leave your
phone for you to write.

NO AI
Nothing you write is read by a model, summarised, or used for training.
There is no AI in Diurnal.

COMING FROM ANOTHER APP
Bring your old journal with you, with your photos and original dates
intact. Diurnal imports from Day One, Journey, Daylio, Diaro, Diarium,
Stoic, Obsidian, Joplin and others, so years of writing are not left
behind.

YOURS TO TAKE, ALWAYS
Export everything whenever you want. Take it as a PDF to keep or print,
as a web page you can open in any browser, or as plain files that will
still work in ten years. Exporting is never locked behind a payment.
Your journal is not held hostage.

BACK UP TO YOUR OWN GOOGLE DRIVE
Optional, and it goes to your private app folder on your Drive, not to
our servers. Turn it off and Diurnal stays entirely on your device.

FIND ANYTHING AGAIN
Search every word you have ever written, then narrow by tag, place, mood,
notebook or date. Or just the entries with audio in them. Browse by
calendar, or open the map and tap a place to bring back what you wrote
there, photos and all.

SEE THE SHAPE OF YOUR YEAR
Consistency, streaks, total words, moods over time, your most used tags,
monthly activity, and the hours you tend to write. Diurnal even works out
your patterns, like the fact that you mostly write in the evening. All of
it calculated on your phone.

A DIARY THAT IS NOT ONE LONG SCROLL
Your home screen is arranged in shelves you control. Photo stories, audio
stories, video stories, quick thoughts. Show the ones you use, hide the
ones you do not, in the order that suits you. Light and dark themes
included.

REMINDERS THAT FIT YOUR LIFE
Pick a time that suits you and Diurnal will quietly remind you.

DIURNAL PRO
An optional subscription. Everything described above is free.

WRITE FROM YOUR HOME SCREEN
Put Quick Entry on your home screen and catch a thought without opening
anything. One tap, type the line, done. It offers a prompt when you are
not sure where to start. The thoughts you lose are the ones that needed
three taps to record.

WRITE FROM A KEYBOARD
Some entries want more than a phone. The Diurnal web writer opens in any
browser, with the same notebooks, moods and places as the app, and sends
what you write straight through to your journal.