Spending more time looking at a the various subscription I pay and looking for things to ditch. Can’t decide about DayOne.
@wilsongis funny - i never moved to the subscription - so for me it is free - and even then i can’t decide on whether to stick with it ... they seem to have lost the plot.
@JohnPhilpin I have far too much private writing in Day One to export to M.b. I haven’t had trouble with v2, but I wonder what alternatives exist…
@JohnPhilpin Same as @Bruce, what I write in the journal is kind of private, just for me. I am still searching for the best solution though that is not DayOne.
@JohnPhilpin @wilsongis Things did seem to start going astray with v2. The ‘we could look, but promise we won’t’ policy meant I couldn’t use it for work anymore, for example. It does seem to me that it’s a type of app that just isn’t suited to subscription, but maybe that’s just me.
Yes .. agree ... I was looking at it yesterday .. but I have a lot that could be public ... and it is pretty much organized into multiple journals ... and when you export to json it comes in folder collections .. so for public stuff ... easier ...
And the reason I have a lot of that kind of stuff in day one is that back then it did things I wanted that I couldn’t find to do as easily in other apps ....
Still thinking ... and not jet come up with a journal alternative. I did like day one ... but it has gone off the rails ... so don’t seem to be using it like I used to. And it might therefore fit into part of my consolidation purge.
In fact I might look at using blot to import. Haven’t yet explored that properly but he does support imports like that ... and then you have it all in Dropbox ... anything private ... move out of the blot folder.
It’s not the subscription it is how much they have changed it ... without being any better
@JohnPhilpin Yeah. I haven't found the answer yet for myself. But I feel like I want to move on from DayOne.
@JohnPhilpin @grayareas I was just looking at RedNotebook rednotebook.sourceforge.io/index.htm... Cross platform: Linux, Windows, Mac. Future proof: export TXT, HTML, PDF, Latex. Will sync via Dropbox and others. There is a nice 6 min video review on that site worth watching.
@JohnPhilpin I’ve not really been in it for a while, when I did it seemed they were pushing the monetisation of it. For me the issue was having to pay subscription when (as far as I could tell) I was reliant on them giving me my data. I really must make the effort to export it all and delete it from their servers.
@JohnPhilpin I'm really not seeing anything that will work better than Wordpress for me. The web based journals all have one or more fatal flaws (export format, etc.) or simply cost too much. I can get a Wordpress.com blog lock it down for free.
@grayareas Very few actually - I had heard about RedNotebook and Journaley, but neither fits my needs. And then there are few apps which try to fill the gap. But again, not really good enough. And hence the search is open.
@amit I’ve tried Momento and Grid Diary as DayOne replacements. I think both of those journaling apps are good in different ways, but I didn’t feel their writing environments were as pleasurable as DayOne’s — and that’s important to me. It’s always so difficult to find/create an app that’s “just so.” 🙌🏽 🤷🏼♂️
@grayareas Yes, I had tried out Grid diary for some time. But it looks too messy overall - over-designed for a simple journal use. I am currently trying out a simple app - Card Diary. It looks clean and simple. And a big plus is they claim they have no servers. So sync is all via iCloud. Looks promising.
@sumudu Yeah. I mainly wanted an iOS app. But with day one I was using it on Mac too. So I can see it would be a deal breaker for many.
@jemostrom 'lost the plot’, ‘no longer on course’ ... emerging from an observation that stuff they used to have in v1 still is not in v2, they spent more time thinking about subscription ( i am one of those NOT against subscriptions - I want developers to be rewarded) than enhancing the code, changes they have made seem to me to have made it harder to use .... etc
@JohnPhilpin My main annoyance with Day One at the moment is that in the latest version they seem to convert Markdown to styled text, and keep it that way. So you lose the Markdown. It may not matter all that much, but I find it annoying.
(See also WordPress’s new “Gutenberg” editor.)
@bradenslen just looked at redbook - thankyou ... not for me - primarily because it is a windows app that then means you are running some other code to make it run ... but on face of it great for those that want to do that and / or run on windows - that said a big bennie for me is that day one is multi platform - that is desktop and mobile
@devilgate @JohnPhilpin The upside is that there's no longer separate views for editing and viewing, which I like. I do wish their Text export used better Markdown. I don't need Markdown for my journal entries but the way Day One does the export is kinda-sorta like Markdown but not very useful.
@wilsongis About a month ago, I exported all my years of Day One data to a file and started using a daily document in DEVONthink instead. Of course, I also put the big export file in the same folder, making it all eminently searchable. I’m not looking back.
@jemostrom My reference to being reliant on them? It was just that I had no guarantee my data was safe, especially when they moved from JSON text to SQL (which I guess I might be able to interrogate, but certainly not as easily as plain text). I also seem to recall they updated DayOne 1 to stop export, forcing you through DayOne 2.
I probably just have a lower tolerance of some of these things though I do also share the view of many here that it has lost its way.
@wilsongis @amit @grayareas @sumudu @jemostrom @JohnPhilpin @devilgate @jack what about just using Apple Notes with password protection? FWIW, I really enjoyed the context around Day One entries, the photo support is great and the writing experience is so nice. I don't pay for it (maybe I was grandfathered in?) so I'm not as anxious to export, but this is a great discussion.
@bradbarrish So many options. I do like Notes (or Bear or whatever) but Day One is very good at adding a photo (or two) and a few sentences for an entry. And like you said, the context is nice. I export everything to text/HTML/and PDF monthly and put it into DEVONthink for search and safe-keeping. I like the "On this day" feature. I recently ordered my first printed book from Day One and while not perfect it was super quick and easy to make. I find it pleasant to use for the type of journaling I'm using it for. It's a subscription I can live with.
@jack yeah, I think where I'm at with Day One and Evernote for that matter, which I recently wrote up, is that I'm increasingly concerned about keeping everything in a single place or a couple of places (or apps) that allow me to effortlessly port my data elsewhere. For me, Day One really fits the bill for a private journal that is very well designed, thoughtful and actively developed.
@bradbarrish @wilsongis @amit @grayareas @sumudu @JohnPhilpin @devilgate @jack FWIW I'm a medium user of DayOne with some 5000 entries. While I was a bit suspicious when version 2 came it was not for the reason I've seen mentioned (might have missed it) - my main objection was the move to non-apple servers that are located in the US.
Another thing that I was a bit skeptical about, was the move to a database but after the first version there was an update that implemented JSON export with all data - including photos. This covered my requirement for portability.
I've tried several different type of journal apps (including writing my own) but I haven't found anything that fits me better than DayOne.
@JohnPhilpin I agree. Every software program seems to have some fatal flaw for me or won't run on both Linux and Windows and sync. And for some reason, I'm hesitating about totally web based solutions like penzu.com . There are Wordpress Journal plugins the downside is they effect the whole site so you need a unique WP instance. But I could do that and just keep WP locked down. Penzu and WP come the closest, other than that I'm striking out.
For just notes I have SimpleNote which works well.
@jemostrom @bradbarrish Did the introduction of end-to-end encryption for Day one mitigate your privacy concerns at all? I'm sure there are complaints about how they implemented it but for a personal journal I'm satisfied. It's not like I'm keeping state secrets in there...OR AM I? :)
@jack @bradbarrish Ah love/hate Day One. I’ve used it since v1 but stopped for awhile when v2 came out. I was very unhappy with their storage decisions. But I want/need to journal and returned when encryption was added. I think their export format is very concerning and I can’t see paying $25/year to have them further lock up my personal thoughts. It feels like other journal devs have ceded defeat to Day One.
@jack @jemostrom I don't have privacy concerns, really, though I do wish they would use iCloud if for no other reason than to reduce attack vectors. I don't have state secrets, but I have deeply personal stuff in Day One.
@bradbarrish I looked at their Export page just now and it seems they’ve improved the capability. I’ll have to experiment with it again. My previous concern was that a log of the meta data was lost in the export.
@JohnPhilpin It doesn’t directly; but it does a similar thing of converting Markdown when you add a post. I hope it’s not a trend.
@bradbarrish I seem to recall my biggest issue was that the text output had markdown headers for each entry, but put the weather/location data above the header, which didn't make sense to me. I could probably find a way to post-process the files but wish I didn't need to.
@bradbarrish First the bad news on Day One export: I tried exporting a small journal with some photos on macOS. It crashed every time no matter what format I chose.
Now for the good news: I could successfully export from my iPad. And the JSON export, at least at a glance, has the meta data included that I’d be interested in. So I’m feeling better about it.
I did a D1 export and one of my journals is now with David at Blot ... when I find out .. will report back how it went ... this particular import is a very public journal as an experiment.
@bradbarrish work : servers hosted by my department, private : my own domain hosted by a Swedish ISP. I do have gmail accounts but I rarely get/send any email there.
@bradbarrish another reason is that I think that gmail in itself isn’t a good service/app. Ironically I think search is pretty bad. Well, time to sleep
@wilsongis @JohnPhilpin @Bruce @amit @grayareas @jamescousins @bradenslen Did any of you come up with an alternative to DayOne? Looking for something with end-to-end encryption, tags, markdown, and iOS support... So far nothing checks all those boxes for me.
@jamescousins Unfortunately, the one-note-per-day aspect of Diarly is a pretty big limitation for me. You can only have more if each one is in a separate journal, which is awkward...
@kerim Nope, I tried many in between. Nothing worked as well as DayOne - which I just can't convince myself to use.
@amit @Bruce @wilsongis @jamescousins Thanks. I'm still using DayOne myself, but I'm on the Plus (legacy) plan for old users so stuck at the limit for the number of journals I can have… Diarly looks good, but one entry per day limit is a problem for me (even with timestamp markers).