As regular readers of this blog may know, I’m perpetually looking for an offline diary to keep. The problem doesn’t seem to be the lack of apps available, though I find fault with each of them. Rather, it seems to be the lack of commitment to actually keeping a daily journal.
That being said, I’ve tried a lot of apps. Until very recently, the iOS app Day One was by far my favorite. Now, it seems to have gotten a strong competitor in Diarium.
Diarium was originally developed as a Windows 10 app. This was before I had a Windows 10 computer. At some point roughly three years ago, they however launched the iOS app. It was still far from ideal at the time. If I remember correctly, most buttons weren’t labeled and there was no timeline view.
In the current iOS version, the tabs in the bottom right corner allow you to switch between timeline, calendar, search, map and tags. I really love this.
In the top left corner of the screen is the button to add an entry. This will open a calendar with an ability to pick the date. Diarium, though it does seem to support multiple entries per day, does not automatically include the timestamp. Rather, you have to click a button while typing your entry to insert it. You can also add images (not sure if you can add just one image per entry or multiple), audio or files.
Also in the top left corner are buttons to sync your diary with OneDrive, iCloud Drive, Google Drive, WebDav or Dropbox. This is a paid feature, but the positive about Diarium’s paid plan as opposed to for example Day One’s, is that it’s €5,99 (if I’m correct) and is a one-time purchase rather than the €37,99 per year for Day One. To Day One’s credit, it does offer more features.
I have Diarium on both my iPhone and Windows 10 PC now. At first, I had no clue how to use the Windows 10 app, because it doesn’t work like Word or Notepad or any of the older Windows programs at all. For example, Alt or Shift+F10 doesn’t work to open a menu at all (there doesn’t seem to be a menu). I’m still figuring things out a little, but it seems most buttons at least are clearly labeled. When I tap the button to add an entry though, I have yet to figure out how to get back to my diary without closing and relaunching the entire app.
Diarium allows integration with several services, including your weather app, Twitter, Facebook and Fitbit. I so far only have integration set up with the iPhone’s weather app and Fitbit. I love how that way, my daily step count is included with each day’s entry. Unlike apps like Momento, Diarium as far as I know doesn’t create separate entries for your integrations, but rather includes them on each day’s main entry. This may be both a drawback and an advantage depending on your perspective.
There are two things I find slightly annoying about Diarium. The first is the fact that each entry is auto-titled something like “Dear diary” and auto-formatted to start with “Today I …”. It does look like you can delete or ignore this though. The other thing is the fact that, despite the fact that I turned it off in settings, my entire entries are still shown in the timeline. This might be a bug, so I’m going to contact the developer about this.
Overall, I really like Diarium. If, like me, you’ve been using Day One and would like to migrate, there’s an easy way to do that by exporting your Day One journal into a .Zip file and importing it into Diarium. Some of the preformatted stuff from Day One looks weird in Diarium, but it’s still readable.
This sound fab! I will definitely check it out! ❤
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Awesome, I’m so glad I inspired you.
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Going to download it right now to my phone and see what I think of this 💖💖
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Great. If you need any help getting started, just send me an E-mail and I’ll try to walk you through it.
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Thanks, I can’t seem to find it in the App Store not sure if I’m spelling it correctly
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Oh, that’s strange. I’ll try to locate it in the App Store now, but since I have it on my iPhone and it was very recently updated, I’m pretty sure it should be there.
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I tried spelling it the way that you spelt it in the review but nothing is coming up all sorts of other journals are coming up but not that one
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Oh crap, yes, you’re right, it isn’t showing on my end either. I’ll write the developer now to ask him about it.
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Cool, let me know what you find out 🥰
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I just located the app via a workaround I think and E-mailed the link to you. I also did E-mail the developer about its apparent disappearance from the app store.
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Okay thanks I appreciate it
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That was a good review! The auto-titling thing would be a real pain.
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Yes, it’s a bit annoying indeed. Thank you for commenting.
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Not sure about iOS, but in Windows and Android at least there’s an “Entry Headings” option for switching off the titles.
Also, on Windows, the back arrow in the top left of the window title bar can be used to get from an entry back to the timeline or calendar. Took me a while to spot as well.
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Thanks so much for this bit of info! I’ll try this out soon.
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Your computer knowleges , amaze me, Astrid !
Love 3<
Michel
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Oh, thank you for saying that!
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