Ask HN: What tool do you use for journaling? Privacy vs. availability tradeoff? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What tool do you use for journaling? Privacy vs. availability tradeoff?

5 pointsmancerayder10 comments

There are a number of search results for threads about journaling ...

..but these days, what do you use for your own ?

I admit I'm a little stuck in between using a cloud service and then being worried about someone reading it one day somehow, and a local .txt type of thing where I have to encrypt and sync it somewhere off the machine. Also, it'd be nice to have phone availability.

I'm curious what others do, or maybe if you're just less paranoid than I am.

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I use Joplin and pay for the basic plan ~$2 a month.

Pros

— You don't have to pay anything. You can sync to your system and still have encrypted notes.

— Can switch between Markdown and rich text

— Web Clipper is fantastic for storing full website copies as reference material

— Can sync between mobile, desktop, etc

— Works with various OS's

Cons

— Printing crashes the desktop app on PopOS!. I have not reported this as it does not affect me that often.

—— The print crash does not affect OSX

— The mobile app can be a bit slow to start on older iPhones (several years old)

Overall, I view Joplin as similar to Apple notes, with a bit more control, ease of export, and benefits of Markdown.

My use case is journaling, work, and the first cut of writing that I publish.

Obsidian. It's the dogs nuts. Choose your own storage.

And their own excellent sync service is client side encrypted with separate passwords from your account credentials!

Best notes tool I’ve ever used.

I use WikidPad, and was looking forward to continuing to use it when I shifted from Windows 10 to Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, but it doesn't work due to Python breakage. I switched back to Windows 10 as a result.

It still works well on Windows, though. 8)

I am not very paranoid about what I write, but my setup might work for someone who is.

I rent a VPS from one of the providers. I use this machine for many things, like running WireGuard.

I also use it as my development platform, as I work in a tmux session over SSH.

Anyway, I use a ".txt" style on there. It has backups already.

Phone availability is not a priority for me, though.

Standard Notes. End to end encryption with mobile / web / desktop apps.

I have a simple private GitHub repository where I take notes, journal, etc. in a series of .txt files.

I have separate work and personal laptops, so I just push and pull from the repo.

Maybe not what you're looking for, but that's what I use.

been using monkkee since 2019. It was (and probably still is) the best option to get started without any efforts for setup and also good security.

https://www.monkkee.com/en/

On a .txt file in my computer. Apple notes is good too, but I don’t sync.

Also Notes, encrypted and shared between all my Apple devices.

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