Journal App for Windows: 5 Best to Use in 2024

A journal is one of the most useful personal development tools you can carry around. Not only does it provide a way to keep a day to day record of our lives, but also help us reminiscence treasured experiences, work through internal conflicts, and improve our self-awareness. Journal keeping apps come in handy when you want to record good moments but you don’t want to carry a notebook around. Life is a mystery and each day brings its own unique experiences. What a better way to keep a record of these moments other than to jot them in a digital journal.

Journaling is not a new idea. The practice has been around since the days of our founding fathers, only then it was limited to pen and paper. Thanks to the expansion of consumer technology, we can now keep a digital journal. Today, various apps exist that allow us to save our journal entries online, making it easy to access these entries from anywhere without the need of carrying a notebook. These journal keeping apps also come with digital features that let us tag and share moments with our friends instantly. In this article, we highlight the best 5 journal keeping apps.

Related: 6 Best Windows 10 Diary Apps

Best Journal Keeping apps

Penzu

Penzu is a powerful tool that allows you to easily keep all your journaling notes online. Penzu offers plenty of security features to ensure your private thoughts are protected from prying eyes. The service also offers mobile apps for Android, iOS, and Blackberry so you can journal on the go and access your account from anywhere. Each journal entry feels like you are writing in a notebook and the process is designed to feel more natural and less technical. You can customize the background using the various themes provided and also change the way pages look.

Penzu allows users to insert pictures, search for folder entries, add tags, and comment on entries. It also gives you the option to input a keyword for every entry in the tag box. This allows you to easily find the entry by keyword search the next time you want to access it. Security is the forte of this app. Penzu uses 256-bit AES encryption, which is the same as the military grade security system used by the US government. The basic service is free, although you can subscribe to the paid version ($19 per year) to access more advanced features. Penzu remains as one of the most robust journal keeping apps.

Microsoft OneNote

Microsoft OneNote is a sophisticated notetaking tool that can handle many tasks, making it a journaling tool that is far more reliable than its paper counterpart. If you like capturing moments, taking photos, and adding music to your journal entries, OneNote’s file integration system makes such journal keeping tricks easy and enjoyable. OneNote’s handwriting recognition and Windows mobile client makes it easy to record your journal entries even when on the go.

Unlike other digital journals, OneNote’s journal can incorporate a lot. Typed text, handwritten text, drawings, video recordings, audio recordings, and even doodles can all be added to the journal easily. In addition, you can access your OneNote journal on your PC, tablet or phone even when you are offline.

Related: OneNote for Windows 10 gets document and whiteboard scanning

Journey

Journey is a beautiful app for PC and mobile devices that takes journaling to a whole new level. As a cross-platform app, you can use it on Windows, Mac, Linux, and even on a Chromebook. The design is perfect and comes with an easy to use UI, customizable fonts, and a well-spaced interface. Journey gives you inspiring thoughts each day to help you start your day on a positive note. It allows you to add one photo to each entry, which is a good thing but also limiting. You can browse your entries by tags which is a decent way to organize them in chronological order.

The calendar is neat and gives you a preview of all the days you have updated the journal. There is even an built-in atlas that shows your location and the entries you made when in that spot. The Android app has a reminder system that you can set to remind you to update your journal at a selected time. One cool feature about Journal is its ability to work offline. You can make entries when offline and Journey syncs the data to its servers when you come back online.

Evernote

Evernote is a very popular application for capturing and organizing all sort of information, which makes it a tool of choice for keeping a daily journal. Evernote is available across multiple platforms and you can use it on Windows PC, iOS, and on Android devices. And since it’s a multifarious application, you can use it to perform many tasks. If you use Evernote as a personal journal, there are various options you can explore to make your journal entries search friendly. For instance, you can leverage the text recognition and create tags to make your journal entries easy to find. In addition to texts, you can also add audio clips and photos to make your notes less monotonous.

Related: Evernote app for Windows 10 PC improved with better navigation, search, and note categories

SomNote

SomNote is one of the most beautifully designed journal apps ever. Available for Windows PC, Macs, and mobile devices, Somnote offers all the basics you could want in a digital journal. You can add photos, tags, organize your journals easily with folders and even lock the app with a password. The interface is beautifully designed and you can customize it to match your preferences. Journals and attached files are automatically synced so you can easily access them on all your devices including PCs and Macs. It even allows you access automatically deleted notes from the trash once the backup mode is activated. Finding your journals is easy as you can either use keyword search or use one of the several sorting options available.

Keeping a personal journal is a great way to improve your writing skills, spill out your thoughts, worries, desires, and feelings on a paper. The very act of writing itself can help you visualize solutions to some of your most pressing problems. The world has evolved so much that we can now easily journal while on the go and even share some of our most treasured moments on social media.

Have you used any of these journal keeping apps? Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

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