Many journal software are available for Mac users. Among them, I found four software that have good reputation and decent updates history. They are Day One, MacJournal, viJournal and Chronories. Although all of these software can be used to record journal, each of them take a different approach to journal writing. Day One is the simplest one. Macjournal and Vijournal are in between. Chronories records almost everything what is done on your Mac including writing journal.
Day one is a journal software for Mac and iPhone and iPad. What sets the software apart from other competitors is the simple interface. You simply touch or click plus button and start writing your journal entry. There is no ability to insert multimedia files like photo, audio or video files. (Although the developer promised that the feature of multimedia attachment would be added in the near future, I personally think it is not a desirable direction for Day One.) The beauty of Day One is the simple and uncluttered interface that helps you to focus on the journal writing itself. As you have no other thing to do with the software, you just write your journal and focus on the content. Day One’s strength still unmatched by other journaling software is a seamless synchronization of journal data on Mac, iPhone and iPad. Whatever you write on one device is immediately synced with other devices through dropbox or icloud.
I first began to write my diary on Mac using Macjournal, which is also a great software to be covered in this post, and after a while, found Day One for iPhone and Mac. For some time, I used both of them to keep my journal but in the end, Day One became my main journaling software. It is not just because Day One is better than MacJournal in every aspect but mainly because I don’t find the need to add photos or other multimedia files into my journal and also I like the convenience of being able to write my journal anytime or anywhere I want using iPhone, iPad and Mac thanks to the excellent sync ability. I think Day One’s strength shines when it is used as a combination of IOS devices and Mac. Mac version of Day One costs $9.99 and IOS version that supports both iPhone and iPad costs $1.99.
2. MacJournal and viJournal
MacJournal seems to be by far the most famous journaling software for Mac. If you want your journal to include not just bare texts but photos, music, videos and other features such as blogging tool, MacJournal is the software to try. The most recent update, Macjournal 6 also features timeline that shows your journal entries on a horizontal timeline. I covered Macjournal 6 in my previous post. Check it out for more details on the software. As written above, MacJournal was my first journal software for Mac and I used it for some months with no problem. But I found out that I am not much of a multimedia guy when it comes to journal writing and began to Day One as a main journaling tool. I still think MacJournal is a great software but you should ask yourself what kind of journal you want to write before making a buying decision.
viJournal is similar to Macjournal in many ways. It handles multimedia files. ViJournal also can be used for blogging like MacJournal. One thing I almost forgot to mention is that both of the software have corresponding iPhone apps. However, based on some available user reviews on the appstore for each software, I had an impression that their syncing ability is still not as satisfactory as that of Day One. MacJournal costs $39.95 and viJOurnal costs $26.95.
Chronories, as a journaling software, seems to be sitting at the opposite extreme from the simplistic Day One. This software, even without your intervention, records activity logs of your Mac computer such as music played, emails correspondence, websites surfing history. It also automatically records weather, top news headlines. This means, even if you don’t write your daily entry, it can fill it up and write your journal for the day. Although I am not much intrigued by the idea of filling journal with entries composed of computer usage statistics, there must be people who like it. Chronories costs $29.99.