Journey is the best journal app available on Android today. It not only allows you to journal from you phone, but also gives you access to all of the bells and whistles on your tablet, or computer.
Best overall
Journey
See at Google Play
Journey manages to one up other journaling apps with a combination of great features and a beautiful presentation. You can make photo or written entries, geotag your entries, and even access the service from your computer. While you are making entries you can enable the app to log the weather, add a variety of media, and even whether you are participating in an activity when you ought to be journaling. It uses Material Design to make navigating through the app as easy as possible, and even writing from your phone is simple and easy to edit.
Bottom line: With accessibility without paying a dime, and easy intuitive use, Journey easily becomes the Journal app that all others ought to be measured against.
One more thing: Journey offers a premium mode which gets you access to even more features that make keeping a journal easy. These include access to Markdown, further aesthetic customization, the ability to see which device you last used the app on, and plenty more.
Why Journey is the best
The right features, and accessibility across devices is what makes Journey the best.
Being able to access your journal from any location is a huge benefit for anyone who wants to take control of their digital journal. After all, if you’re sitting at your computer, it’s far easier to type out a prolonged entry than it would be by using the keyboard on your phone. That’s one of the places that Journey really shines. It offers you access to your journal on tablet, phone, or computer.
While plenty of other journaling apps offer tons of great features, Journey is a complete package. As soon as you open the app you’ll see your last entry, and are immediately able to start a new one. When you’re writing up that new journal entry, there are a variety of ways to augment the text, using locations, tags, photos — anything, really. You can also let your device detect the local weather in your location, and import fitness data from your daily activities.
You get access to a calendar as well. It allows you to easily scroll through and see when you have updated your journal. This is just one of the ways that you can easily find old journal entries to go back over them. The second option for finding an entry you need to look back over is by searching with tags. Once you start to tag posts, they’ll pop up in your sidebar making it easy to track down anything that you need without a problem.
Journey also offers a Premium version. While the free version is excellent and gives you a great experience, Premium adds Markdown support for additional formatting, along with security features that let you see which device you used the app on last.
Best for media
Day Journal
See at Google Play
Day Journal: Personal Diary delivers a great journaling experience with an emphasis on media. When you are writing an entry, you’ll get a word count, and a number of features to help customize your entries. These include tagging, detecting local weather, location tags, and the ability to add how you are feeling. While there are more features like attaching photos, and looking at statistics, you’ll have to upgrade to the Pro version to access them.
Day Journal puts a serious emphasis on having media attached to your journal entries. That’s because the days of folding a snapshot into a paper journal are over for many people. By adding photos or audio to a specific entry you can remember that day more vividly. It’s a small feature that really does make a big difference for people who like to go back and relive their memories through a journal. Now that means more than just words, it means photos and audio clips as well.
Bottom line: Day Journal is a great app that places most of its best features behind a paywall. While it can get the job done, it doesn’t excel in any single area.
One more thing: If you do decide to pony up for those sweet Premium features you’ll be able to add media and audio to your entries, as well as checking out your writing statistics.
Best for Sync
Diaro
See at Google Play
Diaro aims to give you control as to how you organize everything in your digital journal. Each time you add an entry you’ll be able to select a folder and tags for it to live in. This is how they make it easy to go back and find a specific entry when you’re ready to look it over. There aren’t many options while you are writing entries you can add locations and photos. Diaro also gives you the option to enter a full screen mode which can make it easier to concentrate while you are writing.
Diaro also offers a Pro version of the app. The perks are pretty decent, too, with the added ability to export entries to PDF along with cloud sync using your Dropbox account. The Calendar will also help you look over recent entries by showing you the dates that you have journaled in the recent past. It uses Dropbox to store and sync your journal across devices, if you so choose.
That Dropbox sync option is no joke either. It stores your journal on Dropbox, and syncs quickly and effectively. This means that if you switch out phones, it’s a breeze to access your journal from a new device. It adds a layer of accessibility that just cannot be overstated. Nobody wants the hassle of trying to figure out how to transfer their journal when they upgrade devices, and with Dropbox support you won’t need to worry.
Bottom line: Diaro gives you a decent experience that will let you focus on your journaling without bogging you down in many features.
One more thing: The biggest perk of upgrading to Pro is the ability to link up with your Dropbox which allows you to backup and export your journal entries for better safe keeping.
Best for security
Penzu
See at Google Play
Penzu aims to offer you a stress free journaling experience. When you first get started you’ll create a new journal, and name it. This is where your entries will be stored. The free version is a very bare-bone approach to journaling: you’ll be able to write entries, add in photos, and make some tweaks to the format, but that’s about it. Penzu Pro gives you access to unlimited journals, custom journal covers, custom fonts, 256-bit encryption security, reminders to journal at specific times of the day and even more.
Penzu’s golden feature, and the one that might really grab your attention, is it’s security lock. A digital journal is harder to access than a normal one, and that lends itself to being more secure. Penzu takes the fact that your journal may well be where your most private thoughts are stored and aims to give you protection to make sure no one has eyes on it, unless you have given them access.
Bottom line: Penzu is all about simplicity, with a basic free version that pushes you to upgrade to a subscription.
One more thing: Penzu Pro is a monthly membership, but does give you access to fantastic features, not the least of which is the ability to securely lock your journal.
Conclusion
There are plenty of great journaling apps out there that make keeping a digital diary easy. Each one is a bit different and it offers different features to let it stand out in the crowd. However many journaling apps hide their best assets behind a paywall, and that’s where Journey truly stands out. It gives you tons of options and features for free, and if you decide to go Pro simply expands those options and features.
Best overall
Journey
See at Google Play
Journey manages to one up other journaling apps with a combination of great features and a beautiful presentation. You can make photo or written entries, geotag your entries, and even access the service from your computer. While you are making entries you can enable the app to log the weather, add a variety of media, and even whether you are participating in an activity when you ought to be journaling. It uses Material Design to make navigating through the app as easy as possible, and even writing from your phone is simple and easy to edit.
Bottom line: With accessibility without paying a dime, and easy intuitive use, Journey easily becomes the Journal app that all others ought to be measured against.
One more thing: Journey offers a premium mode which gets you access to even more features that make keeping a journal easy. These include access to Markdown, further aesthetic customization, the ability to see which device you last used the app on, and plenty more.
