Hello everyone!

TL;DR:
Journiv is a a beautiful, self-hosted, privacy-first journaling app with mood tracking, daily prompts, and meaningful insights. The mission is simple: your memories should always stay yours. Own them, don’t rent them.

Journiv 0.1.0-beta.4 is now live on GitHub and fully Docker-hostable.
Start owning your thoughts and memories forever and keep them completely private.

The Story Behind Journiv

I got into self-hosting last year and while exploring options journaling solution, I realized there wasn’t a truly modern, self-hosted equivalent to Day One or Apple Journal. Most alternatives were either general note apps or old abandoned projects.

I wanted something focused on journaling with:

  • “On This Day” memories
  • Prompt-based journaling
  • A clean, minimal, distraction-free writing experience

So… I built my own: Journiv, a beautiful (at least I am trying to make it so), self-hosted, privacy-first journaling app with mood tracking, daily prompts, and meaningful insights.

Get Involved

Give Journiv a try, share your feedback and report issues. It means a lot at this stage.

  • Cris@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    4 hours ago

    This looks fantastic! will it possible to use purely locally as just an android app in the future?

    I think for a lot of folks it might be nice to have the option to just eschew self hosting for synchronization and just use local storage, and then have a route to expanding and adding muti device ability should they go set up a server ☺️

    • rockstar1215@lemmy.worldOP
      1·
      4 hours ago

      Thank you. Yes, desktop native app, mobile apps. All are planned and will come. Cross platform support was important to so people can run it on all platform. Hence the frontend is in Flutter which for most part is cross platform.

      Although this so far have been hundreds of hours of work and there is much more upcoming to build it so as of now I am trying to make this project sustainable so I can continue working on it and it develops to the shape I want it to be.

      Stay tuned!

  • Libb@piefed.socialEnglish
    4·
    12 hours ago

    Hi,

    Based on the screenshots and your description, it looks nice and it certainly is an app many people would like to use. I also like that it is both an app and a selfhosted web-thingy (making it available anywhere while being fully private)

    Give Journiv a try, share your feedback and report issues. It means a lot at this stage.

    As the admin of the !journaling@sh.itjust.works community, as someone who has been journaling for almost 50 years now, and as someone that was also heavy into digital journaling (I have probably used most digital tools one can imagine, and was also a DO user since it was first introduced years before it became sub-based) that have quit using digital journaling years ago out of privacy concerns, I would love to try your app and give you some feedback if I can, and to share my experience using it with our little journaling community.

    Alas, I’m also not that much of a geek and, reading the Docker guide, I did not even manage to understand how I was supposed to install the ‘Docker Compose’ and/or the ‘Docker Desktop’ parts of the install process. So, well, I’m kinda stuck at what most people would consider a rather early stage ;)

    Would you happen to know any noob-friendly intro and an install guide for that Docker thingy, beside its official doc? Or is there another way to install it?

    • rockstar1215@lemmy.worldOP
      3·
      12 hours ago

      Yes definitely. This is a very good feedback. Its surprising how being a developer and self hosted enthusiast who is neck deep on hosting everything of my own I completely forgot that there will be people who will like to use this and not know about docker and all the stuff (very common thing in self hosted community).

      I would love to guide you through installing and using the application and your experienced feedback would definitely be very helpful in improving the app.

      Are you on discord? Then you can join Journiv’s community discord server https://discord.com/invite/CuEJ8qft46 if you aren’t then just send me a message here.

  • nullroot@lemmy.world
    4·
    14 hours ago

    I’ve never been one to journal but it looks really cool. Thank you for taking the initiative!

  • vort3@lemmy.ml
    1·
    12 hours ago

    I’m probably blind or something, but I don’t see a list of supported platforms anywhere on the website and in readme on github, also no “downlaods” page or section. It says it’s cross platform, but does it actually have a desktop version (windows/linux) or is it just a browser SPA, and does it have a dedicated android app?

    Sorry don’t mean to be rude, I really wish it has a linux native app and an android app, hopefully in f-droid, if yes then it’s perfect, but for now it’s not clear to me.

    • rockstar1215@lemmy.worldOP
      2·
      12 hours ago

      No not rude at all :) All this is a good feedback. If the lack of documentation confused you then I am sure there are many others who will get confused for the same thing. It is definitely something I should improve upon so everyone can understand the project and use it if they want to.

      Cross platform for various reasons. There are two parts to Journiv

      1. Backend: This is what you run on your local machine (ideally a small server/nas) which can run docker. You can run it on any machine.
      2. Frontend: As of now this is a web app which you can run any where. The frontend of Journiv is in flutter which is cross platform and allow native desktop and mobile apps. Mobile apps will be launched soon.

      Can I ask if you have ran/used docker before?

      • vort3@lemmy.ml
        2·
        12 hours ago

        I did run docker, specifically the portainer interface, not just the docker itself. While it’s nice and easy to use, I felt like docker obscures things behind some abstractions, for example my native services store data simply as directories and files somewhere under /srv, while docker containers keep data somewhere in docker’s directory as some storage objects with randomly generated names.

        I also completely lost control of my firewall, for example if I can just run iptables and see exactly which ports do what, I can easily read and understand line by line each firewall rule, when I use docker containers it’s all some gibberish to me, ports get opened and closed and mapped to container ports (I guess) without me ever touching iptables, and I have no idea what is happening with my server anymore.

        So yes, I tried portainer and dropped it, if you do native packages and an android app in f-droid, let me know, I really like your project so far. I can even stand the docker thingy, but we need an android app with proper sync and caching, because not everyone has internet connection 24/7. We may want to run an app, sync with backend, then add entries during a flight. Browser won’t solve this.

        • rockstar1215@lemmy.worldOP
          1·
          11 hours ago

          Understood about docker. Yes, those are planned and on roadmap. Apps will be coming soon. But software takes effort and time and just to get it here I have put in hundreds of hours and there is much more to build. Currently my focus is to make the project sustainable so I can continue developing it.

          Thanks.

          • vort3@lemmy.ml
            1·
            11 hours ago

            What exactly do you mean by “sustainable”, paid/premium features? Ads? Subscription plans for users that ask you to host the server instead of self-hosting themselves?

            Yes I understand FOSS is a lot of time and effort, thank you :-)