Keeping a diary of your daily life is an activity that is held dear by many people. It represents a good way of storing personal or business information on a day-to-day-basis. Keep track of notes and thoughts through the day, organize and secure memories, ideas, business transactions, emails, accounts, future plans, contact lists, and even secret information.
This article identifies flexible and useful diary tools for the Linux desktop. With features like tag support, encryption, multiple journals, and live searches, Linux diary software makes it easier to keep track of events as they occur.
To provide an insight into the quality of software that is available, we have compiled a list of high quality Linux diary / journal software. Hopefully, there will be something of interest for anyone who wishes to organize their daily life.
Here’s our verdict captured in a legendary LinuxLinks-style chart. Only free and open source software is eligible for inclusion.
Let’s explore the 14 diary tools at hand. For each title we have compiled its own portal page, a full description with an in-depth analysis of its features, together with links to relevant resources.
| Diary Apps | |
|---|---|
| RedNotebook | Daily journal with calendar, templates and keyword searching |
| Lifeograph | Off-line and private journal and note taking application |
| Kontact | Unites mature and proven applications |
| moodiary | Cross-platform diary application |
| jrnl | Simple journal application for your command line |
| Caps-Log | Terminal-based journaling tool |
| Mini Diarium | Local-only journaling application |
| TUI-Journal | Terminal-based journaling and note-taking application |
| Org mode | Powerful system for organizing projects, tasks and notes in Emacs |
| ThotKeeper | Cross-platform and hierarchical personal journal manager |
| Almanah Diary | Small diary application |
| Simple Diary | Simple and lightweight diary app |
| Journaler | Privacy-focused daily journaling app for recording personal thoughts |
| Daily You | Privacy-focused diary and journaling application |
This article has been updated to reflect the changes outlined in our recent announcement.
 Explore our carefully curated directory of recommended free and open source software, covering every major software category.The directory forms part of our extensive collection of articles for Linux enthusiasts. It includes hundreds of detailed reviews, together with free and open source alternatives to proprietary software from companies such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk. LinuxLinks also covers interesting projects worth exploring, Linux-compatible hardware, free programming books and tutorials, and much more. Know a useful free and open source Linux application that we haven’t covered? Tell us about it using our submission form. |
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Zim Desktop should be here!
Definitely awesome software!
We agree that Zim is awesome software. It’s recommended in our Notes round up.
No love for HAZAMA?
The purpose is to select the best options, not to list everything. Hazama does not, in our opinion, currently warrant inclusion.
No update for 6 years, software is dead.
RedNotebook – Free for Windows, not for Linux. Inserting $0 does not allow a download.
RedNoteBook is free for Linux, just scroll down to the Download section where you can download the Flatpak, Ubuntu PPA, and the source code.
Agreed. I used it for years. Currently I’m using Lifeograph, but having lost some of my recent entries I’m becoming a little fed up.