Skip to content

Journal / Daily Notes

The Journal provides daily notes — automatically created pages for each day.

Opening the Journal

Click Journal in the sidebar or navigate to /journal.

At the top of the panel you'll find the date header with Previous/Next day arrows for quick navigation between entries. Click the date text to open a calendar popup for jumping to any specific date.

Mobile

Journal is fully available on mobile (Android/iOS and small browser viewports). All desktop controls are present:

  • Previous/Next day arrows at the top of the panel work exactly as on desktop.
  • The date header opens the calendar. On mobile the calendar renders as a full-screen dialog (rather than the desktop popup) to provide larger touch targets and focused navigation — this is an intentional, documented deviation; the calendar logic is shared.
  • The entry stack scrolls inside the panel; older entries load as you scroll, matching desktop behavior.
  • Row actions: each journal row (the in-place editors for today and past days) shows a single ⋮ action button pinned in the row's top-right corner (invisible except on the row itself; 40px touch target). It opens one menu with Insert (paragraph / heading 1–3 / code / mermaid / math) and Marker (TODO/DOING/DONE/NOW/LATER/WAITING/CANCELLED) options. The full-page editor (opened from a page, e.g. via search) keeps its two floating +/flag buttons instead — the journal intentionally uses the per-row button because floating FABs overflow the compact journal rows and overlap the date headers/text (bug fix t_1100de53).
  • Long-press a block to open the context menu (cut / copy / read aloud / delete), same as on desktop.

Parity screenshots: after (mobile), before (mobile), after (desktop), before (desktop).

How it Works

  • Each day gets its own page at journals/YYYY-MM-DD.md
  • The journal auto-opens to today's date
  • Multiple recent days are shown as stacked editors — scroll down to see previous entries, each loaded lazily as you scroll
  • Use the Previous/Next day arrows at the top of the panel to jump between dates
  • Click the date header to open the calendar popup for direct date navigation
  • Journal pages are normal .md files — they appear in search, graph, and backlinks
  • Journal content is always loaded from your current .md files — switching between the journal and other pages always shows the latest content, with no app restart required
  • If a journal page ever fails to load its content, use the Repair database action shown in the journal error state (or Settings → Developer → Repair DB from disk)

Calendar Navigation

The calendar popup gives you a visual overview of your journal activity. To open it, click the date text or calendar icon in the panel header.

  • Dates with entries are highlighted, so you can see at a glance which days have notes
  • Click any date to navigate directly to that day's journal
  • Previous/Next month arrows let you browse across months
  • Close the popup by clicking outside it or pressing Escape

The calendar works alongside the stacked editor view — opening a date scrolls the stack to show that entry, or creates a new one if it doesn't exist yet.

Creating Journal Entries

Journal pages are just block editors like any other page. Start typing to write:

# Standup

TODO Review PR #42
DOING Documentation rewrite
DONE Database migration

## Notes

Investigated the indexing performance issue.
Root cause: Tantivy segment merge scheduling.
See [[Indexing Performance]] for details.

Journal Workflow

Morning Pages

Use the journal for daily standups, morning pages, or free writing. Wiki-link to project pages for context:

Worked on [[Block Editor]] improvements.
Need to fix the drag-and-drop reordering for deeply nested blocks.

Meeting Notes

Create a journal entry during meetings, then link to detailed notes:

Met with team about [[Sprint 24 Planning]].
Key decisions: use [[Tantivy 0.22]] for search indexing.

Capture and Process

Use the journal to quickly capture thoughts, then process them into proper pages:

  1. Write freely in the journal
  2. Later, extract sections into dedicated pages
  3. Link back from the new page to the journal entry

Voice Capture (One-Tap)

On the journal panel you'll find a voice-capture control: a round microphone button (bottom-right on mobile) or a "Record voice memo" button in the header (desktop). It records straight into today's journal using the same dictation pipeline described in Voice Dictation:

  1. Tap to record — a timer shows the recording duration.
  2. Tap again to stop & save (or cancel to discard) — the memo is transcribed, summarized, and inserted at the end of today's journal as a structured voice memo.
  3. If transcription can't be reached, the recording is never lost: a placeholder block referencing the saved clip is inserted and a Retry transcription action is shown.
  4. If no transcription endpoint is configured, the recording is still saved and a Configure STT prompt links you to Settings → AI.

The one-tap button can be disabled (or re-enabled) under Settings → AI → Voice-Capture Button (the AI accordion on mobile).

Journal File Format

Journal pages follow the same format as all other pages — plain Markdown with optional frontmatter:

---
title: 2026-06-22
tags: [journal]
---

# 2026-06-22

Content...

Tips

  • Use tags like #standup or #meeting in journal entries for easy searching
  • The journal is great for temporary notes that don't need their own page yet
  • Old journals are automatically indexed and searchable