a day one alternative

shizumu is a private writing app, and a day one alternative for people who want to journal on windows or linux, with the writing on their own device. it is free, it runs natively on both, and android is in a closed test on google play.

the pins view in shizumu: each pin kept on a trail, with its title and the line of the page it points back to the pins view in shizumu: each pin kept on a trail, with its title and the line of the page it points back to

day one on windows, or on android

most people searching for day one on windows want the same daily writing on a pc. day one is built for apple devices and also has an android app; it has no native windows or linux app. shizumu installs on windows from a setup exe and on linux from flathub (x86_64 and arm64). on android it is a closed test on google play: the android page is where you ask to join. mac is a beta download and iphone is a testflight beta, so if every device you own is apple, day one still fits better.

how the two behave

day one is a journal with an account. it keeps your entries in its cloud, offers prompts and a daily reminder, and sells the sync and the extras as a subscription. that suits a lot of people.

shizumu is a page. the writing is a database on your device, and it goes nowhere unless you turn sync on. sync is optional and end-to-end encrypted: the relay holds what it cannot read, and neither can we. hosted sync is free on two devices, and your own relay is free on every device (pricing). the source is on github, apache-2.0 on the client and agpl-3.0-or-later on the relay, which is what people looking for an open source day one alternative usually ask first.

who it fits, and who it doesn't

people who came to day one for the nudges, the photos and the map of where they wrote tend to miss them. every day here starts on an empty page, and the app does not ask how you feel or whether you wrote yesterday. people who came for a place to think tend not to miss the rest.

what a page does instead

you write to think. when something turns out to matter, you pin it, and the pin points back into the page it came from. a trail is for a project, not a day: a book, a job search, anything you'll come back to tomorrow. choose a trail and the page picks up context: the pins you already kept there, already on the page. everything else lives in memory: search it, or open one trail, one date, pages, or pins. among the day one alternatives people list on reddit, that is the thing to check: whether the app has a way back to what mattered, or only a calendar of everything.

what moves across

a day one journal alternative has to answer for the years of entries. day one can export them, and the text pastes onto a page here, with pasted markdown keeping its headings and lists as blocks. the words move; the photos, locations and prompts do not come along on their own. if you leave shizumu later, every page exports as a markdown file into a folder you choose, and settings can make a full backup of the database.

try before you move

the whole app runs in your browser with a few weeks of writing already in it: try it. if a day one alternative has to earn the switch, that is the fastest way to find out. also worth a look: a penzu alternative.

what holds on every platform

shizumu is free, on linux, android, and windows. your writing stays on your device. sync is optional and end-to-end encrypted: the relay holds what it cannot read, and neither can we. the app and the relay are open source: apache-2.0 on the client, agpl-3.0-or-later on the relay.

it will not write for you, because the writing is the thinking.

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