JourNote

JourNote is a proof of concept journal app with a text user interface and a couple of goals:

• to illustrate creating a minimal app of this type (in Python);
• to explore the use of dialog for a day-to-day tool of moderate complexity.

The name is pronounced like in French.

As of January 2026, JourNote is back after a hiatus; documentation is only now catching up. See inside the archive for an introduction.

Download

• JourNote v2.1 (84K)
• source code repository

JourNote runs on Haiku; it's packaged as part of Michel's Haiku apps as of 2025.

Requirements

• Python 3.5 or newer
• dialog (tested with v1.3)
• [optional] grep (for the search feature)

Features

• Use external editor if set, else the dialog edit box.
• Works in any given directory (current one by default).
• Create journal files by day, week or month.
• Pick file extension for journal files (plain text / Markdown).
• Configurable number of entries in listings.

To do

• ✅ Improve workflow for Recent and Search.
• ✅ Command-line options.
• ✅ Man page.

License and contact

JourNote is open source under the MIT License. See inside the archive for details.

You can usually find me on IRC, in the #ctrl-c channel of tilde.chat, or else on Mastodon. Would love to hear from you.

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