A Journal in Orgmode? Yes Journelly!

For those that know of its existence the combined power of emacs & org mode for everything from simple note taking to complex journal writing, website creation, literate programming and more simply makes it an indispensable tool but its very power comes from its roots which means it is desktop centric and although a lot of my usage is in an MS environment to really leverage the most from the combination it should be in linux environment but getting back to the mobile journal topic - yes there are mobile clients;

of all these I find plainorg the best for viewing existing files it renders images nicely and handles internal links & beorg for agenda functions, at the moment there is nothing close to those two on android but the author of plainorg is working on another app one which allows a journalling experience on iOS and you can read an excellent review of it here https://www.macobserver.com/tips/round-ups/journelly-journal-app-ios/

The app is called journelly and it is effectively a polished front end to keeping a true journal in genuine orgmode format. Each entry is automatically populated with the following properties;

You do not see these properties when creating an entry but you do see the location and weather as part of the heading

It is out now on the appstore priced at 14.99GBP it might seem a little high but I think its worth it. I’ve been using it almost daily to capture notes, events and to as the name suggests journal & I instantly have access in emacs.

I’ve found it that useful that I’m considering a change to my normal journalling method & I’m currently re-writing a python script to plot the journelly recorded locations on a map.

The one thing I am missing is the ability to see a TODO as a subheading, I’m not suggesting journelly become a todo list or task manager but my journal is often the first place a task will land especially if I am out for example on a ride-out I’ll make notes, take photos but also possibly add a task to visit a shop when its open, or whatever. Then these tasks in my journals are available in emacs on the desktop, Alvaro and I had a good exchange about this and at the moment sub headings are disabled due to the way it treats all headings as equal. Nevertheless as a standalone application built around orgmode it is excellent.