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The search for a good, free journal

One of the first freeware programs ever to make the thriftmac collection was MacJournal. It was an excellent app, totally free and had a big fan base.

Then the sky fell. MacJournal went commercial, and many users reacted with bitterness, outrage and a sense of betrayal. At the root of it all was a feeling that the Mac community deserved a good, free journal program. To be fair, it should be noted that there remains a free version of MacJournal that is no longer upgraded, and for some people its feature set may be more than enough.

Still, other developers saw an opportunity to fill the void. Perhaps the best example is Journler. It was a little rough around the edges at first, but has since been nicely polished. There are more features than you can shake a stick at, and perhaps best of all a commitment to remain free. (Donations are accepted and encouraged.)

Another contender is viJournal Lite. We put this one through the paces at the thriftmac lab a few months ago, found it unimpressive and didn’t give it another thought. But we couldn’t help noticing that it receives regular updates, so we decided to have anther look.

The new viJournal Lite now makes a good impression. It’s simple to use, has a good set of features, and has a professional look to it. You may be put off, though, by one of the ways it was made “Lite.” An arbitrary limit of two is placed on the number of journals or sub-entries you can create, which can be frustrating. The developers would like you to upgrade to the paid version, which is perfectly understandable, but crippling some features makes viJournal feel almost like a demo instead of true freeware. If this sort of thing doesn’t bother you, though, by all means give it a whirl.

Another app that deserves mention is DreamDiary. Yes, we know it supposed to be for keeping track of dreams, but it can easily be adapted to other purposes. It’s not exactly feature-laden, but then it doesn’t pretend to be. And sometimes simple is all you really want.

Posted Wednesday, November 15, 2006 in

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  1. Don’t forget journler
    http://journler.phildow.net/

    which blows me away every time I use it. It is SO feature packed, SO incredible, I do most of my word processing inside of it.

    adam

  2. Journler will, as of 2.6, be going Shareware. In 2.5.4 it is dropping blogging support. The whole reason I liked it was the idea of having a journal app that gave me the option to post any entries to a blog. Any suggestions of free alternatives?

    Ryan Campfield





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