If you are running a diary it’s time to organize it with @dayoneapp

What is Day One?

Day One is my go to journaling application. Instead of mindlessly tweeting throughout the day I use this simple app to take notes on what’s going in my life privately. I used to run my diary in Evernote, but it all got messy, because I didn’t have a reliable way of retrieving information, I couldn’t know what happened when… And Evernote was simply to much clunky for the calm reading environment. It took me a while to import all the 250 diary entries from Evernote, into the Day One, because I didn’t know any other way to do it. But in the end of the day it was worth it!

What I like about it

The main two reasons why I am using this instead of Evernote is it’s design and calendar. These two alone are making it a perfect journaling app. Simple, yet awesome. Some might argue that you don’t have photo support, to be honest I want my memories contained in the simplest way possible. Kept in such a way, that when I export them I can easily get them back in a .txt format.

What I don’t like about it

There is only one thing that I don’t like, lack of Evernote support. Somehow over the time Eveernote became my backup storage, where I store all my Facebook photos, updates, Tweets, Instagram, Read Later articles. Unified search of everything that goes trough my system. Evernote support would be pretty much a must have, but I believe developer will include it in the future, because I will whine to him a lot to get this implemented 🙂

Features

The app is minimal and full-featured at the same time. You have five windows: New, Days, Calendar, Starred, and Reminders. Simple design that does exactly that I want from it. About some technical things Day One has:

1. Dropbox Sync – haven’t really tried Dropbox sync, but this is going to be my export strategy 🙂
2. iCloud Sync (works like a charm) When iCloud gets clunky
3. iOS and OS X apps – It covers your laptop and your iOS devices. It gives integrated experience across all of the devices.
4. Reminders – Reminders are good, but they don’t cross sync between devices. (I am being spoiled I know 🙂 They show up in your notification center on iPhone.
5. Quick Entry on OS X. This little thing pops up when as your reminder that it’s time to write. It made me capture so much thoughts over the course of the working day, it’s ridiculous. This feature is pure gold. But on the other hand doesn’t create a lot of distraction.
6. Full Screen Writing on iOS – It’s true joy to use it on the iPhone which doesn’t have a lot of screen real estate

Price

iOS version covers both, iPad and iPhone (iPod touch) and costs 1.99$. It tends to remind me of Twitter. It is supported by Launch Center Pro. Definitively worth your money. OS X Version usually costs 10$, but I believe they’ve lowered it to 4,99$. And in my humble opinion if you want a long term solution for your journaling needs, it’s very well worth the money. I like the fact that the developer promised a lot of new features.

Get Day One on The App Store