There was a time, back when I was a teenager, when I kept a daily journal, noting the little things in my everyday life. That habit died abruptly but my love of writing never did. I sometimes reminisce about the good’ol days and wonder if I am happier for not remembering every detail or if I would be served better by recalling some things. I have one of the worst memories in the world — just ask the AndroidBeat team how often they have to remind me to do something! — so while I am using Todoist to manage my tasks, I have had no way of saving the notable moments in my life. Well, maybe Journey can solve my conundrum.
Journey comes to us courtesy of 2 App Studio, the same team who developed Jotterpad X, our favorite text editor for Android. Having dipped their toes into minimalistic and efficient design, the developers wanted to provide a lighter way for users to get into writing. That’s where Journey originally started.
A “Material” interface
Journey uses similar minimalistic fonts and iconography to Jotterpad X. The app is built with Android L and Material Design in mind, with a bold blue color, transparent status bar, beautiful typography, no superfluous design additions, and some layered UI elements (they’re rare but there).
Journaling done right
Journey opens to a card of your latest journal entry but you can conveniently swipe back and forth. Calendar, Photos, and Atlas views let you browse these entries by date, visuals, and location respectively. These options come in handy when you want to go back to a specific date, or when you recall a certain moment but don’t know when exactly it happened. When adding a journal entry, Journey goes the extra mile — or many extra miles. It will automatically find the location, weather, and current playing music, and beside text entry, let you add a new or existing image, tags, and assign an activity type (with accelerometer-based steps detection). Little touches like the Undo and Redo buttons, the word and character counts, and the manual editing of time and location prove how much thought has gone into making Journey a great app from the start.
Handy options
Journey doesn’t stop there. It syncs your entries with your Google Drive account and can save them to pdf files too. There’s a search option and support for external keyboards. And finally, a passcode locks all of your data should you need to keep your journal away from prying eyes. A Premium in-app purchase adds more features like a night mode and Markdown support if you want to format your texts. Incredibly easy to use and love, Journey is one of the first diary apps I have tried that has made sense without sacrificing on features or design. In that sense, it is reminiscent of Jotterpad X: simple, option-packed, and still gorgeous to look at. However, I am not sure if Journey will convert me back to a journaling person the same way Jotterpad became my only writing application. I will keep on using it for a while and see if the habit sticks with me or if I fall back into my blissful forgetful self. If you are a diary person or just curious to see how Journey works, the app is currently in private beta for less than 1000 users, which you can enter by going to the Journey’s page and submitting your Gmail address. It should be available later in the Play Store for free with an in-app purchase for the Premium features.
