For a simple-minded journal, is DayOne necessarily better than Simplenote?
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I’ve been journaling with Simplenote for about a month now. Each note’s title is of course the date, and the tag is, simply (¡!) “journal”. I appreciate Simplenote because of its lightning-fast sync: faster than *any* other app I have. I just found out about DayOne today. For my Simple journal is DayOne as fast as, and necessarily better than, Simplenote? I request here simply for an opinion *before* bothering to download and fiddle with DayOne.
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I use both apps so I think I can give you a decent comparison.
It truly depends on what you’re after for your Journal habit. Day One has a ton more features than Simplenote for formatting text, staying motivate, adding metadata and organizing your entries, so I find it advantageous as my needs and wants change. Simplenote just has Markdown and tagging.
Let’s say you really like your simple format, but you wish you had a reminder every day to help you stay consistent. Day One could easily do that, but the feature isn’t in Simplenote: https://dayoneapp.com/guides/tips-and-tutorials/reminders/
Or, for example, you’re going on a vacation and would like to have an entry for every day and location you go. Day One has a ton of support for automating adding that info to your entries that doesn’t exist in Simplenote: https://dayoneapp.com/guides/tips-and-tutorials/location-history/
Our syncing should be close to as fast as you see on Simplenote, with our servers updating every 30 seconds on iOS and Android, and instantly on the web app. I don’t find it to be as instantaneous as Simplenote can be, but it’s plenty good enough for my needs.
If you wish you could just a little more fancy with Simplenote I think you should give Day One a try. If you’re really happy with Simplenote and it’s working well to support your Journaling needs, I say stick with it. The most important thing is your writing.
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Howdy after many months, @staff-mobilefox
For your entertainment: after journaling on Simplenote from mid-April through mid-September, I decided to follow your example and use both. I copied all dated Simplenote journal entries to DayOne and bought DayOne (tedious, but I want to be able to use *all* devices, not just one). Now I’ll use Simplenote just for quickies. Like ideas or quotes or pending blog entries. And DayOne for the diary. For DayOne has far superior sorting, font choice, and other features I don’t use yet. So as Walter Kronkite used to say, “That’s the way it is.” I thank you for your advice. (So long ago, in May.)
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Hi @apfossa. Thanks for following up! We are glad to hear that this routine has been working out. Please contact us again if you have any other questions or concerns.
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(replying one more time…) After quite awhile of using DayOne (which I will continue!) I re-downloaded Simplenote. Here’s what I found. DayOne is superb for journaling. It’s my go-to, my friend, and my pard. I re-downloaded Simplenote simply for this. Nothing beats it for the fast immediacy of simple, trivial notes. Like a momentary thought not necessarily to be saved. A flit. So I’ll use both. Each has its place.
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