Journelly for dead simple org-mode journaling on your iPhone

I mentioned it in passing a few days ago, but wanted to pull it up above the fold: Journelly is an iOS app from Álvaro Ramírez that he describes as "kinda like tweeting but for my eyes only."

You just open it, tap the "+" to make an entry, and add some text (including tasks or a list) or a photo. The toolbar also includes a shortcut for the # character to make it easy to tag entries (which are linked when you're viewing your entries). You can share links to it, as well. It's very simple and elegant.  

It stores the entries in org-mode syntax, though, and it's able to either keep that in its own storage, in iCloud, or in a location of your choosing. Since I recently learned about Blink as an sftp interface, I keep the Journelly,org file in my org directory on my NAS, where everything else can get at it via Tailscale. 

Álvaro helped me up my org-capture game to make a quick capture template: 

\#+begin_src emacs-lisp
(add-to-list 'org-capture-templates
'("j" "Journelly" entry (file "~/org/Journelly.org") "* %U @ Home\n%?" :prepend t))
\#+end_src

So in Doom Emacs, I can just spc-X-j to type in a quick entry at the top of the file, then C-c C-c and get something like:

* [2025-04-01 Tue 22:45] @ Home
Well, it's bedtime.

A more complete entry from the app, with weather and location turned on, looks like this:

* [2025-04-01 Tue 22:45] @ SE Claybourne St
:PROPERTIES:
:LATITUDE: 45.something
:LONGITUDE: -122.something
:WEATHER_TEMPERATURE: 46.51°F
:WEATHER_CONDITION: Mostly Cloudy
:WEATHER_SYMBOL: cloud
:END:
Well, it's bedtime. 

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Still in Testflight, but working pretty well. It includes an easy way to make backups, and when you choose a different storage method it offers to migrate all your stuff, so nothing lost if I decide it's safer to just use the app's own storage.

I have org-journal for longer form journal entries, but I like to keep a day log and this is a pretty neat way to do it with ease from a phone (vs. some stuff I cobbled together in Drafts) or from a laptop.

Another app of his I want to write up once I've used it for a bit more is Flat Habits, an org-based habit tracker that provides an iOS interface to org habits. I've only used it for about a week now, alongside Streaks, which is great but doesn't save my stuff in plaintext.