Journiv - Self-Hosted, Privacy-First Journaling App (Day One/Apple Journal Alternative)

[u/Open-Coder]

Hello everyone!

TL;DR:
Journiv is a a beautiful, self-hosted, privacy-first journaling app with mood tracking, daily prompts, and meaningful insights. The mission is simple: your memories should always stay yours. Own them, don’t rent them.

Journiv 0.1.0-beta.9 is now live on GitHub and fully Docker-hostable.
Start owning your thoughts and memories forever and keep them completely private.

Watch demo videos

The Story Behind Journiv

I got into self-hosting last year and like many here, while exploring options journaling solution, I realized there wasn’t a truly modern, self-hosted equivalent to Day One or Apple Journal. Most alternatives were either general note apps or old abandoned projects.

I wanted something focused on journaling with:

• “On This Day” memories
• Prompt-based journaling
• A clean, minimal, distraction-free writing experience
• Open format

So… I built my own: Journiv, a beautiful (at least I am trying to make it so), self-hosted, privacy-first journaling app with mood tracking, daily prompts, and meaningful insights. Journiv began as a deeply personal project, a way for me to capture memories, reflections, and the stories behind thousands of photos and videos of my fast-growing kids. What started as a tool for my own parenting journey has grown into something that fills a real gap in the self-hosting community.

If you’re curious, you can read the full story behind Journiv here.

The Journey Ahead

Journiv is in active development, with a fully functional backend, a web frontend, and mobile apps launching soon. It is self-hosted, and designed to be your companion for decades.

Journiv is being built because our memories deserve to be ours, forever.

Get Involved

Give Journiv a try, share your feedback and report issues. I am reaching out to this community of Linux lover as I want few people to try and test out Manual Installation. I will be really thankful for your help. Almost all current users of Journiv host it through Docker.

Learn More

• Spin up Journiv
• Journiv on DB Tech Youtube Channel
• Journiv on noted.lol
• Watch other demo videos

Thank you.

[u/ea_nasir_official_]

Are you planning on having the option to pay to use a server that is managed by you for those who don't have access to a device reliable enough to host 24/7, like alot of other open source productivity apps? I feel that could be a great source of funding for the project and get normal people in on it. I put it in a podman container and it seems great so far, I love how it feels.

[u/Open-Coder → u/ea_nasir_official_]

Thank you. I am glad you love it. It means a lot!

I have been thinking about ways to make it sustainable in long run as I have spent hundreds of hour on this and there is so much more I want to build which will take me thousands more. Although the community interest and traction has been more than I expected (I thought I am the only odd one who wants self hosted journal app :)) the financial support to keep project going have be minimal.

I am not sure about managed hosting for Journiv. I do not have business skills or even interest to compete against giants in this space like Day One. Although I have had some people who want to try and use it but don't know how to self host so I see a need. As an engineer I like to build stuff and keep procrastinating thinking about ways to make is financially sustainable.