jrnl

Frictionless journaling from the CLI.

Each day is a discrete plaintext file: $JRNL_DIR/YYYY/MM/DD.txt. Each entry added will auto-prepend the time. Multiple entries in a single day will be delimitted with Markdown-style --- notation.

You can choose to add content directly from the CLI or edit an entry in your preferrered $EDITOR.

Installation

Requires Bash >= 4 (for globstar).

Add the jrnl script to your $PATH or create a function similar to:

jrnl() { 
  /path/to/jrnl "${@}" 
}

jrnl defaults to writing to $HOME/Journal. You can customize this by setting $JRNL_DIR to something else (e.g. export JRNL_DIR="$HOME/Dropbox/Journal").

You'll also want to make sure $EDITOR is set to your preferred editor (e.g. export EDITOR='vim').

Usage

Run jrnl to start writing. You can list entries with jrnl --list and show the usage info with jrnl --help:

jrnl [<arguments>]

  Creates a file in $JRNL_DIR/YYYY/MM/DD.txt.

Options:
  -h --help  Show this.
  -l --list  List entries.
  <content>  Populate entry with <content>. If not set, open with $EDITOR.

Related

• jot - Create & manage Markdown files from the CLI
• jt - Quickly create timestamped notes (simplified version of jot)

License

MIT © Paul Esch-Laurent.