Diarium vs deariary: cross-platform manual vs fully automatic
Diarium does something clever that no other diary app does. It pulls in your calendar events, your GitHub commits, your Fitbit data, even the weather, and displays them right next to the text editor. The idea is clear: here is everything that happened today, now write about it.
You look at the integration panel. Three meetings, two pull requests, 8,200 steps, partly cloudy. All the ingredients for a diary entry are sitting right there. All you have to do is type.
You stare at the blank editor for a minute, then close the app.
The data is not the problem. Diarium solved the data problem. What it has not solved is the writing problem. The information is there, organized and timestamped. But composing it into sentences, choosing what matters, finding the words: that is still on you.
deariary starts where Diarium stops. It takes the same kind of data (calendar events, commits, completed tasks, messages) and writes the entry itself. No blank editor, no cursor waiting. The diary appears overnight.
This is a comparison between two apps that connect to the same services but do fundamentally different things with the data. One shows it to you. The other writes about it for you.
What Diarium does well
Diarium is the most complete cross-platform diary app available. Built by solo developer Timo Partl, it won the Microsoft Store Awards 2024 and has earned a 4.8 rating from 1,800+ iOS reviews and a 4.5 rating from over 20,000 Android reviews, with 500,000+ downloads on Google Play. The reviews are not just positive; they are enthusiastic. Users call it “everything and more” and “exactly what I was looking for.” Several mention switching from Day One specifically because Diarium does not charge a subscription.
True cross-platform availability. Diarium runs on iOS, macOS, Windows, and Android. Not a web wrapper, not a ported mobile app: each platform gets a native build. The Windows version is the flagship (it started there), and the mobile apps are fully featured. If you journal on your phone during commutes and your desktop at night, Diarium handles both.
Your cloud, your data. Sync works through your personal cloud storage: OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox, iCloud, or WebDAV (including self-hosted options like Nextcloud and Synology). Cloud Sync is a Pro version feature, but your journal data never touches Diarium’s servers. There is no account to create, no login, no sign-up. You download the app and start writing. This is one of the strongest privacy stories in the journaling category.
Smart integrations as context. This is Diarium’s signature feature. It connects to your system calendar, camera roll, Facebook, GitHub, Last.fm, Untappd, Trakt, Fitbit, Google Fit, Strava, Microsoft To Do, Todoist, BoardGameGeek, WorkingHours (the developer’s own time-tracking app), Google Timeline, and weather data including sunrise/sunset times and lunar phases. Diarium calls these “Feeds & Events” and displays them on the entry page when you open a day. You can see what meetings you had, what commits you pushed, what music you listened to. The data is read-only: it appears for reference while you write, but it is not embedded in the diary entry itself. If you export your journal, the feed data is not included. The idea is to solve the “I don’t know what to write about” problem by showing you what happened.
Rich media support. Photos, videos, audio recordings, PDFs, files of any format. Rich text formatting with bold, italic, colors, lists, and links. Dictation for hands-free input. Journal templates for structured entries.
One-time purchase, not a subscription. The Pro version is a one-time purchase per platform (iOS Pro is $14.99, the Windows version includes Pro by default). No monthly fee, no annual renewal. This pricing model alone has earned Diarium a loyal user base. In the forum, users explicitly thank the developer for not switching to a subscription like Day One did.
Migration from other apps. Diarium imports journals from Day One, Journey, Diaro, Daylio, Diarly, Daybook, and Evernote. If you are leaving another app, the transition is straightforward.
Export options. Word (.docx), plain text (.txt), HTML, and JSON. You can take your data out at any time.
Diarium is, in many ways, the app that Day One used to be before Automattic acquired it and moved to subscriptions: feature-rich, privacy-respecting, cross-platform, and priced fairly. The solo developer model means updates are steady and thoughtful rather than driven by investor timelines.
Where Diarium’s model has limits
Diarium’s integrations are genuinely useful. Seeing your calendar events and commits alongside the editor is better than staring at a blank page from memory alone. But the core experience still centers on writing.
The integrations inform. They do not compose. Your GitHub commits appear as a list on the entry page. Your calendar shows meeting titles and times. Your Fitbit data displays step counts and heart rate. But this data is a read-only overlay. It is not embedded in the diary entry itself. The feed data and the diary text are separate: you look at one and type into the other. If you export your journal to Word or JSON, the integration data does not come along. Only what you wrote is part of the permanent record.
This means the “what happened today” data is there for reference while you write, but it does not survive outside the app. If you close Diarium without writing, the feed data still appears when you reopen that day (it is pulled from the source services), but the diary entry for that day remains blank.
The writing is still on you. Every entry requires you to open the app, look at the context data, and compose text. On a good day, the integration display makes this easier. On a busy Tuesday when you fall into bed at midnight, it does not matter because you never opened the app. The blank days accumulate the same way they do in any manual journal.
Platform-per-purchase pricing adds up. The one-time purchase model is genuinely better than a subscription for most users. But Pro must be purchased separately for each platform: iOS, macOS, Windows, and Android are all separate licenses. If you use Diarium on an iPhone and a Mac, that is two purchases ($14.99 each). Add a Windows laptop and an Android tablet, and you are buying four licenses. The developer explains the reasoning transparently (avoiding the complexity and cost of a cross-platform licensing server), and many users in the forum accept the trade-off. But it is worth knowing before you commit.
No AI, no narrative generation. Diarium does not use AI to process or compose text. The integrations pull in raw data (event titles, commit messages, track names). Turning that raw data into readable prose is your job. If your calendar says “Sprint Planning” and your GitHub says “fix: resolve auth token refresh loop,” your diary will say those exact things, or whatever you choose to write about them.
How deariary approaches the same data
deariary connects to many of the same services: Google Calendar, GitHub, Slack, Todoist, Bluesky, and anything else via webhooks. The data sources overlap significantly with Diarium’s integration list.
The difference is what happens next. deariary does not display the data alongside an editor. It feeds the data into a language model that composes a diary entry overnight. By morning, the previous day’s entry is already written.
A Diarium user opening Monday’s entry sees: three meetings, two merged PRs, 7,400 steps displayed alongside a blank text area. A deariary user opening Monday’s entry sees: “The morning started with sprint planning at 10, followed by a design review where the team decided to postpone the dashboard redesign. After lunch you merged two pull requests on the notification service and closed five Todoist tasks. A quiet evening: you posted a link on Bluesky and called it a day.”
The prose is not literary. It is a factual account of the day, assembled from the same data points that Diarium would display as context. The difference is that deariary has already done the composing step that Diarium leaves to you.
The trade-off is real: you lose the writing act itself. If you value sitting down and crafting your own account of the day, if the writing is part of how you process your life, deariary takes that away. It also means you cannot add the internal experience in the moment of writing: the frustration of a long meeting, the satisfaction of finally closing a bug. deariary captures events, not emotions.
At a glance
| Diarium | deariary | |
|---|---|---|
| How integrations work | Read-only overlay: data displayed on the entry page for reference (not embedded in the entry, not included in exports) | Data fed to AI, diary entry generated as permanent text |
| You write? | Yes, every entry | No (edit if you want) |
| If you skip a day | Blank page, permanently | Entry still appears |
| Platforms | iOS, macOS, Windows, Android (native apps) | Web |
| Data storage | Your personal cloud (OneDrive, Google Drive, iCloud, Dropbox, WebDAV) | deariary cloud |
| Account required | No | Yes |
| Integrations | System calendar, Camera Roll, GitHub, Fitbit, Strava, Google Fit, Facebook, Last.fm, Untappd, Trakt, Microsoft To Do, Todoist, BoardGameGeek, WorkingHours, Google Timeline, Weather, and more | Google Calendar, GitHub, Slack, Todoist, Bluesky, Discord, and webhooks |
| Media attachments | Photos, videos, audio, PDFs, any file | Text only |
| Rich text editing | Yes (bold, italic, colors, lists, links) | Basic editing |
| Export | Word, HTML, JSON, plain text | Export available |
| Privacy model | No account, data in your cloud, no server-side processing | Cloud-based, data processed server-side |
| Pricing model | One-time purchase per platform | Subscription |
| Free tier | Yes (limited Pro features) | Yes (one integration) |
| Paid | $14.99 per platform (one-time) | See pricing |
Two ideas about what integrations are for
The interesting thing about comparing Diarium and deariary is that both apps connect to external services, but they use that data for opposite purposes.
Diarium treats integration data as a reference layer for you. It shows you what happened as a read-only overlay and trusts you to turn it into a diary entry. The feed data itself is not part of the entry. If you export your journal or switch apps, only what you typed is preserved. The human does the narrative work. The app provides the reference material.
deariary treats integration data as input for an AI. It takes what happened and turns it into a diary entry that is the entry. The generated text is the permanent record. The machine does the narrative work. The human reads the result.
Neither approach is objectively better. They serve different relationships with journaling.
Who should use which
Use Diarium if you want to write your diary yourself and want help remembering what happened. Diarium’s integration display solves the blank-page problem by giving you the facts. You still do the writing, which means you control the voice, the emphasis, and the emotional layer. If you value the act of composing your own account of the day, Diarium is one of the best tools for it: cross-platform, privacy-respecting, fairly priced, and actively maintained by a developer who clearly cares about the product.
Use deariary if you want a diary that exists even on the days you do not write. If seeing the integration data is useful but not enough to get you to actually type, if the writing step is where your journaling habit dies every time, deariary removes that step entirely. The entry appears whether you participated or not.
Diarium is the best manual diary app with integrations. deariary is for people who need the manual part removed.
Starting
If Diarium sounds right, download it from diariumapp.com for your platform. The free version is genuinely usable, and the Pro upgrade is a one-time cost.
If you want to see what a fully automatic diary looks like, try deariary free (one integration) at deariary.com. Connect one service and check the entry tomorrow morning.
Both apps want the same thing: a diary that does not have blank pages. They just disagree on who should fill them.
