Guides › Journal

A journal inside your draft

Lab notebook, writing log, morning pages — a Journal section lives in your project, files itself by date, and is one keystroke away from wherever you're writing.

Today's entry, one keystroke

Press ⌥⌘J and today's entry opens — created from your chosen template if it doesn't exist yet. Titles follow your date format, and entries file themselves into Year / Month / Day folders automatically, so the journal stays organized without you ever touching the binder.

The calendar

⇧⌥⌘J opens a calendar that dots every day with an entry — or keep it always visible, collapsible at the bottom of the binder. Click any day to open or create that entry. It's the writing-streak view: a month of dots is a month of showing up.

Templates with placeholders

Journal entries are created from a template, and templates understand placeholders: {{date+7:yyyy-MM-dd}}, {{time}}, {{title}}, {{project}}, {{clipboard}}, {{prompt:Question|Default}}, {{choose:Label|A,B,C}}, {{cursor}}. A lab-notebook template might stamp the date, ask which experiment you're running, and leave the cursor in the observations section.

Set it up your way

Everything is configurable in the tabbed Project Settings: which template new entries use, the title's date format, and where the Journal section lives in your draft. Because entries are ordinary documents, everything else works on them too — tags, search, snapshots, sync to iPhone and iPad.