GitJournal - Notes with Git

GitJournal

In-app purchases

About this app

Git Journal is a note taking / journaling app built with privacy and data portability in mind. It stores all its notes in a standardised Markdown + YAML header format or plaintext. The notes are stored in a hosted Git Repo of your choice - GitHub / GitLab / Gitea / Gogs / Any Custom-provider.

Features -

- Offline First - All yours notes are available offline
- No Account Required
- Categorize your Notes with Folders
- Open source / Free Software / FOSS
- Can easily be extended and integrated with other Git tools
- Can also be used to manage Hugo / Jekyll / Gatsby websites
- No Ads
- Built with Flutter


Never need to import / export your notes, as you always have control of the data. Apps may come and go, but your notes will always be with you.

The app comes with a clean, easy to use interface designed to focus on just writing your journal entries without any distractions.

We have chosen Git as a backend as self-hosting a Git server is much simpler than almost any other software, additionally there are already many commercial providers of Git. So you can choose who you want to trust with your notes. We currently don't support encrypting the notes, but it's something we're actively working on.

Ratings and reviews

Exactly what I want: a notes app that uses simple markdown and saves in regular markdown files, doesn't rely on proprietary storage, has keyword search, and and is simple to use. Now I can sync notes across devices and software quickly and easily. I even used the feedback link in-app and got a prompt response from the creator. Can't ask for better.

This is a very useful app. I use it to manage to- do & shopping lists, edit blog post drafts, and keep project notes. It syncs seemlessly with the custom repo on my server. All the files are standard markdown documents making them easy to edit in Vim on my desktop computer. The developer is very responsive. I submitted a bug via an email link from within the app. He responded a few hours later to clarify the problem, and followed a few days later to report he had fixed it.

There's a bug that can happen when you have external storage issues, Android 13. It can happen if you change the external location too often and too soon, and it may happen because you are doing it while the app is trying to move the files. I thought I lost all my notes but they were just saved in a different location. Despite merging them I can't get the app to read the notes in the subfolders. GitJournal also doesn't want to recognize FairEmail as an email client, so I can't submit bug reports

What's new

* New SSH + Git implementation - We're now using go-git instead of libgit2 + libssh. Golang is far easier to cross compile and work with in comparison to libgit2.
* go-git is only used for git + ssh. For everything else - we're using our own implementation in Dart. No this wasn't a great use of my time, and I probably shouldn't have gone down this path.