Show HN: Mini-Diarium - An encrypted, local, cross-platform journaling app

This is Nice.

However, how do one access their diary, when you stopped maintaining it? Is this targeted more at the technically inclined, high-profile people who need to keep secrets?

Personally, I believe that for something like a diary/journal, it should be in a format easily readable by most tools (so a Plain-Text or a MarkDown at best), then it is in a container/folder. Now, encrypt that container/folder instead. In the future, when you need to change the tool for Encryption/Decryption, move the container/folder.

For instance, tools such as https://cryptomator.org comes to mind.

I love the minimalism of the UI.

Here's a tip: GitHub now allows you to embed a proper video in your README. (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4279611/how-to-embed-a-v...). Quality would be much better, and people can navigate back-and-forth in the video.

I like the idea, as a niche project for users that don't have control over their hardware/OS, or run on USB flash for portability.

Speaking of which, I have notes / journal entries dating back several decades, all in plain text files. I'm worried about these new projects and their longevity and whether it'll be actively supported 30 years from now. For simplicity, I'd use gocryptfs, Veracrypt, or other general file-based encryption which suits your risk tolerance, and use whatever editor (ie Obsidian, vscode, OneNote, etc) I want to use.

There already is another, unrelated "Diarium" journaling app: https://diariumapp.com

It's a paid app, not open source, but I've been using it for years and it has been working very well for me.

Dann, that’s a fancy README.md , love it

Looks really cool, I like the pretty but minimalist interface. Could I store the SQlite file on, say, google drive so that I could access my journal from different devices while the contents are still kept secure because they’re encrypted?

The biggest problem is that this is not available on mobile platforms. Most people do this on their phones, not their laptops.

looks sleek, fast, and stays true to the privacy-first roots we all loved. Awesome job modernizing a classic without losing its soul.

I'm using obsidian and cryfs. Nothing has access to those except a few programs. I'm storing notes, files, documents, whatever is important and everything is synced to the cloud.

Here's another approach using Rclone and an editor of your choice. Rclone has a built in crypt library that can encrypt your data and store it in a cloud provider. I use it along with Sublime Text to journal, and store my encrypted data on Dropbox.

More here: https://alabhya.me/rclone

Thank you for sharing this, this is very interesting problem to tackle.

I find this interesting mostly to understand how you are handling encryption and security. I think this is one approach but others expressed concern over long term viability.

Using Tauri is also very interesting. How did you find using it for this simpler case?

Anyhow, very cool project. Don't aband it :)

You can just encrypt your partition and use a file editor.

How are we pronouncing that name?

Obsidian.md

One major problem, I don't want a journal with unbreakable encryption where I lose all my data if I ever lose the key.

I already pay for a journaling website where I know I can always recover my journals as long as I have access to my Gmail.

So, while I appreciate this security first mindset, for me it actually becomes less interesting. I want my journal to sync to the cloud, I want to be able to unlock it, I don't want to risk losing years of journals if I forget a single key.

Nice project. The SQLite-on-cloud-drive approach mentioned in another comment is actually pretty solid — if the encryption is done client-side before the file hits the cloud, it doesn't matter where it's stored. The key thing is making sure the key derivation is robust enough that a compromised cloud account doesn't compromise journal contents.

One thing I'd push back on regarding the "what if you stop maintaining it" concern: SQLite with AES-256-GCM is about as future-proof as you can get. Both are standards with multiple implementations. The real risk isn't the format dying — it's losing the password. A recovery key export (even just a paper backup of the key material) would go a long way.

For the cross-device case, you might also consider something like Syncthing for sync without any cloud intermediary. Keeps the threat model simpler.

[flagged]

> Every entry is encrypted with AES-256-GCM before it touches disk

Until the OS needs more memory and swaps your secrets out.