What is jrnl
It is simple yet powerful journal application for the command line which also acts as a note taking application for professionals. It’s easy to create, search & view the journal/note entries. Everything is stored in human readable format and it allows encryption too.
It contains almost all the important and fundamental features that you need for taking notes in everyway you want. It is more suitable for those who are familiar with working on the terminal.
Installation
I’m using Fedora 41, so I’ll be using the dnf package manager to install jrnl. You can use the package manager of your own Linux distro, or alternatively, use the pipx to install package.
sudo dnf install jrnl
Alternate & Easiest way to install
pipx install jrnl
That’s it, jrnl has been successfully installed in your system.
Configuration
Open the jrnl.yaml in ~/.config/jrnl/ using an editor
colors:
body: none
date: magenta
tags: yellow
title: cyan
default_hour: 8
default_minute: 0
editor: /usr/bin/nvim
encrypt: false
highlight: true
indent_character: '|'
journals:
default: /home/iamyaash/.local/share/jrnl/journal.txt
fedora: /home/iamyaash/.local/share/jrnl/fedora_journal.txt
linewrap: 88
tagsymbols: '#@'
template: false
timeformat: '%F %T'
version: v4.2
It might take some time to get used to work with jrnl, so it more advisable to touch the configurations once you are familiar using it.
| Settings | Description |
|---|---|
colors | Change the colors you want to be displayed in the 4 attributes |
default_hour/minute | When the time is not specified it will use the default hour/minute |
editor | Editor of your selection to modify the journal entries |
encrypt | Set to true if you need encryption |
highlight | Just hightlights the essential parts of the entry |
indent_character | Pretty prints the paragraph |
journals | Path of your journal being stored, create multiple if you need add multiple entries |
linewrap | Wrap the text within certain limit (readability) |
tagsymbols | Choice of your tagging symbols |
template | Advanced but, uses a template to take notes & uses editor for that |
timeformat | Set it 24-hour format |
Basic Usage
Adding an entry:
jrnl "Today is my lucky day!" #heading only
jrnl "Today is my lucky day!" "Because, I got 0 errors during compilation" #heading only
jrnl yesterday at 8pm: I completed working on the bug. Data mismatch was resulting in the bug
#heading + para + time + date
Note: Everything until the first sentence mark (
.?!:) will be interpreted as the title, the rest as the body.
Output:
Note: Uses the time when the entry is added if time & date are not mentioned.
iamyaash@fedora:~$ jrnl -n 1
2025-04-27 19:13:08 Today is my lucky day!
| Because, I got 0 errors during compilation
iamyaash@fedora:~$ jrnl -on yesterday
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ 1 entry found ┃
┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛
2025-04-26 20:00:00 I completed working on the bug.
| Data mismatch was resulting in the bug
Viewing & Searching an entry:
View: Keywords like on, from & on are important and can be used as a flag.
jrnl -on yesterday #display only the yesterday entries
jrnl -from yesterday #display entries from yesterday to today(now)
jrnl -n 8 || jrnl -8 #displays the last 8 entries
Search: The -contains command displays all entries containing the text you enter after it
jrnl -contains "meet" -from last-week
jrnl -contains "program" -from last-week --edit
Editing an entry:
Opens the editor of your choice, as mentioned in the jrnl.yaml -> editor config above. For me, it’s nvim.
If you are familiar with nvim, you can navigate through it easily.
iamyaash@fedora:~$ jrnl -n 1 --edit
Deleting an entry:
Opens the editor with the specified number of recent entries. For example, use -n 2 to open the last two entries, allowing you to delete the last entry if needed.
Note: Even if you delete the entry using -n 1 --edit, the contents inside will be deleted but the date & time remains
iamyaash@fedora:~$ jrnl -n 2 --edit