Features
A day with nexdiary, from the first note to the page.
This page covers everything nexdiary does, in the order of a day: what you jot down during the day, what it becomes in the evening, and how you look back on it later. The pictures come from the app, filled with a made-up family: Jule writes, Paul is her husband, Mia their daughter and Ruth the grandmother.
During the day, a few words will do
Today is the page nexdiary opens on. At the top there is a field that says “What is on your mind? Just jot it down.” You type whatever is happening, the way it comes, and send it off. Every note gets its time and then appears under “Noted today”.
Notes that ask nothing of you
Spelling, order and full sentences do not matter during the day. Enter sends the note, Shift Enter starts a new line. The camera button attaches a photo. You can change or delete a note later, right where it is, and it stays even when it becomes part of a page in the evening.
- Question of the day: Below the field there is a small question for the days when nothing comes to mind. “Answer” turns your answer into a note, “Another question” shows a different one.
- After midnight: If you write between midnight and 4 am, nexdiary asks once which day it belongs to. You can also move a note to the day before or the next day later on, photo and all.
- Catching up: Days from the last 60 that have notes but no page sit in a quiet card. From there you go straight to writing them up.
- The family question: If your family takes part, the question everybody gets today is here too, and once you have answered, so are the others’ answers.
Good to knowOn tired days there is “Just briefly today”: your first value, mood for instance, and a single sentence become today’s page. It works only on a day without notes. It counts towards your streak but does not earn a shield.
In the evening, the notes become a page
Below the notes sits the card “Write the day up”. It offers “Write it yourself” and, if your operator has set up an AI, also “Write it up with AI” and “Ask me first”. Whichever you choose, the notes always stay as they are.
Writing as in a blog
The editor shows the text the way it will look in the journal. The toolbar has bold, italic, subheading, quote, list, undo and insert picture. There are no links, tables or code on purpose; a diary does not need them.
Your notes of the day sit next to the text. Tapping a note puts it into the text, a photo from a note goes in as a picture. Under “Keep writing?” there are questions you can add as a subheading at the end.
- Nothing gets lost: The draft goes to your server while you type and is back the next time you open the page. Ctrl S saves, Cmd S on a Mac.
- Two devices at once: If you changed the same day on another device in the meantime, nexdiary shows you the other version and you decide which one stays.
- Templates: If you like writing under fixed headings, you can keep up to 20 templates. Empty sections are dropped when you save.
- Earlier days too: Any day can be written up or changed afterwards.
With AI, if you like
“Write it up with AI” turns your notes into a suggestion in your own words, short or long. It lands in the editor, and you change whatever does not sound like you. No AI is set up out of the box. What the AI does, what it does not do and what leaves your server has a page of its own.
A day that stays as it is
“Lock for good” makes a written day unchangeable. After that nobody can change or delete it, not you and not the operator either. To confirm, you type the word “lock”. Sharing still works. “Delete page”, on the other hand, only removes the title, text, tags and values; the notes and photos of the day stay.
Every day has a picture
A diary you enjoy leafing through has a picture on every page. That is why the cover in nexdiary is never empty: it is a photo of your own or one of 256 drawn illustrations.
256 illustrations to suit the day
There are 16 motifs, from a lighthouse to coffee by the window, each in four times of day and four seasons. Every day already has a suggestion picked by season, time of day and your tags; add the tag “holiday” and you are likely to get the beach. With “Change cover” you pick another one by motif, time of day or season, or take a photo from that day. For a photo, “Adjust framing” lets you choose what shows.
The drawings live inside the app. nexdiary loads nothing from photo services on the web.
Photos, with nothing tagging along
You take photos with the camera or upload them, as JPEG, PNG, WebP, HEIC or AVIF up to 20 MB, up to 100 a day. nexdiary redraws every photo from its pixels, so location, device and the time it was taken stay out. In the text, a picture gets a caption and can be cropped, rotated and moved.
“My photos” shows all your photos in one place, with where each one is used. If you delete one, nexdiary tells you first where it still appears.
Photos from Immich
If your photos live in Immich, you connect your own Immich under My account, Connections. Today then shows the most recently uploaded photos under “New in Immich”, ready to take over. “All photos” opens the whole collection, with albums and search.
A photo is copied only when you take it over. Videos stay out. For this to work, the operator has to allow Immich first and name the address; it is off out of the box.
How the day was, in numbers and keywords
For each day you can give a few values from 1 to 10 and add tags. Both are optional, and both make looking back and the statistics richer later on.
Values of your own
Out of the box there are mood, health, sleep and work day, plus relationship, which is switched off. Under “My values” you rename them or add your own, sport or time with the kids for instance, up to 30.
What 1 and 10 mean
Every value has its own ends, “1 means” and “10 means”, and a short hint. For mood, the ends are awful and great out of the box.
Tags to tap
Keywords such as family, outdoors or cooking. They filter the journal, turn up in the statistics and help suggest the cover. Up to 30 a day.
The journal, as a blog or a timeline
The journal holds every day that has a page. You choose how it looks, and your choice applies on every device.
Browse, search, filter
As a “Blog”, the journal shows large cards with their covers, the newest day big at the top. As a “Timeline”, it is grouped by month, one line per day with a small picture, which makes finding things quicker.
- Search: The search field looks through titles, texts, tags and notes, including days that only have notes.
- Filter by tag: The tags sit as chips above the list, each with its count.
- Marks: A day shows whether it is shared, written up with AI or locked.
- Without a page: A section of its own gathers days that still have notes but no page.
Reading a day
A day shows its cover, the text as you wrote it, the photos, tags and values, and who it is shared with. Photos open large, and you swipe through all the photos of the day. The notes of the day sit folded away below.
“One year ago today” takes you to the day exactly a year earlier. The statistics show it too, for today.
Looking back on weeks, months and yourself
At the start of a week, Today shows a small strip with the covers of the last week, at the start of a month the last month. Tap it to open the look back.
A week or a month at a glance
A week appears as a strip of covers, a month as a collage. Alongside come how many days you wrote, how many words and photos there were, your first value as a curve compared with the week or month before, the best day and “What it was about”, the most used tags.
If an AI is set up, “Sum it up” puts the pages into a few sentences. The summary is shown and not stored.
Statistics only you can see
The statistics are worked out from your own days alone, and nobody else sees them. At the top come streak, longest streak, days this year and words. “Your half year” shows 26 weeks as squares, the darker, the higher your first value was.
- Over time: any value over 30, 90 or 180 days, with the average over seven days.
- Your weekdays: on which day of the week your first value is highest on average.
- What goes together: comparisons in sentences, such as your mood on days when sleep was 7 or higher and on the others. Always with the note “Together does not mean because.”
- Best and worst day: for 30 days, a year or all time.
A streak that forgives a bad week
A flame at the top of Today counts how long you have kept going. You decide how strictly it counts.
Your writing goal
Under “Writing goal” you choose how often a week you want to write, from once to seven times. At seven the streak counts days in a row, otherwise weeks in a row in which you reached your goal.
Shields
A shield saves a missed day or a missed week by itself. You earn one for every ten days in a row, with a weekly goal for every four weeks reached, and one for a page of 300 words or more, at most one a week.
What counts
Every page with text counts. A draft the AI wrote in the morning counts only once you accept it. The short page from “Just briefly today” counts, but earns no shield.
A volume for every year, and a book if you like
At the top of the journal, every year stands on the shelf as a volume that fills up page by page. Next to it, an empty volume is already waiting for the next year. Tap a volume to see only that year.
The shelf
Each volume is as wide as it is full, in your colour, older ones a little darker. A short line counts the days until New Year’s Eve and reminds you that every page stays, even when a week is missing.
A year as a book
“As a book” sets a whole year as a PDF: a title page with six covers from the year and “The diary of” with your name, a table of contents, a chapter for each month and a page for each day with its cover, text and photos. If you like, the values go under each day and the raw notes into an appendix.
You choose “A5, like a book” or A4. The PDF is made on your server, and only you can collect it. It is meant for printing out and keeping; it is not a print-shop file with bleed and crop marks.
A reminder, if you want one
nexdiary reminds you by web push, on the devices you sign up for it. There is no app from a store involved, and without a device signed up nothing comes at all.
A gentle nudge in the evening
Under My account, Reminders you sign up each device on its own. Out of the box the reminder comes every day at 8.30 pm, with a question of the day, and stays away if you have already noted something today. You can also pick “After a pause”, after 1 to 30 days without an entry, or “Never”.
- Weekly goal: If you like, a reminder comes when your weekly goal can only just be reached.
- What it says: Never an entry. A reminder says something like “How was your day?” and at most names the question of the day.
- What else arrives: a time capsule that comes in or opens, a draft in the morning, a new sign-in to your account. When someone shares a day with you, only a counter in the app shows it.
- iPhone: There, push only works from the app on the home screen, from iOS 16.4. Push also needs an address with https.
Five colours, light and dark
Everybody sets nexdiary up the way they like it. The choice belongs to the account and applies on every device.
Themes and layout
There are five colours: Sage, the colour of nexdiary, plus Terracotta, Plum, Dusty rose and Ink. Each comes light and dark, and nexdiary follows the system until you pick “Light” or “Dark”.
You can choose the layout of Today, too. “Day page” shows everything one below the other, “Two columns” puts writing on the left and the day on the right on a computer, and “Like a chat” shows your notes as messages to yourself, with the text field at the bottom.
- Language: German or English, for each person separately. The operator can add more languages as a file.
- Fonts: nexdiary brings its own fonts. Opening it asks no other server.
On the phone, like an app
nexdiary is a web app. Through your browser’s menu you put it on the home screen, and from then on it opens without the browser bar, like any other app.
Straight into the text field
On the phone you land right in the quick note: one field with the keyboard open, above it today’s notes, the streak and the question of the day, nothing else. “All” at the top leads into the whole app, “Write the day up” to the page in the evening. If you would rather start on Today, switch off “Start with the quick note” under My account, Look.
- Shortcut: Press and hold the icon and choose the shortcut to open the quick note directly.
- Sharing to nexdiary: In Android browsers that know how to share to web apps, you can send a text or a link from another app to nexdiary. Photos are not taken that way.
- Everything works: A bar at the bottom leads to Today, Journal, Statistics, Time capsules and Shared.
- What there is not: an app from the App Store or Play Store, and writing without a connection. Notes go straight to your server and need it to be reachable.
What else there is
A few things have pages of their own, because there is more to say about them.
Time capsules
Letters with photos that open only on a certain day. To yourself in a year, or to Mia on her 18th birthday.
Sharing a day
A single day goes to the people you choose. They read it and can send a heart. You can take it back at any time.
The family question
One question a day for everybody who takes part, for every age. You see the others’ answers as soon as you have answered yourself.
AI and writing prompts
Have a page written from your notes, let the AI ask first, templates and the question of the day. No AI is set up out of the box.
Security
Encrypted per person, a second factor required out of the box, passkeys, and a card that checks whether your server is ready for the internet.
Self-hosting
One container with Docker Compose, for amd64 and arm64. nexdiary is in the Unraid catalogue as well.
What nexdiary does not do
Some things you might expect from a diary are not here. Better to say so now than to disappoint later.
- No voice notes: Notes are typed.
- No export as text: There is the year as a book and the backup of the whole server, but no export of single entries as Markdown or JSON and no import from other diary apps.
- One page a day: Every day has one page and as many notes as you like. There is no shared diary for several people; each one belongs to one person.
- No videos: Photos yes, videos stay out.