New Plugin: Journals

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1

New plugin for journaling in Obsidian. Initially inspired by Periodic Notes that unfortunately seems to be abandoned.

  • Calendar based journals (daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly notes)
  • Interval based journals (like finantial quarters or sprints)
  • You can configure many different journals based on your needs
  • Every note type configured separately (path to store, templates etc)
  • Variables to insert journal related data into paths/note name/template content.
  • Creating current journal notes on vault open
  • Opening journal note on startup
  • Code blocks for journal notes for easier navigation

Github repo: GitHub - srg-kostyrko/obsidian-journal
Install: Plugins - Obsidian

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The guy who wrote Periodic Notes is Liam Cane. He is an Obsidian employee, one of the chief developers. He also wrote the calendar plugin.

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Impressive plugin that is well thought out and feature rich. I like that it can be used alongside the existing journal plugins, but functions similarly enough that it can also be a drop-in replacement allowing users to get their feet wet and eventually easily integrate it into their workflow.

I briefly tested the plugin, so I mightā€™ve missed these options, but I can think of three minor improvements that would make it a serious contender to replace the existing plugins:

  • Have an option to have the the nav bar navigate to the previous or next existing note as opposed to just yesterday or tomorrow because some journals donā€™t have an entry everyday.
  • Have the calendar indicate if there is an existing note for a date and have the option to ask the user when clicked if they want to create the note if itā€™s not created already. The existing mini calendar places a dot under the date for every X number of words, but all thatā€™s really needed is to see where entries exist at a glance.
  • Have a tabbed or dropdown menu that allows the calendar to swap between journals so that there doesnā€™t need to be a separate calendar/note for each journal and makes navigation painless. This is useful for users that keep their mini calendar in the sidebar.

These changes would go a long way to having me replace the existing plugins because I currently use Templater to create additional journal entries. It works, but itā€™s janky and not elegant like your plugin.

Another idea to consider, but isnā€™t really important is to have the weekly timeline act as a navigation table for all the created journals allowing me to see if thereā€™s a existing note for a particular day and be able to quickly navigate to it without having to use the command palette or links.

Thanks for creating and sharing the plugin. I really do like the nag bar because it elevates the journal look.

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Nice work, well done! Already reported some minor issues or questions as issues on GitHub.

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Is it possible to use my existing journal entries (from the Periodic Notes plugin) with this plugin, if i use the same folder structure? I would like to give this a try, however, I donā€™t want to risk having issues with my existing files (or even lose them?). Thank you.

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Sorry for later replay, I just forgot to check forum for some time.

I created an issue on github to add this.

I recently added separate calendar view similar to calendar plugin intended to improve navigation.

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it safe to use this plugin alongside Periodic Notes if you use same folder and titles. The only caveat right now is that journal plugin uses frontmatter to connect notes to journals, so it will not ā€œknowā€ about existing notes until you either

  • open it through any navigation from plugin (like calendar view or any code blocks) as at this point plugin will recheck and add missing frontmatter entries
  • or use Connect note command to connect existing note to journal manually (useful if a note is not in configured folder or has title different from name template)

Iā€™m working right now on a command to go though existing notes and connect them to journal in bulk. Hope to get it within week or two.

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Thank you very much ruyu!

I have deactivated the calendar plugin, Periodic Notes & Daily Notes and everything seems to work with the Journals plugin only.

I saw the icon ā€œadd existing notes to journalā€ in the Journals settings (v1.3.0) and used it to add my previous daily and weekly notes (created with Periodic Notes) to my journal (i called it ā€œLifeā€). This function added the following entries in frontmatter to all my previous daily and weekly notes:

journal: life
journal-start-date: 2024-03-31 (Date from the Title of the daily or weekly note)
journal-end-date: 2024-03-31 (Date from the Title of the daily or weekly note)
journal-section: day

Everything worked fine and the daily and weekly notes are now represented through a point in the Journals Calendar.

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I really like this plugin! It already has all the main features Iā€™ve been hoping to find.

Question: At the moment I have two different daily journals set up. Would it be possible to get an Obsidian command for each individual journal, rather than the generic ā€˜Open todayā€™s noteā€™ that then gives an input prompt for selecting the journal? This would make it easier for non-programmers like myself to automate navigating to the desired entry.

In my particular case Iā€™m trying to make a button (using Meta Bind) that opens todayā€™s note for journal 1 and another that opens it for journal 2 so that I can get this done with one click from my preferred location. I tried fiddling around with macros but couldnā€™t figure out how to automate handling the input prompt.

Thank you for this plugin!

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I did not want to increase number of commands - it is 9 for calendar journals now, so it will be multiplied by number of journals, plus making journal specific commands would require Obsidian reload to be applied after command related changes, it looked more intuitive to make just generic commands.

But looks like using commands for different automations is very common so Iā€™ll think on how better introduce more fine grained commands into plugin. Iā€™m not sure about ETA for this feature - Iā€™m in a middle of big rework to plugin.

As a temporary solution for your case I can suggest using input command on Meta Bind button

```meta-bind-button
label: "Open journal one"
id: "test"
style: 'default'
actions:
   - type: command
     command: "journals:journal:calendar:open-day"
   - type: input
     str: journal one name

This way journal list would be filtered to just one journal and you need to hit enter to open a note. It is not ideal as it requires one more key stroke but this is the best I could find with current state of plugin.

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Thanks @ruyu for the quick response. :slight_smile: What you suggest is exactly what Iā€™m doing as a workaround. My ADHD would very much appreciate if I didnā€™t have to shift my attention from wherever my mind is to needing to hit enter (or memorise that I have to do so). I can see though that the number of commands would easily get overwhelming when thereā€™s more than one journal.

Being able to do multiple journals is a great feature! I have one that has my basic level daily notes with tasks etc. and another for long form, written journal entries that I want to keep uncluttered so they only include text and images. Itā€™s very convenient that I can quickly access both from the same calendar.

Iā€™ll be looking forward to future updates.