Can I use Day One or another journal app?

You can — but the provider sees your entries by default. If that is fine for you, that's fine. If the point is that nobody sees them, encryption at rest is the honest shape.

What if I want to write on my phone?

Note it on your phone in a temporary app; move the text into the sealed folder on your laptop at day's end. The laptop is the vault; the phone is a scratchpad.

Answers/The life queries

A truly private place to keep a journal on a laptop

A journal that you know a service could read, or a synced folder that a family member might stumble on, is a journal you will write differently. Real privacy is the condition, not a feature — the sentence you write when you are certain nobody else will read it is not the sentence you write otherwise. The setup that gets you there is boringly small.

The setup

One folder called 'journal', full of plain .md files — one per day, or one per entry. Any editor works. When you close the laptop, seal the folder; when you open the laptop, unseal.

Plain markdown means your journal will read on any computer in 2050. No app lock-in, no export mess later.

Why encryption specifically

OS-level user accounts don't help if a family member knows your login. Cloud-synced notes apps have the provider in the loop and often a preview thumbnail cached somewhere. Encryption at rest — a passphrase only you know — is the one setup where the sentence 'nobody but you can read this' is true without asterisks.

Elba is one HTML file that seals a folder with AES-256-GCM. No account, no server contact, no telemetry.

Questions people actually ask

Can I use Day One or another journal app?: You can — but the provider sees your entries by default. If that is fine for you, that's fine. If the point is that nobody sees them, encryption at rest is the honest shape.
What if I want to write on my phone?: Note it on your phone in a temporary app; move the text into the sealed folder on your laptop at day's end. The laptop is the vault; the phone is a scratchpad.

Take the island

Elba is one HTML file. It runs locally in a Chromium browser, seals a folder with AES-256-GCM, never phones home, and becomes open source on 1 January 2030.

€49MMXXVI· now ·
€39MMXXVII2027
€29MMXXVIII2028
€19MMXXIX2029
FreeMMXXX2030

the price falls each year · free to all 1 jan 2030

Take the island — €49

pay once · no account · nothing leaves