Create your first journal

A journal in Cozy is simply a folder on your computer. You can have as many journals as you like: one for everyday life, one for travel, one for work, each in its own folder with its own settings.

Start fresh or bring one in

When Cozy opens to your home screen, you have two paths:

• Start a new journal — Cozy asks you to pick a folder where your entries will live. Choose anywhere you like: your Documents, a Dropbox or iCloud folder, an external drive. This folder is your journal.
• Import an existing journal — already journaling in Day One, Obsidian, or Bear? Cozy can bring your history in so you don’t start from a blank page. See Import from other apps.

Thinking about sync?

If you want your journal on more than one device, put its folder inside a cloud folder like iCloud Drive or Dropbox now, when you create it. Everything you write lands in the right place from the start. More in Sync across devices.

What a new journal starts with

A fresh journal comes ready to write in. It also includes a ready-made Mood tracker (Great / Good / Meh / Low / Bad) so the feature is easy to find on day one. You can rename it, change its options, or remove it entirely. See Tags, places & trackers.

Switching and adding journals

You can create or open another journal at any time from the app menu (New Journal / Open). Each journal keeps its own settings, stored in a small config file inside its folder, so you can set each one up differently.

You can also move an entry from one journal to another later if you file something in the wrong place, or point a journal at a new folder if you’ve moved it.

To remove a journal you no longer want, use Settings. Cozy only forgets it. The folder and every file inside stay right where they are.

Color-coding your journals

When you keep a few journals, give each its own color and icon so you can tell them apart at a glance. Right-click a journal in the sidebar and choose Edit (or open Settings) to pick a color from Cozy’s palette and an emoji of your own. Want a color that isn’t in the palette? Click the + swatch to open your system color picker and choose any shade. Leave the color on Auto and Cozy keeps choosing one for you.

That color does more than mark the badge. The whole interface tints to match the journal you’re in: links, bullets, checkboxes, calendar highlights, and the selection ring all pick up the color, and shift when you switch journals. If you’d rather keep the editor on the default warm theme, tick Use this color for highlights off and the journal keeps its badge color without tinting the rest of the app.

Light, dark, and System themes

Cozy comes with a warm light theme and a soft dark one. Switch between them in Settings → Themes, or straight from the menu bar. Choose System and Cozy follows your Mac or Windows appearance setting — light through the day, dark at night — and flips the moment your OS does. Each theme card shows a live preview in its real colors, so you can see the dark palette before you settle on it.

See every journal at once

Keep more than one journal and an All journals row appears at the top of the list. Pick it and Cozy gathers every journal into a single feed, newest first, each entry wearing a little colored dot for the journal it came from. The calendar, map, On This Day, search, and filters all span the whole collection until you click back into a single journal. It’s a place to read across everything you’ve kept, and you can start a new entry without leaving it: Cozy asks which journal to put it in, or just writes it in the one you keep. More in Calendar & map views.

Next

You’re ready to write. Head to Writing entries.