Where your files live

This is the part of Cozy that matters most: nothing is stored on a server. Your journal is a regular folder on your computer, full of plain files you can open with any app. Your thoughts, experiences, and writing are yours forever.

What’s in a journal folder

When you create a journal, you choose its folder. Inside, you’ll find:

• One Markdown file per entry, like 2026-06-07-coffee-with-marta.md.
• Your media — photos, video, and audio — sitting right next to the entries that use them.
• A small config file holding that journal’s own settings.

Filenames stick to characters every operating system accepts. A ? or a : is perfectly legal on a Mac or an iPhone but not on Windows, and a single file Windows won’t take can stall a cloud service syncing the whole folder onto a PC, not just that one file. Cozy renames those as it opens a journal, so a journal written on one machine opens cleanly on another.

What’s saved inside an entry

Each entry file holds your writing in plain Markdown, plus the entry’s details at the top of the file: its date, your mood and any other tracker values, the location, and tags. Your formatting is ordinary Markdown too.

Because all of it lives inside the file, you can open an entry in any other editor and read it exactly as you’d expect. And if you ever want to run your own tools, or even an AI of your choosing, over your journal, you can, on your own terms.

No AI, by default

Cozy doesn’t use AI and doesn’t send your entries anywhere. They’re plain files on your computer. Anything you do with them beyond that is your call.

Cozy names that folder the way you typed the journal’s name, so a journal called “Daily Journal” gets a Daily Journal folder, capitals and spaces intact.

Per-journal settings

Every journal has its own settings, stored in that config file inside its folder, so you can set each journal up differently. Move or back up the folder and its settings come along with it.

Moving a journal’s folder

Settings shows where each journal lives and lets you point Cozy at a new folder. If you’ve already moved the folder yourself, dragged it into iCloud Drive, say, just choose the new spot instead of removing the journal and adding it back.

Moving an entry between journals

Right-click an entry (or a selection) and choose Move to journal. Cozy copies the writing and any media into the journal you pick and removes them from the old one, so nothing is left behind or broken.

Backing up

Because a journal is just a folder, backing it up is whatever you already do with folders: copy it to an external drive, or keep it in a cloud folder that backs itself up. See Sync across devices for keeping it in step across machines.