Apple made a Journal app and left it on the iPhone. Day One made a good Mac app and put it behind a subscription. I wanted a journal I could open on my Mac, type into at a real keyboard, and pay for once — so I built Cozy.
It's a native Mac app, not a web page in a window
Cozy is a real macOS application. It follows the system light and dark mode, so it looks right at 8am and at midnight. macOS Text Replacements work in the editor — the shortcuts you already type expand the way they do everywhere else on your Mac.
Quick entry from the menu bar
Most thoughts worth writing down show up while you're doing something else. Cozy lives in the menu bar with a global shortcut, ⌘⇧C, that opens a small capture box. You write the line, hit save, and get back to what you were doing without ever opening the full window.
Photos and video from your iPhone drop straight in
Drag an iPhone photo onto an entry and it goes in — HEIC and all, no converting first. iPhone video in .mov format works the same way, and so do audio files and voice memos. The things you already capture on your phone become part of the day you're writing about.
Your journal is a folder of plain files
- Plain Markdown. Every entry is a .md text file you can read in any editor, now or in ten years.
- No account. There's nothing to sign up for and no password to forget.
- No server. The app doesn't phone home, so it works offline and nothing leaves your Mac unless you move it.
- No cloud lock-in. Because it's just a folder, you can put it in iCloud Drive yourself and open the same journal on another Mac or a PC.
One price, all your Macs
Cozy is $35, paid once. That single license covers every Mac you own — and your Windows PCs too — so there's no per-device math and no subscription quietly renewing every year.
If you came here from a Reddit thread
People keep asking, on Reddit and elsewhere, for a Mac journaling app that isn't a subscription and isn't iPhone-only. I looked for that app, couldn't find one I trusted, and built Cozy instead. If that's the thread that sent you here, this is the one I'd point you to.
Related reading: Cozy vs Apple Journal, Cozy vs Day One, and a private journaling app.