San Francisco
A private journal made for the city that built the alternative.
If you've spent the day instrumenting other people's products, you might want a notebook that has been instrumented by no one.
Plenty of San Franciscans are quietly tired of being legible to the systems they helped build. The Eternal Journal is one small place to be illegible again.
Local-first. Encrypted. Verifiable.
The file is not minified — open it in your editor and read the code. The cryptography is browser-standard AES-256-GCM with PBKDF2; the architecture has no second copy to leak.
The Typewriter Experience
The cursor stays. The text moves.
In Write mode, your cursor remains exactly at the centre of the screen. The page rises up to meet it. Past words fade into soft shadow at the edges, leaving the present sentence in clear focus. Switch to Read mode and the entry flattens into an evenly lit document — the fade is for writing; the flat light is for returning.
Radical Privacy & Encryption
AES-256-GCM, in your browser, with a key only you derive.
- ·PBKDF2 key derivation at 600,000 iterations — the OWASP 2024 recommendation. Existing journals upgrade transparently on first unlock.
- ·No accounts, no telemetry, no analytics, no cookies, no third-party scripts.
- ·IndexedDB storage with a localStorage fallback. Encrypted before it touches the disk.
- ·The file is not minified. You can read the source. We'd rather you trust it than us.
What It Does Not Do
- ✕No word counts chasing you across the screen.
- ✕No formatting toolbar wrestling your thoughts into neatness.
- ✕No cloud sync. No distant servers. Your words stay yours.
- ✕No social sharing. Your vulnerability is not content.
- ✕No AI assistant finishing your sentences.
- ✕No streak counters. No guilt. No gamification.
- ✕No subscriptions. No mood trackers. No noise.
Licensing & Gift Copy
One purchase covers up to three of your personal devices. It also includes a second untouched copy of the file — meant to be given to one person you trust. Lifetime updates. 30-day, no-questions refund. If you run a clinic, school, or workplace and want a copy for everyone, ask us about a site licence.
Questions
Can I audit the source?
Yes. The HTML file is unminified and readable. You can verify the encryption flow and confirm there are no outbound network calls after first load.
Is the crypto end-to-end?
There is no other end. Encryption and decryption happen entirely in your browser; nothing is ever transmitted. "End-to-end" is technically inaccurate because there is only one end — yours.
Do you use any third-party analytics or SDKs in the app?
None in the journal itself. Zero scripts, zero pixels, zero SDKs. The marketing site is a separate concern with privacy-respecting analytics; the journal file ships clean.
More in By Location
See all →A private journal for an American moment that demands one.
No data brokers. No subpoenable cloud copy. No "de-identified" usage telemetry quietly sold downstream.
A private journal for a city that is mostly other people's noise.
Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, Staten Island, Manhattan when it lets you. Open the file. Write.
A private journal for the long quiet between meetings.
Echo Park to Santa Monica, an offline notebook that does not turn what you write into a marketable signal.
A private journal for a city that talks too much in public.
Quiet software for the writing you don't post.
A private journal designed for British writers and readers.
No data leaves your machine. No cross-border transfer questions. No subject access requests to file — there's nothing to access.
A private journal for the city that never quite goes quiet.
London is louder than most places. Your inner life shouldn't have to be.
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Core
A private, offline journal that asks nothing of you.
One file. One password. Yours forever. No accounts, no cloud, no algorithms reading your three-in-the-morning thoughts.
Core
An encrypted journal where the passphrase never leaves your device.
AES-256-GCM with PBKDF2 key derivation at 600,000 iterations — the OWASP 2024 recommendation. Done in your browser, not on a server.
Core
A journal that doesn't track you. At all. Ever.
No analytics. No cookies. No third-party scripts. No "anonymous usage data." If you view the file source, you'll see for yourself.
Comparisons
The Eternal Journal vs Day One.
Both are journals. They're built on opposite assumptions about where your writing should live.
The cursor will be there when you return.
Centered. Blinking. Patient.
Start Writing