Can your journal app read your diary? What encryption actually means
By PlanJour team, Sparklithic Ltd · Published · Updated
Most journalling apps can read everything you write. A few cannot. The difference is not what the privacy policy says — it is what the software is capable of.
The question worth asking
Before you write something you would not say out loud, it is reasonable to ask who can read it. Most people check the privacy policy. That is the wrong document.
A privacy policy is a promise about behaviour: we will not look. Encryption is a statement about capability: we cannot. Those are very different things, and only one of them survives a change of ownership, a subpoena, or a breach.
The three postures, and how to tell them apart
Almost every journalling app falls into one of three groups.
Plain storage. Entries sit in a database the company can query. Staff access is governed by policy and access controls. This is the overwhelming majority of apps, including some very good ones, and it is not disgraceful — it is simply the default.
Encrypted at rest. The disk is encrypted. This protects against somebody stealing the hardware and almost nothing else, because the service holds the key and decrypts on every read. Marketing copy often presents this as though it were the next category. It is not.
End-to-end encrypted. Entries are encrypted on your device with a key the server never receives. The company can show you ciphertext and nothing else.
How to check which one you are using
You do not have to take anyone's word for it. Two questions settle it:
Can the app search your entries on the server? If searching works instantly across years of writing on a new device, the service can read your entries. Search over ciphertext it cannot decrypt is not possible.
Can it email you a summary of what you wrote? Weekly recaps that quote your own words are a useful feature and a definitive answer: something on a server read your diary to write that email.
Neither is a scandal. They are just incompatible with end-to-end encryption, and an app offering both while claiming the latter is confused about one of them.
What end-to-end encryption costs you
This is the part most pages skip, and skipping it is why people do not believe the claim.
Turn it on in PlanJour and your journal is encrypted in your browser with a recovery key our servers never receive. The consequences are real and we would rather you knew them before you choose:
- Server-side search stops. Only what is on the current device can be searched.
- The weekly recap stops quoting your entries. It can still tell you that you wrote on five days; it cannot tell you what you said.
- The calendar assistant cannot read your journal. It never could, but now it could not even if we changed our minds.
- If you lose the recovery key, the entries are gone. Not recoverable by support, because there is nothing on our side to recover them from.
That last point is the honest cost of the guarantee. An app that can reset your password and still show you your diary was never encrypting it from you.
What stays readable, and why
In PlanJour, dates, mood and habit ticks stay readable even with encryption on. Thoughts, wins, gratitude, affirmations, kept lines and photos are encrypted.
The reason is proportion. A date plus the word "low" is metadata, not a diary. Encrypting it would buy very little privacy and cost the streaks, the album and the year view that make the thing worth using.
Choosing
If you journal about ordinary days, plain storage from a company you trust is a perfectly rational choice, and you should pick on features instead.
If you write about your marriage, your health, your employer or your faith, choose capability over promises — from us or from anyone else.
End-to-end encryption is part of PlanJour Plus. Start free and turn it on when you are ready; the free plan journals perfectly well without it.