A private journal app with lock, multiple journals, images, and search.
About Simple Journal - Private Notes
Simple Journal - Private Notes is a lifestyle app developed by Magille Ltd.
Download Statistics
Simple Journal - Private Notes has been downloaded 150 thousand times. In the last 30 days, the app was downloaded 2.2 thousand times.
User Ratings
Simple Journal - Private Notes is rated 4.45 out of 5 stars. The rating is based on 1.4 thousand ratings.
App Information
Simple Journal - Private Notes is FREE to download. The last update was on September 8, 2025.
Technical Requirements
Simple Journal - Private Notes requires Android 11+ or higher. The app has a content rating of Everyone. The app has been available on Google Play November 2014.
Description
A private journal app with lock.
Need a place to write? Work on your thoughts and take notes. Great for writers. And for anyone who needs to get things off their mind.
Writing is powerful. Writing brings clarity. Simple Journal is built for this.
Write freely: Document your life, work on your thoughts, jot down notes, and store things worth remembering
For you to be able to write freely, even about sensitive topics, this app has been designed and built ground-up just for this purpose with privacy in mind: No ads. No forced cloud subscriptions. You are not the product, and your entries are and stay yours. Your entries are stored on your device by default.
Categorize your notes and journal entries into multiple journals or categories. Add images to your notes. Search through your existing notes, all of them at once, or only in the journal you have open.
Distraction-free editor
The editor has gotten a lot of special love to keep it as distraction-free and straightforward as possible. It is you, and what you want to write or think about. Nothing else.
Focus of the app has always been on giving you a place to write when you need one.
Editor has support for basic formatting and has quite a lot of customizability without taking away from the distraction-free experience many writers and ordinary people wanting to jot down notes short or long have come to appreciate over the years.
Keep your text safe
Continuous auto-save means you won't lose your work when you rotate your device or run out of battery.
Lock your journal to keep it secure
Simple Journal has extensive settings around locking and auth, as often the biggest threat to your privacy comes from people closest to you, and the random people you may have to hand over your device to. Ever been there? You know if you know.
You can tweak the settings and allow unlocking the app with any of the following: device credential (such as a pattern, pin or biometrics), custom Simple Journal specific password, or fingerprint which is the default.
Sync your journal and notes to YOUR Google Drive, with strong AES-256 encryption
With the upgrade you can sync your journals to your Google Drive and across your Android and Chromebook devices. This will make sure that you don't lose your journal and notes even if you lose or manage to destroy your phone. If you have multiple devices such as a phone and a tablet or a chromebook, or a secondary phone, you can keep your journal entries and attached images synced across all of them. A full copy of your private journal is kept on each device and (encrypted if you want) in your Drive. There's plenty of redundancy and you stay in control of your own data. This is the recommended way to keep your notes safely backed up, as we do not have them, and never will!
Backup and export manually
You can always move your data to a new device manually with the data import and export system, which can also be used for backups. This system is very robust and moves tens of thousands of journal entries and many gigabytes of images without a hitch!
Free features
✅ No ads ✅ Lock automatically (fingerprint, password, or device credential) ✅ Continuous auto-save ✅ Distraction-free editor ✅ Light and dark themes ✅ Multiple journals ✅ Inline images ✅ Search through entries ✅ Location tags (optional) ✅ Font customization ✅ Basic formatting (bold, italic, underline, highlight, strikethrough) ✅ Auto-indent ✅ Scrambled mode (write without unlocking) ✅ Keyboard shortcuts ✅ Export/import for manual backups
Pro features
✅ Encrypted sync to YOUR Google Drive 🔐 Backup your journal and sync across Android/Chromebook devices. End-to-end encrypted. ✅ Printable HTML exports 🖨️ ✅ Export individual journals ✅ Encrypted manual exports (AES-256) ✅ Home screen shortcuts ✅ Pin important entries ✅ Custom color themes ✅ Font size control with volume keys ✅ Advanced sorting options ✅ Word and character counters
Get a detailed PDF report for Simple Journal - Private Notes with download trends, rating history,
and key performance statistics — useful for competitive research or tracking your own app.
Learn more
Are you the developer of this app? Join us for free to see more information about your app and learn how we can help you promote and earn money with your app.
Comments on Simple Journal - Private Notes for Android
★★★★★Holly· Jul 12, 2025
Very helpful and easy to use even just using the none premium version. My entries are automatically timed and dated which is a wonderful feature for me. Thank you for actually creating" simple" app.
★★★★★Danielle Powers· Jul 20, 2024
I like the app. It provides a way to keep an electronic journal. I pay for the basic version. I can edit it other than the day I write it. I can do different journals. I wrote a couple of Church talks with it. I like the versatility of it.
★★★★☆Ellie· Jan 15, 2026
This app has been great for me. Literally just a simple journal. But with the recent update, I'm not happy with the bright pink "back up your notes" ad at the bottom (and yes, it's an ad, because they are trying to get me to buy the feature). It was fine before when it was subtle and not in my face. I'm considering other options.
★★☆☆☆Ben Covington· Nov 19, 2024
It was everything I wanted and I love it. But for some reason ever since the beginning of November it keeps forcibly scrolling to the bottom of any entry I'm editing. Since I use this for notes, that makes it difficult to edit anywhere but the end of the notes.
★★☆☆☆Aiden Roten· Mar 15, 2026
This journaling app is clean and helpful for logging thoughts that I may have, and I have used it for a while. The inability to screenshot journal entries, or send their data elsewhere besides within the app is a flawed design in my view. If the phone is lost, or if it must be reset, then all data goes with it. I understand that income is necessary, but at this rate, I would just make the app a paid one, or include ads without data tracking.
★☆☆☆☆S. Dale Amburgey· Feb 9, 2025
No customer service. I had to switch phones. Don't remember having to set up a passphrase, so I don't remember what it was I used so long ago. Tried looking for a customer service contact. Or account recovery. Or passphrase recovery. Don't even have a way to save your journals off-line. Where in the hell is the drive sync saved to? Too many questions and not enough answers.
Google Play Rankings for Simple Journal - Private Notes
This app is not ranked
Technologies used by Simple Journal - Private Notes
Simple Journal - Private Notes is requesting 0 permissions and is using 14 libraries.
Show details
Back to top
AppBrain Intelligence premium content
Subscribe now to get full and unlimited access to AppBrain Intelligence.
You'll have access to:
Each subscription will automatically renew 3 days before the expiration date for
the same time period. Subscriptions can be cancelled at any time before the renewal.
