While many still keep a paper journal or diary handy, the Windows Store has a large selection of apps that can make recording the day's events a little easier. These journaling apps for Windows 10 have the ability to store your written thoughts, photographs and even drawings. Many are password protected to secure your personal thoughts and some have the ability to share your thoughts with other when desired.

These apps can be used to document personal experiences, work-related adventures or any other daily event you encounter. After careful consideration and searching high and low down the Windows Store aisles, we've pulled together a collection of the best journaling apps for Windows 10. I'm still partial to paper journals but these apps make a very strong argument for going digital. Let's see what we have discovered.

Journalist is more of a scrapbook than diary app but is a very capable app for Windows 10. The app has a variety of drawing tools as well as support for inserting images to your journal pages, audio clips and video footage. You can create vertical or horizontal scrolling parallax pages with four independent layers and save scrolling pages as videos.

Journalist has support for launching your camera to capture new images for pages, or you can insert existing photos from your gallery. There is also support for inserting map images of your location.

Additional features include:

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• Voice Command support to control the app while creating pages
• Pin Journals or pages to your Start Screen for easy access
• Create custom pens and pencils using color palettes from ColourLovers.com
• OneDrive support to save and synchronize journals between devices
• Pages can be saved in PNG, SVG, JPEG, TIF, JXT, GIF, MP4, WMV or AVI format

Available for Windows 10 PC and Mobile, Journalist does play out a bit better on a tablet than a phone. The larger screen of a tablet offers more real estate for designing and creating journal pages. Journalist is also available for Xbox One, but several features are disabled.

Journalist is a free Windows 10 app and a colorful option for documenting the events of your day.

PaperStreet Journal

PaperStreet Journal is a free journal app that is available for Windows 10 PC and Mobile. The app has support for both type written entries and drawn entries, but you cannot combine them. Additionally, switching between the two methods of entry could be better.

While the interface could use a little fine-tuning, PaperStreet Journal does offer password protection for your journal, entries can be searched by keyword and the app has a built-in spell checker. There is also support for voice-to-text entry, making PaperStreet an appealing option for hands-free journal entries. Your journal can be backed up locally in .RTF format with drawn entries saved in .PNG format.

When viewed in landscape orientation, a summary of your journal entries line the side of the display. Tap on an entry and the remainder of the screen is filled with the content, where you can add to or edit things.

While a capable journal app, switching between drawing and text entry requires you to go to the settings and make the change in the Preferences menu. If you do not switch between entry types, this is not an issue. If you do, I can see it being a bit cumbersome but not a deal breaker.

Dear Diary

In many ways, Dear Diary is the tale of two apps. The Windows 10 PC version of the journal app offers a few visual enhancements, while the Windows 10 Mobile version is more simplistic in nature.

The Windows 10 PC version offers password protection for your diary, mood music to play in the background and an illustrated journal sitting on a wooden desk for visual effects. Journal entries are made by keyboard (on-screen, or physical) and you can scroll through the journal pages with navigation a buttons or by specific date.

The Windows 10 Mobile version is more down and dirty. You do not have the mood music, password protection of the serene visual appearance. Just a blank page where you can log your journal entries. Entries can be entered through the on-screen keyboard or through a voice-to-text feature. Plus, you can have your Windows 10 Mobile device read back your entries. Scrolling between dates can be done by navigation buttons only.

Neither version of Dear Diary has support to insert images or drawings into your entries, nor can entries be synchronized between devices. While not as feature rich as other options, the simplicity of Dear Diary may be the app's strength. I would have liked to have seen the features of the app be more consistent, but in using both over the past few days, the simpler Windows 10 Mobile version seems to be the better of the two.

Dear Diary is a free app and if you are looking for a basic journal solution, it is worth checking out.

Diarium

Diarium may be the most functional diary/journal app for Windows 10. It allows you to keep up with all your memories through text entries with support to add audio, video, photos and more to fully document the events of your life.

Available for Windows 10 PC and Mobile, Diarium has full integration with your system calendar, password protection, along with integration with Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Swarm. You can back everything up to OneDrive and synchronize all your entries between devices and export the diary in DOXC, RTF, HTML or TXT format. If to add motion data to your diary entries there is a setting to achieve that, and you can automatically add weather data to boot. Diarium has support to add your location, include tags and rate your day from 1-5 stars.

If all that is not enough, Diarium also has notification support to remind you to make your daily entry. If you have ever tried to keep a journal or diary, one of the biggest challenges is remembering to make your entry. This feature is a great way to beat back that challenge.

On the downside, Diarium isn't the most glamorous app in the journal genre. You do have light and dark themes, along with a color wheel for custom accent colors, but there isn't a lot of flash to this Windows 10 app. And that may not be a bad thing. Diarium makes up for the lack of bling with a boatload of features to fully document your thoughts, experiences and memories.

Available for Windows 10 PC and Mobile, Diarium is currently priced at $4.99 and well worth the price of admission.

If you have experience using any of these journal apps for Windows 10, let us know what you think of things in the comments!

As with any roundup, we may have overlooked your favorite journal app. If such is the case, feel free to toss out your journal app recommendation in the comments as well.

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No matter who we are and the kinds of lives that we live, we all have memories, whether they're good or bad. Regardless, these memories are always worth remembering at some point, because who knows what will happen? What if we lost all of our memories one day and can't remember a thing? That's why keeping a journal is so important, even if you think it's silly, it's one way to recall all of the great events and milestones that occurred in your life.

In days old, people kept analog journals written in pen and paper. But now we're equipped with smartphones, and these are an even better way of keeping our memories intact since we probably have hundreds, or even thousands, of photos and videos to relive moments with.

These are the best apps for keeping a digital journal of your life as it happens.

Day One Journal

Day One Journal is my absolute favorite way to keep a journal. This beautiful app lets you create multiple journals and color code them for easy organization. All of your journal entries can be formatted with rich text options, have photos, include activity, location, and even weather data of your location, and more. The latest update added audio recording capabilities, a new intuitive editor, a gorgeous Dark Mode, and other slick features.

Day One Journal is free to download, but you have a few limitations on the number of journals you can keep and how many photos you can upload. If you go for a Premium subscription, which starts at $3.99 a month or $34.99 a year, unlocks unlimited journals, up to 30 photos per entry, audio recording, Dark Mode, 25 percent off of printed books, and more.

Momento

Momento is similar to Day One, except it's more about automation with your social network feeds. With Momento, you can manually create journal entries with some rich text formatting, multiple photos, tags, locations, and other bits of data that you want to remember. But the real magic lies within the ability to link up your social media accounts, which then populate each day's entries as you go. All of your updates and posts are fetched and pulled into Momento, so it's like a digital record of your private and online lives.

Momento is free to download and use, but you'll be limited to three social accounts. You can add three more through in-app purchases, or subscribe to Premium to get unlimited accounts. Premium starts at $3.99 a month.

Moodnotes

Keeping track of how you feel is just as important as remembering memories. Because some of us don't mind keeping track of our own mental health and well-being. Moodnotes is a sleek app that helps you track your moods and the reasons behind how you feel. The colorful interface is warm and welcoming, and it'll ask you how you're feeling. Pick a mood that reflects how you are doing, and each one of these is represented with an emote and color. You can choose to add more details to the entry, or just leave it as is.

If you opt for more details, the app asks you why you feel the way you do. Doing this makes you think and reflect on why you're feeling that way. For the negative moods, Moodnotes helps you identify traps that you've fallen into, and even give some tips on avoiding doing the same thing in the future.

Over time, Moodnotes keeps track of patterns in your moods and helps you get into the mindset of developing healthier perspectives. This app is most effective when used daily.

Journey

If you want something that's like Day One, but is available on pretty much every platform, then Journey is for you. Journey lets you create journal entries with text, photos and video, location, activity, and more. Journey is cross-platform and accessible on all platforms because it syncs seamlessly with Google Drive, and you can import Day One entries into Journey if you want to switch.

Journey, like the other journaling apps, is free to download and use, but you'll get the most out of the app by becoming a Premium subscriber. This starts at $3.99 a month or $29.99 per year.

Daylio

Like the idea of journaling but just don't have time? Then Daylio's micro-journaling method may be best for your needs. Daylio simply asks you to pick your mood for the day, and then add an activity to go along with it, presumably the one that makes you feel the way you do. This counts as an entry, and optionally, you can add some notes to it if needed, just like a traditional diary. But the core focus with Daylio is fast and simple micro journaling. As you use it more, it keeps track of your mood by showing the data in simple charts and graphs, and you'll see what your average mood is.

Grid Diary

If you tend to be someone who has trouble getting started with writing a journal entry from scratch, then Grid Diary is a good option. It uses journaling templates of inspiring questions to answer and has them all lined up in a grid. Pick the one you want to answer for the day and then write your answer as a journal entry. It's a good way to get some inspiration for your writing, and you can always use your answer as a lead-in to writing about your entire day.

For many, it's just hard to write, so having journaling templates is more effective in getting the juices flowing. You can also add photos to your entries, search for specific keywords, and sync your data. Grid Diary is free to download and use, but you can upgrade to Pro ($4.99 one-time purchase or $1.99 monthly) for passcode lock, multiple export formats, multiple reminders, custom font styles, and more.

Five Minute Journal

Do you have five minutes to spare each day? If so, then grab Five Minute Journal, because that's all you need. Five Minute Journal has writing prompts and questions that you answer quickly and easily. You can even add photos if you'd like, and there are also daily quotes to help inspire you, as well as weekly challenges. All of your entries get displayed in a beautiful timeline, where you can go back and reflect on memories with ease. There are also reminders, passcode lock, and backup/export to PDF options available.

Penzu

Penzu is a journaling app that focuses on your privacy. With Penzu, you're able to create rich text entries with photos and sync your journal to access on the web for free. All you have to do is create a free Penzu account. However, to get the most out of Penzu, you'll need Penzu Pro, which you can get for $4.99 a month, $19.99 a year.

Penzu Pro unlocks all of the available features, such as passcode lock for your journals, unlimited journals and photos, customize journal covers, and more.

What are your favorites?

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These are some of the best journaling apps we've come across in the App Store at the moment. Personally, I'm a huge fan of Day One and have been using it as my journal for years now.

What are your favorite apps for journaling? Or do you prefer to stick with pen and paper? Let us know in the comments!

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