Looking for an App That Timestamps Each Entry

[Sojourn71]

Looking For An Open-Source Journal/Text Editor/Note Taking App That Timestamps Each Entry, Stores all Data On-Device, and is Linux-Friendly

When I say "each entry," I mean overtime I hit "Enter." I don't really care about a ton of bells and whistles as long as it has that.

I keep a running journal of some things that did/did not happen for weeks at a time, and I need to be able to accurately recall when entries were made. I know I can do it manually with almost anything, but I also know I can be forgetful as all hell when things get going.

I know a couple of people looked at me today like such an idea was crazy talk, but instant messengers have been time stamping each entry for years now.

If it were Android-friendly as well, that would be nice, but not a must.

If there really isn't such a thing Is there an easy macro I can toggle on when I need to that will accomplish the same thing?

 

[MikeRocor]

Seems like this would be a straightforward scripting project. If you only need a piece of text with a timestamp, something like this might do:

#!/bin/sh
# mylog - enter a bit of text into a log file with     lem 2026-06-22 00:02
#         time and date stamp.  Hit enter on an empty comment to exit.

LOG=/tmp/mylog.txt
STAMPFMT="+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S"

while read -p "Type a log entry: " ENTRY ; do
  [ -z "${ENTRY}" ] && exit
  echo "`date "${STAMPFMT}"` ${ENTRY}" |tee -a ${LOG}
done

 

[wizardfromoz]

@Sojourn71 just a note on good forum etiquette or manners - if you are going to post the same question at more than one forum, it is better to let each one know you have done so.

We cannot be expected to read minds of their members, nor they ours. Otherwise people can waste their time or give contradictory advice.

I am speaking of

https://www.reddit.com/r/productivity/comments/1uby43f/opensource_journal_app_that_timestamps_each_entry

One person there suggested Obsidian, have you tried that yet?

You should also tell us what Linux distro you are using and version number.

Chris Turner
wizardfromoz

 

[Sojourn71]

@Sojourn71 just a note on good forum etiquette or manners - if you are going to post the same question at more than one forum, it is better to let each one know you have done so.

We cannot be expected to read minds of their members, nor they ours. Otherwise people can waste their time or give contradictory advice.

I am speaking of

https://www.reddit.com/r/productivity/comments/1uby43f/opensource_journal_app_that_timestamps_each_entry

One person there suggested Obsidian, have you tried that yet?

You should also tell us what Linux distro you are using and version number.

Chris Turner
wizardfromoz

If it were such critical etiquette, then you would think there would have been obvious notices at both forums. I must've missed that.

In all seriousness, I have posted the same or very similar question on multiple forums covering all sorts of topics for decades...and this is the first time anyone's taken a moment to inform me of my egregious error.

I'll tell you something though, In terms of manners, it's definitely bad form to be critical rather than informative and encouraging when encountering someone new who you feel isn't doing something the way you feel it should be.

No, I have not tried Obsidian yet, and I haven't posted distro information again because I'm in the process of migrating from one to the other, and life's really "shown up," this weekend.

 

[linuxjedi]

crazy idea but if you are ok using the command line, the logger command will send your message to syslog (timestamp, server, userid, pid and your message) like this:

$ loggger "this is my entry for today"

and then you can retrieve your entries like this

$ journalctl -r|grep xuser

Jun 22 20:29:30 ganimide xuser[77903]: this is my entry for yesterday
Jun 22 20:29:24 ganimide xuser[77899]: this is my entry for tomorrow
Jun 22 20:23:54 ganimide xuser[77638]: this is my entry for today

if you format your entries like "entry: This a new entry......." the grep will be easier

The entries will also be available in /var/log/syslog (in Ubuntu).

You can configure rsyslog to write to a specific logfile

just an idea

 

[linuxjedi]

If it were such critical etiquette, then you would think there would have been obvious notices at both forums. I must've missed that.

In all seriousness, I have posted the same or very similar question on multiple forums covering all sorts of topics for decades...and this is the first time anyone's taken a moment to inform me of my egregious error.

I'll tell you something though, In terms of manners, it's definitely bad form to be critical rather than informative and encouraging when encountering someone new who you feel isn't doing something the way you feel it should be.

No, I have not tried Obsidian yet, and I haven't posted distro information again because I'm in the process of migrating from one to the other, and life's really "shown up," this weekend.

shall be write a report as well?

 

[Trml]

I stayed away from Obsidian, because I dislike it is not open-source. I have tried Joplin as an alternative and don't like its interface. I have yet to have a closer look at the alternatives Logseq and Zettlr, Obsidian refer to themselves: https://obsidian.rocks/why-isnt-obsidian-open-source/

I do use markdown a lot (like Obsidian does). Combining markdown files with a simple local git repo gives you most accurate timestamps (git log) and the whole host of git features (once you discover you'd like one for your notes, you will likely find git has it solved).

 

[osprey]

I keep a running journal of some things that did/did not happen for weeks at a time, and I need to be able to accurately recall when entries were made. I know I can do it manually with almost anything, but I also know I can be forgetful as all hell when things get going.

If you are running systemd, the systemd-cat command can enter into the journal whatever you configure to be so, whether it's a comment, the output from a script, the output of some user or system command etc., and it's given a time and date just as all other entries are given such.

Here is a simple example:

echo "ThisIsAJournalEntryUsingSystemd-Cat" | systemd-cat

And the journal entry appears thus:

[~]$ journalctl -b | tail
Jun 22 22:05:01 min CRON[168879]: pam_unix(cron:session): session opened for user root(uid=0) by root(uid=0)
Jun 22 22:05:01 min CRON[168881]: (root) CMD (command -v debian-sa1 > /dev/null && debian-sa1 1 1)
Jun 22 22:05:01 min CRON[168879]: pam_unix(cron:session): session closed for user root
Jun 22 22:05:05 min dhclient[785]: DHCPREQUEST for 192.168.0.6 on enp3s0 to 192.168.0.1 port 67
Jun 22 22:05:15 min dhclient[785]: DHCPREQUEST for 192.168.0.6 on enp3s0 to 192.168.0.1 port 67
Jun 22 22:05:19 min cat[168925]: ThisIsAJournalEntryUsingSystemd-Cat <---ENTRY INTO JOURNAL
Jun 22 22:05:25 min dhclient[785]: DHCPREQUEST for 192.168.0.6 on enp3s0 to 192.168.0.1 port 67
Jun 22 22:05:37 min dhclient[785]: DHCPREQUEST for 192.168.0.6 on enp3s0 to 192.168.0.1 port 67
Jun 22 22:05:52 min dhclient[785]: DHCPREQUEST for 192.168.0.6 on enp3s0 to 192.168.0.1 port 67
Jun 22 22:05:59 min dhclient[785]: DHCPREQUEST for 192.168.0.6 on enp3s0 to 192.168.0.1 port 67