However, how do one access their diary, when you stopped maintaining it? Is this targeted more at the technically inclined, high-profile people who need to keep secrets?
Personally, I believe that for something like a diary/journal, it should be in a format easily readable by most tools (so a Plain-Text or a MarkDown at best), then it is in a container/folder. Now, encrypt that container/folder instead. In the future, when you need to change the tool for Encryption/Decryption, move the container/folder.
For instance, tools such as https://cryptomator.org comes to mind.
1) Can I still read my data in 10 years? That’s mostly about open, well-documented formats + an export path. A journaling app can still be “safe” here if it can export to Markdown/plain-text (or at least JSON) and the on-disk schema is documented.
2) Can I decrypt it in 10 years? That’s about using boring primitives (AES-GCM, Argon2/scrypt/PBKDF2) and keeping the crypto layer simple. If it’s standard crypto, you’re not locked to one vendor the way you might be with a bespoke format.
The “plain files in an encrypted folder” approach (Cryptomator/VeraCrypt) is totally reasonable—and arguably the simplest threat model—but you do give up a lot of what makes a journal app nice (full-text search, tags, structured metadata, conflict handling, etc.). SQLite + client-side encryption is a fine compromise if there’s a solid export and the KDF/password story is strong.
The biggest real risk is still: losing the password. A printable recovery key / key export would help more than switching formats.
If necessary for things like search, add a cache file to the folder.
I used Notational Velocity in those days :) A rare gem of ergonomics.
Later I did the same thing with a VeraCrypt volume.
Now I'm in Obsidian, which has its own encryption (if you trust 'em!), but never quite got the frictionless feeling of NV back.
It's just a bit of a pain to set up, and also, not mobile-friendly.
Here's a tip: GitHub now allows you to embed a proper video in your README. (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4279611/how-to-embed-a-v...). Quality would be much better, and people can navigate back-and-forth in the video.
It's a paid app, not open source, but I've been using it for years and it has been working very well for me.
But your feedback is still valid. It's unfortunate that OP used the login screen as the last frame; it'd be better to show the app as the last frame, or just loop the animation.
Speaking of which, I have notes / journal entries dating back several decades, all in plain text files. I'm worried about these new projects and their longevity and whether it'll be actively supported 30 years from now. For simplicity, I'd use gocryptfs, Veracrypt, or other general file-based encryption which suits your risk tolerance, and use whatever editor (ie Obsidian, vscode, OneNote, etc) I want to use.
I already pay for a journaling website where I know I can always recover my journals as long as I have access to my Gmail.
So, while I appreciate this security first mindset, for me it actually becomes less interesting. I want my journal to sync to the cloud, I want to be able to unlock it, I don't want to risk losing years of journals if I forget a single key.
For example, if you set up a password and a key, you can use your key, and if it gets lost or compromised, you can still log in with the password, remove the old key, and generate a new one.
You can do the same in reverse: just use the password and keep the key in a safe place (like a password manager or a physical USB), and if you lose your password, you can still get access with the key.
Thanks again!
I think you should be more cautious about relying on the services of a company like Google that can arbitrarily decide to remove your account data or access. Similar, though the person was fortunate enough to regain access: https://hey.paris/posts/appleid/
You can mitigate hardware failure and data loss, especially for a simple key, but you may not be able to prevent Google from deciding your account is gone one day.
I find this interesting mostly to understand how you are handling encryption and security. I think this is one approach but others expressed concern over long term viability.
Using Tauri is also very interesting. How did you find using it for this simpler case?
Anyhow, very cool project. Don't aband it :)
Regarding Tauri, I liked it a lot. This is my first time using it for any serious project.
I will improve the experience for this use case in follow up releases, by for example being able to define a arbitrary path for your db file.
Thanks for the feedback!
That's a good win-win situation.
As a fellow obsidian user, I wouldn't scoff at a simple app which does one thing well.
is there a reason we aren’t using high level crypto libraries in 2026?
On the libraries: Mini Diarium actually does use established, widely audited crates rather than rolling its own primitives. See https://github.com/RustCrypto/AEADs for AES-256-GCM, https://github.com/RustCrypto/password-hashes for key derivation, and https://github.com/dalek-cryptography/curve25519-dalek + https://github.com/RustCrypto/KDFs for the key file ECIES scheme. The thin cipher.rs wrapper just handles nonce prepending with no custom crypto primitives.
On key reuse: the master key is intentionally shared across entries (as in Signal, 1Password, etc.), but each encrypt() call generates a fresh 96-bit nonce from the OS CSPRNG, so the (key, nonce) pair is never repeated.
That said, I am not a security expert by any means. If you've spotted something concrete, a specific call site, a protocol flaw, or a library you'd swap in, I'd genuinely love to hear it. Open to PRs or a discussion issue.
Regards
More here: https://alabhya.me/rclone
Until the OS needs more memory and swaps your secrets out.
If your machine is fully compromised or actively monitored by a threat actor with physical access, then this tool would not cover you, that's for sure.
If you have any concrete recommendations, I can even give it a try in one of the next releases.
Thanks!
All of the supported operating systems have memory locking functions that prevent swapping out but they are not used in this tool, AFAIK. Also, they are intended to lock things like secret keys that are small and not displayed to the user in a GUI. You can lock the whole process though but a big web browser process is going to significantly up the amount of unswappable memory. Stuff sent to the windowing system may get swapped out too.
