How to Keep a Journal in Markdown (Daily Notes That Last)
To keep a journal in Markdown, make one folder, then write one plain .md file per day named after its date, like 2026-11-02.md. Start each file with a short block for the date, mood and tags, then a heading for the day and whatever you want to write under it. The date-first names sort in calendar order everywhere, and plain text files will still open in twenty years. The rest of this post covers the template, the two formatting rules that trip up journal writers, and an honest look at what QuickMark does and doesn't do for daily notes.
Why Markdown suits a journal
- You own the files. A journal is the one thing you want to read in ten years. A folder of
.mdfiles doesn't depend on any app, account or company still being around. - It's fast to write. A dash is a bullet,
##is a heading. Nothing to click. - It reads well later. Rendered, the same file has headings, lists and checkboxes instead of a wall of symbols.
Folder and file names
Name every entry YYYY-MM-DD.md. Year first, then month, then day, always two digits. That's the whole trick: alphabetical order becomes date order, in Finder, in the Files app, in any editor. 2026-11-02.md sorts after 2026-10-30.md, which a name like 2 Nov 2026.md never will.
Journal/
2026/
2026-10-30.md
2026-10-31.md
2026-11-01.md
2026-11-02.md
photos/
sunset.jpgOnce a year has a few hundred files, a folder per year keeps things tidy. Repeat the year in the file name anyway, so a single entry still says when it was written after you copy it somewhere else.
On the Mac, QuickMark can open the whole Journal folder with File ▸ Open Folder… (⇧⌘O). The Folder Files panel on the left then lists every entry, sorted by name the way Finder sorts them, so your days come out in order. Its Filter box matches file names and folder names, ignoring case and accents, so typing 2026-10 narrows the list to October. Folder Files is a Mac feature; the iPhone and iPad apps don't have it.
One limit to be clear about: that Filter box searches names, not the words inside your entries. QuickMark has no search across all the files in a folder. Find in page (⌘F) only searches the entry you have open. If you want to type "dentist" and see every day it came up, that's a job for Spotlight, or for an app like Obsidian or VS Code that indexes a whole folder.
A daily journal template you can copy
---
date: 2026-11-02
mood: tired but okay
weather: rain
tags: [journal, gratitude]
---
# Monday, 2 November
Woke up late.
Coffee on the balcony.
## Grateful for
1. A slow breakfast
2. Lan's phone call
## Tomorrow
- [ ] Call the dentist
- [x] Water the plantsA table at the top with date, mood and weather, and journal and gratitude as tag pills. Then the heading, one paragraph, a numbered list, and two checkboxes, one ticked.
The block between the two --- lines is YAML front matter. It keeps the facts about the day out of the writing itself. Make up whatever keys you like: mood, sleep, place. QuickMark shows them as a small table at the top of the preview, and a list in square brackets turns into tags. If you'd rather not see the table, turn off Show document metadata in Settings.
A #health hashtag in the middle of a sentence, on the other hand, is just text. QuickMark doesn't collect tags across files, so if tags matter to you, keep them in the front matter where at least they look like tags.
QuickMark's built-in Daily Note
QuickMark ships a Daily Note template on both Mac and iPhone/iPad. On the Mac it's in the launcher under "Start from a template" and in File ▸ New from Template ▸ Daily Note. On iPhone and iPad, tap Start from a Template on the Home screen. The new document opens with today's date already filled in as the heading (in YYYY-MM-DD form, taken from your device's calendar) and four sections: Priorities, Notes, Log and Tomorrow. It leans towards a work day plan more than a diary, so expect to rewrite the headings.
Two things to know about it:
- It starts unsaved. The first save offers the name
Untitled.md, so rename it to the date. On the Mac there's a small shortcut: if the window was opened on your journal folder, the save panel starts in that folder. - You can't edit the built-in templates. If you want your own layout, keep a
template.mdin the journal folder, open it, and use File ▸ Duplicate… on the Mac to save a copy under today's date.
Line breaks: the trap every journal hits
Journal writing comes in short lines. You press Return after each thought, and in the preview the lines run together into one paragraph. Look at the screenshot at the top: "Woke up late. / Coffee on the balcony. / Rain all afternoon." became a single line.
That's standard Markdown, not a bug. A single line break inside a paragraph is treated as a space. QuickMark follows the rule, as GitHub does when it shows a .md file. You have three ways to keep a break:
Woke up late.
Coffee on the balcony.
Wrote one line per thought,··
and kept every line break.
Rain all afternoon.\
Cleared up at six.Woke up late.
Coffee on the balcony.
Wrote one line per thought,
and kept every line break.
Rain all afternoon.
Cleared up at six.
- A blank line starts a new paragraph, with space above it. Best for separate thoughts.
- Two spaces at the end of the line (shown as
··above) force a line break without the gap. They're invisible, which makes them easy to lose. - A backslash at the end of the line does the same and stays visible. My pick for a journal.
The other trap: a year at the start of a line
Start a line with a year and a full stop, like 2026. What a year., and Markdown reads it as a numbered list that starts at 2026. We ran it through QuickMark's renderer while writing this post, and it came out as list item number 2026. Put a backslash before the dot, 2026\. What a year., and it stays a sentence. The escape characters guide has the full list of these.
Linking days together
If you come from Obsidian you'll want to write [[2026-11-01]] to link to yesterday. In QuickMark that renders as a link, but it doesn't open another file: it only jumps to a heading with that name inside the same document. For a link to another day, use a normal Markdown link with the file name:
Same problem as [yesterday](2026-11-01.md).On the Mac, clicking that link opens the entry in a new tab, once QuickMark has access to the folder. On iPhone and iPad, links to other .md files don't open from the preview at all. That's a real gap if you link days a lot.
Photos
Keep photos in a folder next to your entries and point at them with a relative path:
QuickMark shows images that sit next to the document or in a folder above it, on Mac, iPhone and iPad. The first time, it asks you to give it access to the folder. Obsidian-style ![[sunset.jpg]] embeds work too, including a width like ![[sunset.jpg|300]].
Checkboxes for tomorrow
- [ ] makes an open checkbox and - [x] a ticked one. In QuickMark you tick them by editing the text. The checkboxes in the preview are read-only, so clicking one does nothing. The checklist guide covers nesting and the mistakes that turn a checkbox back into a plain bullet.
Keeping the journal one click away
Star it. On the Mac, with the window open on your journal folder, choose File ▸ Favorites ▸ Add Folder to Favorites. Single entries, tabs, Recent items and subfolders in Folder Files can be starred with a right-click ▸ Add to Favorites. Everything you star shows up in the Favorites tab of the left sidebar. On iPhone and iPad you can star files (not folders): long-press an item in Recent, or use the … menu ▸ Favorites in an open document. Favorites stay on that device; they don't sync.
Where QuickMark falls short for journaling
QuickMark is a fast Markdown editor and viewer, not a journaling app. If daily notes are the main thing you do, compare honestly:
- No "open today's note" button. Obsidian's Daily notes plugin opens today's note with one command, creates it if it's missing, names it
YYYY-MM-DD, puts it in the folder you choose and fills it from your own template file. QuickMark makes you name and save the file yourself. - No calendar view and no search across entries.
- No links between days on iPhone and iPad, and
[[wiki links]]don't open other files anywhere.
Where it does well: the entries are plain files in a folder you pick, nothing gets uploaded unless you choose Publish to Web, and they look good to read back. On the Mac you can also press Space on any entry in Finder and read it in Quick Look without opening anything. For a longer side-by-side, see QuickMark vs Obsidian.
The short version
- One folder, one file per day, named
YYYY-MM-DD.md. - Front matter for date, mood and tags; prose below a heading.
- End a line with
\when you want the break to show. - Write
2026\.if a line starts with a year. - Link days with
[text](2026-11-01.md), not[[…]].
Get rendered Markdown previews everywhere
QuickMark is a free, native Markdown app for Mac, iPhone and iPad. Live preview, export and publish built in.