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Android

Diaro

Fast, and supports drawings, geo-location on notes, tags, text-to-speech (read aloud), calendar view, map view, templates, 17 fonts, "on this day" flashback, and 35+ languages.

Stone

• 4 min read
Diaro

Welcome back to my hobby/obsession for the 87th Android note-taking app review! This week I review another diary app that works well as a note-taking app. But first, a note of thanks.

💡
A big welcome to Mark from Georgia U.S.A. and thanks for subscribing! You are member #214 in this exclusive club :)

This week I tested out Diaro which has a phenomenal 3M+ users. I was going to give it a score of 6/10 but then after playing with it more this morning decided on 7/10. Maybe I just woke up in a better mood but really it does have a great feature set.

Given the size of the user base, I don't see why it isn't as nice as some of the other journaling apps that I tried like Diarium or Journey. It works really well but doesn't feel as polished as those apps. Especially the Web interface, oh my it does not look like an app I would want open every day.

Diaro was developed by Abhishek Kumar who did an undergrad in Software Engineering and his Masters at University of Konstanz in Germany. He had a couple of intern jobs including one at Siemens AG and then started a company called Bazimo in 2010 which provides a solution for real estate management. He then started Sandstorm Software FZE in 2016 and he's based in UAE according to LinkedIn.

[Sandstorm specializes] in the development of mobile games, apps, and websites. Our expertise extends to both Android and iOS platforms, as well as web development. We have a large portfolio of native as well as crossplatform games for Android and iOS Apps.

The company is not active on socials with with only a single post per year for the past three years on Facebook and Twitter. They still list Google+ links on their site and that service is dead. I also don't see any community engagement via Discord or an interactive forum on their Web site. They do have a good-sized FAQ though. This makes me wonder if they're just milking the app.

Overall, Diaro has a good feature set, primarily targeted for diary and mood tracking and I think it would be a great travel companion.

For me, it lacks Markdown support and does not have the ability to export via Android so I'd end up having to revert to their Web app to do those things. And again, the Web app is not pleasing to my eyes.

You can use Diaro offline to start which is good for trying it out. Then, signup and get DropBox integration for syncing across devices along with backup and restore. If you like it, upgrade to Pro for USD 3.79 per month which is a reasonable price or spend USD 9.99 per year which is a great price.

Upgrading to Pro removes ads and gets you to sync across your devices, and export to Word (DOCX), PDF or Text (TXT) files via the Web app.

Diaro is fast, and supports drawings, geo-location on notes, tags, text-to-speech (read aloud), calendar view, map view, templates, 17 fonts, "on this day" flashback, and 35+ languages.

What's great is if you share a note via SMS, it includes the text and images. That's one of the first times I've seen that and it was a pleasant surprise.

My favourite feature is how photos are handled within a note. They show up at the top and you can swipe left or right to go through all of the photos from that day. It also moves to the next (or previous) note once you reach the last (or first) photo. It's a simple yet very effective feature. There's also a button that shows all of the images on a note, which is super handy

Read on for the ugly, the bad, the good, the great, and the awesome aspects of Diaro.

Screenshots

The Gravol in the pic was for my wife who was in a car accident this week and I'm taking her to physio shortly to be assessed. She was hit from behind by a young guy who sped up as if to intentionally hit her. It wasn't intentional but must've been very scary for her.

Quotes

Keep life moments and ideas always with you. Diaro is here to help.
Diaro is a multi-platform diary, journal, notes & mood tracker, designed to record your activities, events, appointments, experiences, thoughts, feelings, ideas & secrets throughout the day & sync data across all your devices & PC.

Meta

Ugly

  • Ads
  • No export from Android app (use Web)
  • Share to Signal gave the error "Could not get share data from intent."

Bad

  • No bullets
  • No Markdown support for input our output (export)
  • No text formatting
  • Could not share a note
  • Only sort by date
  • No API
  • No trash in the Android app
  • Can't provide a label for a hyperlink

Good

  • Easy to remove a location from a note
  • Tags
  • Folders
  • Location
  • Weather
  • Undo and Redo
  • Insert timestamp
  • Duplicate a note
  • Attach a photo
  • Full-screen mode
  • Character count
  • Word count
  • Dark mode
  • Moods
  • Quick add from long press Android menu
  • Filter by tags, mood, locations, folders
  • 4 widgets
  • 4 font sizes
  • Runs on Android 5 and up
  • Sort by date
  • Sign in with Google or their app
  • Backup and restore via DropBox
  • Statistics on moods, diary entries
  • Share via SMS
  • Share via email
  • Read aloud (text-to-speech)
  • Reminders
  • Hyperlinks
  • Images are shown in the note list

Great

  • Fast
  • 17 fonts
  • Drawing tool
  • Dropbox support
  • Calendar view
  • Includes the weather
  • Security code to lock the app
  • Web app
  • Map view
  • Import data from Journey, Evernote, Google Keep, Momento, Day One, Memorize, Diarium, Universum

Awesome

  • Reel of images at the top of the note
  • Button to see all images on a note
  • Templates
  • On this day
  • As you swipe the images it changes to the previous or next day, smart!
  • 35+ languages supported
  • Share via SMS includes images

Thanks again for reading through and I hope you found this useful or at least interesting. Until next week and have a great note-taking week ahead!

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