A journal is the one document on your Mac that was never meant for anyone else. That makes the choice of journal app unusual: the editor barely matters, and the questions that do are where the entries are stored, who holds the key, whether the app works with the Wi‑Fi off, and whether you are buying it or renting it.
The seven apps below cover the range, from Apple’s free built-in journal to plain Markdown files. We build Dash, so it is listed first and judged by the same four questions as the rest.