Why Wattle

What Wattle is

A journal is where you write what you would not say to anyone. And almost all of them are online, in the hands of someone you do not know who can read what you write. Wattle was born from the idea of keeping writing private, and of making it belong to whoever writes it.

The starting point

Almost every journalling application asks for the same thing before the first line: an email address, a password to remember, permission to keep your pages somewhere. In exchange they offer sync (which is convenient) and the promise not to read what you have written, which can be broken easily.

Wattle was designed so that it has no way of breaking that promise in the first place. The journal is a file on your computer. There is no account because there is nothing to sign in to, and there is no promise of confidentiality because there is nobody in a position to have to make one.

What that means, in practice

The pages, the attachments and the settings sit in a folder - one you can open, copy, move to another disk or slip onto a USB stick. Wattle makes no network requests to work, not even for the built-in features assisted by artificial intelligence (optional and disabled by default).

A backup is a single file with a .wattle extension where the whole journal, the attachments and your preferences can be saved.

What it is not

It is not a productivity app, it does not track habits, it does not set goals and it has no run of consecutive days not to break.

It is a place to write, and a place where what you have written comes back to you: a year from now you will see your first journal page again, reminding you who you were at this moment, showing you how you have grown and what has changed. There is nothing to win but a great deal to find again.

Things worth knowing before you buy

This is not a contest, just different categories. The table is here to help you work out which one you actually need

Things worth knowing before you buy	Wattle	The other apps
Works without an account	yes	no
Works without the internet	yes	limited
The files stay on your computer	yes	no
How you pay	once	Annual subscription
Letters sealed until a date	yes	no
What you write comes back	yes	no
Phone app	no	yes
Sync across devices	no	yes
Productivity features (goals, statistics, habit tracking)	no	yes
Artificial intelligence features	Yes, free and with no internet access	Limited and often paid for after a free trial, collecting your sensitive data
How much the application weighs	~15 MB	300-500 MB

Wattle gives up the phone app and cloud sync. In exchange, your journal stays private and safe on your own computer. It is the principle Wattle is built on: if you need to reach your thoughts wherever you are, another application may suit you better. If instead you want something that stays yours, private, and is not just a place to write something and then forget about it, Wattle is made for that.

"A journal that gives back what you put into it."

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