February 19, 2026
Dear Diary, cue the drama
Show HN: An encrypted, local, cross-platform journaling app
Encrypted diary app drops: fans love the vibe, skeptics demand sync and a safety net
TLDR: Mini Diarium is a new offline, encrypted journaling app aiming for maximum privacy. The community loves the minimalist vibe but argues over cloud syncing the encrypted file and worries about long‑term maintenance versus plain‑text portability—privacy purists vs. convenience crowd, and everyone wants a plan for the future.
A new “Show HN” entry, Mini Diarium, promises a lock-it-and-leave-no-trace diary: no internet, no tracking, everything encrypted on your machine with serious locks (AES-256-GCM) and slow-to-guess passwords (Argon2). The crowd swooned over the clean, minimalist look, with one user calling the README “fancy,” while another offered a tip to make it even glossier by embedding a video in the project page (helpful link).
Then the drama hit. A big camp asked: if the file is encrypted, why not stash it on Google Drive and open it from multiple devices? Security folks clapped back: if encryption happens before it ever touches the cloud, it’s fine — as long as your keys and passwords are strong. Meanwhile, a louder worry spilled out: what if the developer disappears and you’re locked out or stuck with a dead app? That sparked a plain-text vs. encrypted debate: some want entries readable in simple Markdown; others love the Fort Knox approach.
There were spy-movie jokes about “SSH keys for your diary” (you can unlock with a key file, like a digital spare key). The mood? Equal parts admiration and paranoia — a perfect recipe for Hacker News popcorn.
Key Points
- •Mini Diarium is an encrypted, local-only journaling app rebuilt with Tauri 2, SolidJS, and Rust as a successor to Mini Diary.
- •All entries use AES-256-GCM encryption under a wrapped master key design; the master key is never stored in plaintext.
- •Authentication supports passwords (Argon2 + AES-GCM unwrap) and X25519 key files (ECDH + HKDF + AES-GCM unwrap).
- •The app runs entirely offline, storing data in local SQLite, with no HTTP clients, sync, telemetry, or analytics.
- •It offers rich features including import/export (JSON/Markdown), calendar navigation, themes, automatic backups, statistics, and cross-platform installers for Windows, macOS, and Linux.