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Journalling

Fern has a built-in journalling system that keeps dated entries separate from your notes. Entries are organised by period (daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly) and stored as plain markdown files in the journals/ folder of your vault.

The four periods

Period What it is for Typical use
Daily One entry per day Log of what happened, quick captures, to-dos
Weekly One entry per calendar week Reflection, planning, links to daily logs
Monthly One entry per month Broader themes, progress on longer goals
Yearly One entry per year Annual review, intentions for the year ahead

You do not have to use all four. Start with daily or weekly and add others as your practice develops.

How journal files are stored

Fern creates files under journals/ using a predictable layout:

journals/
  2026/
    03/
      2026-03-14.md    daily entry for 14 March 2026
      2026-03-15.md    daily entry for 15 March 2026
      wk11.md          weekly entry for week 11
      mn03.md          monthly entry for March
    yearly.md          yearly entry for 2026 (stored directly under the year)

The extension used matches your ext config setting (default: md). You can open any of these files directly from the sidebar or with the journal commands described in Opening entries.

Quick start

Open or create today's daily entry:

:journalOpen today

Open or create this week's entry:

:journalOpen this-week

If a journal template exists for the period, Fern copies it and substitutes date variables automatically. If no template exists, the new entry starts blank.

Startup automation

Two options let Fern open journal entries for you at startup:

Startup Layout opens one or more journal panes every time Fern launches. You can open a single period or build a split-pane view combining several. See Startup Layout for the full syntax.

auto_journal_periods opens a new period entry only when today is the start of that period (Monday for weekly, the 1st for monthly, January 1st for yearly). A template must exist for each period this applies to.

auto_journal_periods = true

See Configuring Fern for the full config reference.