Fresh Brews: SteepJournal, BookCafe, and PersonalCRM Join the Menu
Three new apps join the menu: an encrypted diary, a chapter-based book writer, and a quiet keeper for the people you mean to call.
Three new drinks landed on the menu this week with almost no announcement. They're not the flashiest apps on the shelf, but they might be the ones you use every single day: a private diary that locks itself, a writing app for anything with chapters, and a quiet little database for the people you keep meaning to call.
The cafe is at 114 apps now. All three are included in the subscription, and all three run entirely on your own machine.
SteepJournal: a diary that locks itself
SteepJournal is a diary for the things you wouldn't put in a note-taking app. It keeps your writing in a file only your password can open, stored wherever you like.
The encryption starts at the first keystroke. Every entry, tag, photo and attachment is locked with a key derived from your password, so opening the file in any other program shows nothing readable. The journal is a file, not a database: keep it in Documents, on an external drive, or on iCloud Drive if you want it synced on your own terms. Double-click it and SteepJournal opens straight at its password screen.
It behaves like a diary should. You can keep several journals, each with its own password, so opening one tells you nothing about the others. Touch ID unlocks it where your Mac allows, and you can turn that off per journal. After a few idle minutes, or the moment you switch apps if you prefer, it locks itself, and there's a Lock Now command plus a keyboard shortcut for the times you hear someone coming.
Writing is pleasant: a wide serif column, a live word count, autosave that never asks you to press anything. Entries sit under big date headers with previews and photo thumbnails, and there's an On This Day view that hands back what you were thinking a year ago. Photos and video attach without slowing the file down, because media is stored in pieces and only read as it appears on screen. Streaks and word counts are a gentle nudge, not a guilt machine, and a streak survives the day you haven't written yet. You can even export a journal as a website.
BookCafe: a book is one file
BookCafe is a writing app for anything with chapters. Write each one on a clean page, keep the whole book in an outline you can drag, and publish it as a website or a PDF, both with a proper table of contents.
The core idea is that a book is a single file. Every chapter, picture and setting lives inside it, so you can move it to another machine, copy it to a drive, or send the entire thing to someone as one document and nothing goes missing. Add an image and it's copied into the book, so deleting or moving the original never leaves a hole in your pages.
The editor stays out of the way. Headings, bold, lists, quotes and links are one click away, and the page you type on is the page your reader gets. The outline handles the heavy lifting: drag a chapter to move it, drop it onto another to nest it, and a moved chapter carries its sections with it. For a long book, you can reorder from a list, one step at a time or alphabetically, without touching the nesting.
Publishing is the fun part. A website export gives you one page per chapter with a contents sidebar, previous and next links, search, and a light or dark switch, and it needs nothing to run it. A PDF export adds a cover, table of contents, page numbers and running headers, ready to print or send. Rename a chapter and every reference to it updates, and links that point nowhere are flagged while you write, not after you publish. Word counts for the chapter and the whole book stay in view the entire time.
PersonalCRM: for the people you keep meaning to call
PersonalCRM is a relationship tracker, built for the friends and family you don't want to lose track of. It remembers the birthdays, the names of their kids, the book you borrowed, and the fact that you haven't spoken since March, so you don't have to hold all of it in your head.
It handles the fiddly parts of relationships well. When you only know someone's birthday by day and month, you say so and it counts down anyway, instead of making you invent a year. You choose how often you want to speak to someone, and if a month goes by it says so plainly rather than quietly resetting the clock. Add someone as a parent and they get you as their child automatically, so you never end up with half a relationship.
Each person gets a page in one scroll: emails, phone numbers, addresses, notes, what you did together, what you owe each other, gift ideas with prices and links, and the big moments in their life. One page tells you what today needs, with birthdays, reminders, tasks and the people you haven't called merged into a single date-ordered list. Notifications stay restrained: one a day while the app is open, off until you turn it on. There's a dated journal with a mood, and mentioning someone pulls the entry onto their page too. vCard and CSV import bring contacts, photos and birthdays across from Contacts or a spreadsheet.
Three apps, one shelf each
SteepJournal joins the Affogato shelf with ChessCafe, the desktop pets and LofiLatte. BookCafe is the second writing tool in Mocha, sitting next to MokaStudio and the design tools. PersonalCRM lands in Frappe, among the data and connectivity apps, and it's the first app there with a real calendar attached.
All three keep your data in files you own. That is the whole point of the cafe: apps that don't hold your work hostage, that work offline, and that don't need an account to respect you, as we argued in The Cloud Is a Prison for Your Workflows. One subscription, 114 apps, and your files stay yours.
Start your 7-day free trial at https://getapps.cafe and see the full menu.