Penjo is a handwriting journaling and digital planning app centered on Apple Pencil, focused on a "one page per day" recording approach. Users can open the current day's page on iPad, iPhone, Mac, or Vision Pro, handwrite content, sketch, plan tomorrow's tasks, and add photos. Pages are organized by date, and iCloud keeps every page in sync.
Main capabilities
- Handwriting journaling and planning: one page per day, where you can handwrite, draw, enter text or use Scribble text, import photos and drag in content from other apps, and customize shapes. Supports Scribble erase and two-finger tap to undo.
- Calendar and Reminders integration: view Apple, Google, and Exchange calendar events and reminders in week and month views, add or edit events, open details, or place events on daily pages. In month view, you can mark each day or a range for tracking habits or important dates.
- Multi-device access and sync: supports use on iPhone, Mac (where you can type entries, plan schedules, and search across journals), and Apple Vision Pro (immersive recording).
- Text recognition and search: all text in handwritten notes is indexed and can be copied as text, and text in images is also indexed. You can perform advanced searches by time range, or by text in text boxes, handwriting, or images.
- Privacy protection: lock journals with Face ID or Touch ID at the journal level or app level.
- Tool picker: customize the tool picker to include frequently used pens, colors, widths, and opacity.
- Image editing: supports removing backgrounds, adding Polaroid-style frames, cropping to shapes, flipping, and creating creative stickers.
- Apple Image Playground integration: generate images from drawings, photos, or text.
- Map cards: add map cards to mark locations and add notes.
- Personalization: customize journals with paper textures, page colors, and cover colors.
- Reminders: set reminders to plan the day, review achievements, or update the journal.
- Dark mode: provides a softer, eye-friendly recording experience at night or in low-light environments.
How to use Penjo organizes content by date; open the current day's page to start writing or planning. List Mode can turn any journal into a notebook-style experience: navigation skips blank dates and presents a continuous stream of entries. Even without Apple Pencil, all features can be used; onWhen Apple Pencil is unavailable and "Draw with Finger" is enabled in the tool picker, all tap actions change to two-finger taps (such as inserting text, images, shapes, or map cards, or selecting and moving items), while one-finger actions are used for drawing; if "Draw with Finger" is turned off, drawing is not possible, but text boxes, images, shapes, and map cards can still be added or edited. Drawing on Mac is on the roadmap; for now, the rectangular selection tool can be used to move, copy, or delete drawings.
Export and Backup A single day or an entire journal can be exported as a PDF, or a .penjo file can be used to back up and move notebooks between devices. Students can use it to record class notes by date, set deadline reminders, search handwritten content later, import classmates' notes, export an entire semester as a PDF, and lock a private journal with Face ID.
Plan and Limits The free plan can have up to 14 non-empty day pages, meaning content can be on 14 different dates. After reaching the limit, the user will be asked to switch to a paid plan; if the content for one of those days is deleted, that day page will be freed up and can be used for another date. Canceling a subscription will not delete data; the data remains on the device. Paid features may become unavailable before renewal and will be restored after renewal. The monthly subscription plan supports Family Sharing; the annual and lifetime plans do not. After purchasing the Penjo Unlimited Lifetime option, the original subscription still needs to be canceled.
Prices (USD) Monthly $2.99/month; annual $19.99/year (includes a 7-day free trial); lifetime $39.99 one-time. Prices are shown in USD, and local prices may vary by App Store region. The monthly plan supports Family Sharing.
Limitations on visionOS The following features are unavailable on visionOS: widgets, image generation (Apple Image Playground), password-protected journals, and export to PDF.
