Settings
Writer Journal Settings page provides a wide range of preferences configurations. You can specify Home Folder, change App language, change your font, enable Auto backup etc. let's dive right into configuring it.
Settings page is divided into 4 main sections, namely App settings, Editor, Document list, About. Let's start configuring them one by one.
App settings
This section mainly contains global app settings, which means the changes apply to the app entirely, not just to a specific section.
Home Folder
You can select a specific folder in your device for WriterJournal to use as a Home directory. WriterJournal will store different files under this folder to function correctly.
Note that although selecting a home folder is not mandatory, we highly recommend EVERY USER to select a home folder, so that WriterJournal can auto backup your data periodically. The recommended Home folder path is: Download/WriterJournal/. However, if you want to restore your data even after your device is broken, you can try to select an external SD card path, for example: SD card/Download/WriterJournal/. This way, you can restore your data even if your device is completely broken or damaged, as long as your inserted SD card remains intact.
To select a Home Folder, simply click the Home folder button and complete the selection. (See the screenshots)
Language
WriterJournal supports multiple UI languages, changing app UI language is very simple, simply click App language and select a language from the list. (See the screenshots)
Theme
Writer Journal offers writers multiple themes to suit their preferences, including dark mode for those who prefer a more subdued background and color options for those who enjoy a pop of color in their writing environment.
To change the theme, please go to Settings -> Theme, select a theme and click ✓ to apply.
Font
Writer Journal offers many font styles, from serif fonts to san serif and many others. To choose a font, simply go to Settings -> Font, and select your preferred font and click ✓ to apply.
Version history
Version history is a feature that allows users to view and restore previous versions of a document. This feature can be very effective for various purposes, such as:
Tracking changes and revisions, recovering lost or unsaved work, etc.
Users can specify a "maximum history version iteration number" in WriterJournal, which essentially instructs WriterJournal as to how many past versions of a document ought to remain undeleted.
UI animation
WriterJournal offers a toggle setting to either enable UI animation or disable it to suit users' preferences.
Tagging system
Tagging documents is a simple but effective way to organize and manage digital files. A tag is a keyword or label that can be assigned to a document, such as "homework", "invoice", "report", or "recipe". Tags can help users to quickly find, sort, filter, and group documents based on their content, purpose, or context.
WriterJournal offers a simple way to attach tags to your document. To use this feature, you must first enable tagging system.
To turn on the tagging system, please go to Settings -> App settings -> tagging system. Enable it. (See the screenshots)
multi-img(navigation-clickSettings.png, settings-clickTaggingSystem.png, settings-enableTaggingSystemDialog.png, settings-clickSave.png)
To learn more about how tagging works in WriterJournal, please visit Tagging system page.
Growth
Text growth tracker is a tool that helps writers measure their progress and improvement over time. It can be used to track various aspects of writing, such as word count, vocabulary, lexical richness and grammar. By using text growth tracker, writers can gain insights into their strengths and weaknesses, set realistic goals, and celebrate their achievements.
Writer Journal introduces growth tracker feature that helps you achieve your writing goals in many aspects. For every single document, you can track its word count, sentence or paragraph count, unique words count, lexical richness and grammar density etc. Giving you insightful feedback on your growing writing skills.
To use growth tracker feature, you have to enable specific trackers in the settings page first. (See the screenshots)
Note that you can also reorder these growth trackers by drag and drop gesture, after enabling these growth trackers, your documents will not have growth chart yet until you modify the text content of your document
To learn more about growth trackers, please visit Growth page.
Recovery Zone
Desktop users are accustomed to the trash bin feature, where deleted files are temporarily stored and can be recovered until they are permanently removed. Writer Journal has implemented a similar feature, now called the Recovery Zone. This enhanced version not only allows for document recovery but also automatically deletes older documents when the user-defined Recovery Zone capacity is surpassed.
Users can specify a recovery zone capacity size by navigating to Settings -> Recovery zone
Compile Settings
Previously known as “Export Settings”, renamed to “Compile Settings”,is a compile setting page to configure different attributes when exporting documents to universal file formats, like PDF, MS Word Docx or HTML files. (See the screenshots)
The settings are self-explanatory, allowing users to preview the appearance of their exported documents by clicking either the "PREVIEW HTML TEMPLATE" or "PREVIEW PDF TEMPLATE" buttons. This will render the "Welcome Writer" page with the user-set configurations, providing a clear representation of the final document's appearance.
Import Settings
When importing a file, users can specify an encoding scheme to ensure the file is properly encoded. This option can be found under the settings page.
Master lock
Master lock settings allow users to configure the behavior of the Master Lock feature. Users can set the expiration period for Master Lock PIN code validation, determining how long a verified Master Lock PIN remains valid.
Auto night theme
When the auto night theme is enabled, WriterJournal will automatically apply the "Dark grey" theme during nighttime. This setting corresponds to the Android OS system setting known as “Dark mode.”
Auto backup
Auto backup is an essential feature for writers, as it automatically backs up data at regular intervals when enabled. This feature helps prevent the loss of valuable data in various situations. To enable auto backup, users must first select a "Home Folder" for WriterJournal.
Please visit Backup And Restore page to learn more.
Dev tool
WriterJournal offers a Dev Tool page where users can find many different tools to do some unusual things, like fixing corrupted document or recover master pin lock etc. To see the Dev Tool page, please enable it first. (See the screenshots)
multi-img(enableDevToolInSettingsPage.png, markDevToolInNavigationMenu.png)
To learn more about Dev Tool, please visit the Dev Tool page.
Editor
Editor settings are meant for the editor page only, under this section, users can configure text size, title size, line spacing and spell check and many more options to make the editor page work as desired.
The first four draggable widgets—title size, text size, line spacing, and letter spacing—are intuitive and require no further explanation. Users can adjust each value by dragging them up or down, with changes being reflected in real-time within the sample text area.
Spell check
Please note that WriterJournal doesn't do the spell check on its own, when you enable spell check feature, it tells your keyboard app to do spell check on the text in the editor page.
Enabling spell check will activate the spell check feature of your keyboard app.
Auto caption sentence
When you enable this function, your keyboard app will automatically capitalize the first letter you write in a new sentence. This is known as the Auto caption sentence feature.
Scroll bar
When you have voluminous text in the editor page, it may become tedious to scroll all the way down to the section of interest, that's when you need a scroll bar widget, you can press and hold it and scroll it down to any section quickly and conveniently.
Layout transformer
Ever felt being distracted by the various editing panels when writing in the editor page? Want a completely distraction free writing environment with full screen mode? Layout transformer is designed just for that purpose.
When enabled, a floating button will appear in your editor page every time you scroll, and you can hide or show individual panels by tapping on it until you are satisfied with the layout. (See the screenshots)
Protective auto saving
Protective auto saving is an amazing feature for every writer, when enabled, Writer Journal will periodically save your editing while you are still pondering about what to write next. Meaning you never have to worry about when you last hit the “Save” button.
Cursor position
Users can select beginning, ending or last edit position for cursor, it means when you load one of your documents, WriterJournal will automatically put the cursor to your selected position. Most preferred position definitely is last edit.
Auto first line indent
First line indent, also known as the tab button, allows writers to add extra blank space to the first line in a paragraph.
When auto first line indent is enabled, WriterJournal will assist writers in adding first line indent automatically, saving time and making it convenient and practical.
Markdown parsing engine
Markdown is a lightweight markup language for creating formatted text using a plain-text editor. WriterJournal natively supports rendering Markdown syntax in real-time, it's achieved by enabling the component called Markdown parsing engine. After enabling it, users no long need the bottom tools panel in the editor page, users can directly write the basic standard Markdown syntax and WriterJournal will automatically render it in real-time making it ideal for users who are familiar with Markdown language to write formatted text.
Notify when text length exceeds recommendation
This setting is added with the release of WriterJournal version 2.42.
WriterJournal recommends a text length limit of 30,000 characters for your document. While not mandatory, adhering to this limit is advised to ensure ease of document management and navigation, and to avoid potential typing lag. For projects requiring extended content, such as books, we suggest breaking your project into smaller sections. Write each section in a separate document, store them in a dedicated folder, and then use the 'Compile' feature to assemble the complete work. You can however completely turn off this warning here, but we strongly recommend you not to do so.
Document list
Under this section, users can configure how the document items appear in the list, users can increase its text size, hide or show preview text section, use different layout to list documents and folders, etc. All of these configurations fall under the Document List section.
Text size
The first draggable widget is for adjusting the text size for a document item.
Layout
Introduced in WriterJournal version 2.42, users can specify a layout configuration to control the appearance of the document listing page.
Preview text
In WriterJournal, each document has a preview text section which is visible by default, it shows a preview text for each document, the preview text can be sampled from 3 sources, the beginning or the ending section of the document, or content around the last edit position.
Scroll bar
Users can also show a scroll bar widget in the home page to scroll through a great amount of document and folder items more efficiently. (See the screenshots)
Remember scroll location
This is enabled by default, when enabled, WriterJournal will remember your last scroll position in a Home page for each folder, and it will automatically scroll to that position when you open the folder.
Folder different color
When enabled, WriterJournal will apply different color scheme for each folder item, one that's different from the color of a document.