Joplin is great; unlike similar apps, it’s very fast. Even with gigs of pics in a doc, it still scrolls fast. Others I tried don’t even open or crash/corrupt.
For me personally the only upside is that I don't have to pay separately for syncing the documents and can use Dropbox instead. Yeah I could use Dropbox on my phone too for obsidian but it's not a great experience when all you want is taking/reading notes without hassle.
Tried both for quite some time, Obsidian has better community plugin support, better sync (paid) and stores plain text files instead of using a DB. Most importantly the mobile app (at least for iOS) of Obsidian is 1:1 with the desktop app.
Switched from Joplin to Obsidian and haven't looked back. Both apps are great initiatives though!
Does it reflect notebooks/folder structure also in the filesystem? That's exactly what I need from a PKM tool: that not only the files but also the structure of the notebooks is reflected in the filesystem so I can have interoperability. This way I can decide to work with Obsidian, EagleFiler, Notebooks.app or DEVONthink while also having the possiblity of using the regular Finder to work with my files.
I tried it out for a while, I'm sure that it's a great program and it's various free sync options & encryption system may immediately put it ahead, but as a basic user I found it much more complicated to the point where I couldn't figure out how to simply sort files into folders (and I don't know if that's something you can do). There's an interesting tagging system to search posts with and there's a ton of plugins out there if you want to do things you can usually do.
I really ought to give it a shot again when I've got a clear head.
If you want a FOSS alternative to Obsidian that's just as simple you could try Zettlr, but currently it's rather rough. You have to change the UI settings to get the folders/file view that Obsidian has, and I found readability to be rather poor. Initially there's no way to make in text larger without zooming in the entire UI, font, and the themes that are available aren't the best for writing or reading notes (and if you like one specific theme you're sod out of luck if you want a darker version of it) – if you want to change things to your liking you have to experiment with the experimental Custom CSS option.
Having started with Joplin, the three things that took me away were the (at the time) lacking mobile support, periodic syncing collisions, and probably most importantly, their non-standard file format. There was a tool that could extract files into standard markdown format, then repack them, but the overhead was tiring, and meant a few key environments lacked access, namely when I was accessing a server from the rack, and when the mobile app acted up.
I actually moved to just using vimwiki style setup with markdown and a markdown editor app on my phone for several years, before I stumbled across Obsidian.
I've since been using obsidian for about 9 months now, which is longer than my time with Joplin, and I will say that, once I got a stable sync going (I'm using the simple sync plugin and my own s3 compatible server), the plugin support, decent mobile app, and native markdown files have won me over. Though I'm still eyeing open source options with Logseq, just waiting on their mobile app to pick up and properly support plugins. I'll be more than happy to port everything as soon as it supports that.
As an additional note, I will add that despite Obsidian being closed-source, I actually feel more comfortable with my data there than with Joplin, primarily because all my data is just common markdown. With Joplin, if I archive content, I have no guarantee the notes on the file format will exist in 10 years (they probably will, but it's still a real possibility). With Obsidian, it's plaintext. There's nothing to need to rediscover, no file format to decode, just good old plain-text. In 40 years I'll still be able to read those files (though the storage media is a very different story). Sure Obsidian can change plans mid-stream, and I don't trust they wont, but all I gotta do is go back to my markdown editor and vim. No sweat.
> In 40 years I'll still be able to read those files (though the storage media is a very different story)
With Joplin, you can easily archive as Markdown+FrontMatter and that format will still be readable 40 years from now with text and metadata included.
Additionally, in case you forgot to make a backup, and 40 years later all traces of Joplin have disappeared from earth and you can't find an old version of the app, the backend is a simple SQLite database, so you can do `SELECT * FROM notes` and get your content back.
> Though I'm still eyeing open source options with Logseq, just waiting on their mobile app to pick up and properly support plugins. I'll be more than happy to port everything as soon as it supports that.
Worse. I want to see the result when writing so I always had to have a separate preview window open which stole a lot of screen space. Obsidian solved this with the WYSIWYG mode where a paragraph transforms to markdown when you click on it, but the rest of the document shows the end result. It makes the experience a lot nicer when embedding tables and images that you can look at directly and write in-depth about without just seeing a filename.
It’s a pretty clunky experience trying to creating and editing notes. There’s also the constant worry about conflicts, to try and cut them down I open the mobile app, hit sync, make an edit then hit sync again. I use WebDAV, maybe Joplin Cloud is better at it
Contrary to popular belief, the mobile app is not forgotten - I count about 40 releases in total for the past 12 months.
We probably spend as much time working on it than on the desktop one, but unfortunately it is much harder to develop for mobile, especially when you have to make sure it works on the many different Android devices and iOS versions, plus the extra work to comply with the ever changing requirements from the Google and Apple stores. Many of these changes are not visible to the user, but without this boring never ending maintenance work the app simply wouldn't exist.
We do plan to update the UI/UX of the mobile app though, as we're aware it could be made more intuitive. I'm very keen on improving this and hopefully it will happen this year.
Shameless plug for my native (Qt C++ based) open-source, cross-platform note-taking app[1]. It's fast, beautiful, and just works.
The next version will add an option to turn your Markdown tasks into a beautiful Kanban view[2] via QML. This feature will be paid but anyone will be able to compile the source with a simple CMake flag to get the PRO version for free.
Currently, it uses a DB but we aim to port it to support arbitrary folder (simple .md/.json files, depending on the complexity of the editor). I'm working on a mobile version and a built-in sync option as well.
Once the built-in syncing is complete I will probably only charge for that and the client itself will be completely free.
Looks nice. Good to see that there are still native apps in development! Looks a lot like Joplin - which I like.
But: I couldn't find anything about syncing my notes or mobile clients / other ways to access my notes. Even in the "vision" document. That's a must have functionality _for me_. Probably not important for everyone... therefore, good luck with your project :)
Hi there! I wrote in the above comment that it's planned. We'll support arbitrary folder (switch from DB), develop our mobile up (switch from QWidgets to Qt Quick), and develop our own built-in sync option.
Currently, you can change the database location to your synced folder (Dropbox, etc...) in the settings, but some users reported data conflicts while others said it works fine. You can try this but I'll wait till we officially switch from DB.
Thanks for making this. I look forward to trying it tonight. A few thoughts:
1. Any chance for a mobile version with cloud sync? Qt compiles for mobile too, after all. I access my notes from my phone all the time so this is a must for me.
2. How come so many indie devs are off making their own notes app instead of pooling their efforts? For example off the top of my head QOwnNotes is a Qt widget note app, and a QML-based one I think is called Noter but which I can't find anymore now.
3. Judging from the UI I take it you're an Evernote user, or used to be? There was a post today about all the Evernote staff being laid off, so I feel pressured to move away ASAP. Other than Joplin do you have any recommendations that work on mobile?
1. We're currently using QWidgets which doesn't look good on mobile. But we plan to port the UI to Qt Quick (logic will stay in C++). Our new Kanban feature and some other widgets are already built with Qt Quick/QML. And we'll work on syncing too. I wrote that in my comment above.
2. We're actually using a major component from the maker of QOwnNotes called QMarkdownTextEdit[1] for our Markdown editor. It Works great (thanks @pbek!). Just two days ago someone managed to port the syntax highlighter to QML[2] which paves the way for us to port the UI over to QML.
3. I never used Evernote (maybe I used it for a short time but I can't remember). Because we currently don't have a mobile app I use the built-in Apple's Notes on my phone that syncs well to the Desktop app and then I'll just copy over the notes to my app.
> 2. How come so many indie devs are off making their own notes app instead of pooling their efforts?
Notes are something very simple on surface, but can become very complicated and diversified on details. So everyone starts doing their own personalized sh*t, some are happy with this, and some learn the hardships of it and abandon their projects at some point. So we have a constant stream of half-assed notes-apps of various flavors, and some which are really well-made, to stay.
Last I checked this did not provide an obvious way for links between notes. This is a crutial feature for many folks who work with lots of small interlinked notes.
I love joplin - it has been my goto solution for adhoc notes for almost two years now. I use it on multiple devices and they all sync to an S3 bucket which is very cheap setup that works well once configured properly.
I don't love the default editing experience but the Rich Makdown extension solves it well for me.
The extension ecosystem is a bit of mixed bag. There are few good extensions but many are half baked.
I tried many note-taking apps and finally settled on Notable[0]. It's simple and you can point it to a folder with markdown files and attachments. Plus, you can just sync the folder using any syncing service, and use Noteless[1] on Android. The tagging support is superb, you can cross-link notes, render math using katex, and export to pdf.
Because of the simple folder structure, you can also use vim+fzf to search/navigate/create/edit your notes. The notational-fzf-vim plugin[2] is superb for that.
For web-clipping, I just use the markdownload[3] extension in firefox and save the markdown file in the notes folder.
Why not joplin? Mostly because joplin stores notes in an sqlite database instead of a simple folder structure making it not easily accessible by normal unix tools and editors.
Why not obsidian? Was never able to grok obsidian. Pointing it at my existing notes makes it just show up as a huge mess of unstructured notes. I guess it needs some effort to organize and link existing notes. In notable, I can tag a note as Books/CS, and CS/Books, and it'll show up in corresponding folder-like structures in the left panel. Can't do that in obsidian.
> Why not joplin? Mostly because joplin stores notes in an sqlite database instead of a simple folder structure making it not easily accessible by normal unix tools and editors.
But instead much more accessible to any kind of software, including a five line python script. While plain text files are useful, they shouldn't be taken to be the only true and accessible way of storing data, even textual ones.
Gitjournal used to make a lot of stuff (including things like rendering math equations) subscription-only, which was sufficiently off-putting.
I just looked at it again, and I think they've gotten rid of the subscription and made it a one-time "pro" purchase. That's better than subscription I guess. The only added advantage I see is that syncing with git is built in.
I have tried to switch to Joplin from Evernote twice. But each time I have ended up being frustrated with the synchronisation. It is just too slow in my opinion. Perhaps I have too many notes, but I will be looking for another alternative to Evernote that can work on my phone and Ubuntu.
It only supports plain text notes (with Markdown rendering), but I've got years of notes in there, and it works on every platform. It's also owned and supported by Wordpress.
I keep looking for replacements but wind up every time coming back to Simplenote. Well worth considering as a baseline to compare other offerings against.
You usually get better sync performance by either self-hosting or using Joplin Cloud. I don't know of any good WebDAV provider, let alone a free one, and even the paid ones have limitations that make them unusable for sync.
OneDrive and Dropbox have a free tier and work with Joplin, but they throttle the connection. But I guess it depends on how many notes you have and how you use Joplin - a lot of people use OneDrive or Dropbox and it works good enough for them.
Nextcloud has a surprisingly inefficient WebDAV implementation. It's not clear how they got it so wrong compared to, say, Nginx or Apache WebDAV, but they did. Maybe they are doing some processing on each request, creating thumbnails, checking for shared files, locks, or something that's not really necessary but it is slow as a result. Perhaps some config changes could indeed help though.
Fastmail comes with WebDAV. I used it with Joplin, but it pushes a very large number of files to the server. I have a paid OneDrive account. Found out that sync didn't work with OneDrive (random files just won't sync). Maybe they've fixed it, but I was not impressed.
I got a large performance bump by increasing the number of allowed open connections from the default 5 to 20 in all clients. I’m syncing to a self hosted Nextcloud via WebDAV.
The funny thing about Joplin sync being too slow... years ago, I complained to the author that his markdown files weren't true markdown, and his rebuttal was that it was necessary to pollute those to get sync to perform well on Nextcloud/webdav. I pointed out how he might have just written a small NC plugin to achieve the same effect, at which point the thread was closed and I was no longer welcome to comment.
For those that want to crosslink anything and everything I suggest Logseq[1]. Its journal and graph view are fantastic. And it has many useful plugins. I use it along with git-sync [2] and syncthing [3] now I can sync the notes across my work, personal desktops and my mobile.
Probably the reason was both Boostnote and Joplin seems to have stopped developing the application and shifted focus to monetization.
Also I personally prefer the (much) more technical way that Logseq work. It is not a markdown editor, but a knowledge base that stores its data as plaintext files in a markdown-like format.
One question: do you have pointers to a good way to setup git sync and syncthing? I pay enough to LogSeq to have free sync but I prefer to self host and also the current sync
model is somewhat flaky.
I have a private git repo in Github which is the folder that Logseq uses. I have a cron job to runs script for git-sync on all machines on reboot. I also have syncthing running on my personal desktop that shares this git repo with my android phone. It runs smooth as long as you don't do simultaneous edits from multiple machines.This will break the git-sync and you will have to do merge conflicts of that happens.
I looked at logseq as an alternative to joplin but there were too many little flags that suggested to me that privacy and being free might not be forever. I don't have a problem with paying for software, but I don't like getting embedded in it when I don't know what the cost will be. Privacy wise, statements like "The aim of Logseq is to establish a better environment for both learning and collaboration, enabling us to form a network that connects our ideas and enhances the collective knowledge of humanity." worry me. I don't want my ideas connected with humanity and I certainly don't want my notes used to train someones LLM. Maybe this is an unfair reading, as they do claim to be privacy focused, but I am worried that they will discover far to many interesting and fun things to do with user data and I just don't really like where that sounds like its headed. If Joplin could do better sharing (with eg a colleague or spouse) on mobile and better separation of work/private notes (like different storage locations) it would be just about perfect for me for a note taking app, but then my needs are pretty simple.
> I looked at logseq as an alternative to joplin but there were too many little flags that suggested to me that privacy and being free might not be forever.
Exactly my thoughts when I looked at it a few weeks ago (minus the privacy angle that I didn't feel).
I also bounced off the slew of influencer-type blog posts and videos that promise you that Logseq will change your {life, studies, PhD, work} forever when all I saw in those videos were very, very simple outlines. The whole community (including the subreddit) seems very... promotional.
> better separation of work/private notes (like different storage locations)
FYI, as of last year, Joplin supports profiles on both Desktop and Android that are exactly that. Though you do have to restart the app to toggle between the two.
Thank you for the info. Since, I use my own local data and don't store anything on their cloud, I didn't read their cloud storage plan. I hope how they will not be able to train LLMs or connect with other data sources if the data is not stored on their cloud. One lesson I learned os that if you use any cloud storage, they can always update the ToS and EULA at anytime to break through privacy
Just try it out before interpreting their vision (which I totally ignored up until now). It is simply a nice system based on your local markdown files, allowing to easily cross-link notes. It is opinionated but I like that. It follows the bullet journaling approach and has a rudimentary integrated todo system.
I have personally tried many alternatives (obsidian among them) but nothing comes close to what logseq offers _to me_, despite its few shortcomings (it's not a lightning fast implementation, it bugs sometimes).
Same. I've tried a dozen different notes options and logseq is the one that has stuck the longest. After screen sharing it at work a little there are now 10 more people using it daily for notes and talking about how it's what they've always been looking for.
The code is open source... Go read it...
If you can't, ask a friend who can or trust the community to have did it for you. The privacy is the statement number one of why people choose logseq, there is a reason...
I don't have a problem with how its written now, their statements on privacy seem to conflict with other statements they make about the future of the product. They seem very ambitious in way that a simple note taking app will not satisfy.
A huge fan of Logseq here. I can’t imagine my workflow without it anymore. However, I still can’t have it on mobile because of sync. iCloud is awful, Syncthing doesn’t support mobile.
my understanding is that syncthing doesn't work properly on iOS, because Apple doesn't allow background processes. So you have to manually sync all the time.
I'd imagine you'd get into some merge conflicts if you forget to manually sync and start editing notes.
That's why ios apps generally either use their own sync, or use iCloud. As someone that has a mix of devices (iOS, Linux desktop, macbook for work), this leave me with very few cross-platform options.
Same here. I only use note taking apps on my Mac, so syncing isn’t something I am interested in. For me the interface of Obsidian is really top notch. Typing headers and code block quotes doesn’t feel like it gets in your way.
My only complaint is that embedded images are saved at the root level by default. Would be nice if I could hide those or move them to an /Images folder,
I really want to like Joplin, and I've tried to switch a number of times. But the mobile experience just isn't there for me. The iOS app is simple and reliable, which is good, but it's missing some of the touches that make mobile computing feel like it's made for mobile.
Specifically, things like swipes for navigation and for selecting or deleting notes. Also, many of the buttons are just too damn small for my sausage fingers. It's dumb, I know. Still, I find myself attempting to swipe to open the side bar then realizing my mistake after the second try and fumbling to reach the too small hamburger in the very top left of the screen.
Notes are something I reference at my desktop but generally write while on the go, so having a easy to use mobile app is a requirement for me. It's a shame though cause the desktop experience is so good.
just jumping on this to say I'm a Joplin user and I love it, thank you for building an awesome app. I currently also use notion because of Joplin's lack of note sharing on mobile; if good note sharing came to the Joplin mobile app I wouldn't need anything else. The only other feature I'd want that I think is missing from Joplin is the ability to define different storage locations / encryption keys per notebook to allow good separation of work and personal data. Overall though, wonderful app and I am so happy that something like it exists. I really feel like the intentions of the app developers align with my values, and that it will continue to go in the right direction for years to come.
Glad you like the app and thanks for the kind words! For separation between work and personal notes, we know support multiple profiles, as described here, available on both mobile and desktop: https://joplinapp.org/news/20220606-release-2-8/#multiple-pr...
By note sharing on mobile, what do you mean? I believe you can share some text from any app to Joplin. And there's also a way to share from Joplin to any other app (from the context menu). Or is it not currently working?
I use the iOS shortcut for pasting into Joplin and it works great other than not brining in the title.
Wanted to thank you for the great app! I left Evernote a year ago and it’s helped me get my journaling back on track. I use Dropbox sync and it wonderfully. I don’t remember the last time I had issues with it.
Only thing I hope for one day is the ability to see the article tags on each note in the list view so I can see which notes have which tags in common without having to click on the tag.
Multiple profiles is a great addition, but obviously would be even better if the app did not need to close and re-open. The risk for me is that a thought disappears in the time it takes me to swap profiles, but I think the keyboard shortcut should help with that on desktop :) the switching itself seems to be fast enough.
My use case is sharing lists etc (e.g a shopping list, task lists) with my wife who barely ever goes on a desktop computer, and have her be able to share lists with me, update them etc.
Joplin as a FOSS app is really a good initiative and I keep trying it from time to time. However having used smartphones for more than a decade now (and being a mobile developer) I have realised that, whatever would be the reason for an Electron app (there might be valid ones like resource, time, target audience etc), an electron app just doesn't cut it. So I doubt I can use an electron app on mobile. Problem is it shows :(
> Specifically, things like swipes for navigation and for selecting or deleting notes.
Gestures / swipe-navigation gets me every time too. There’s also a new enhanced editor on iOS but it’s a little clunky so I switched back to the plain textbox one. I still use and love Joplin, but tolerate some rough edges on mobile because it’s truly open source.
Joplin on desktop with the MacOS theme-plugin is great. The markdown editor on an actual Macbook outshines whatever is packaged with Linux, but both are very usable. Several other nice plugins on desktop that I rely on are inline-tags, simple backup, templates and the outline sidebar.
Overall, love Joplin and can’t wait to see more improvements as time goes on.
Obsidian. It's not perfect but I like a lot of what it brings. Particularly, I like that the notes remain in an accessible format (though as long as the format is not proprietary I'd be fine) and the mass of third party plugins supports basically any workflow. The main issue for me is the fact that the main app is not open source (not for any particular reason other than that I like supporting open source initiatives). I pay for their sync option which works well, though on iOS your kinda forced into it as iCloud sync does not work well. Otherwise, though their mobile experience improved greatly in recently releases.
Thanks for this. I used orgmode for many years, and love it. My main issue is that I travel and found that using the mobile versions unpleasant. Obsidian looks very slick.
If I ever went back to a desk job I’d switch back to orgmode instantly. For now it’s OneNote + whatever is nearby that I can write on (and maybe Obsidian!).
I also write on the go and reference on the desktop later. What is your current workflow? Apple Notes would be great except my work computer is windows, and apple notes in the browser is not great
Big no-no to Joplin for me is that it is using some custom data format (sqlite I think). Why bother? Just give me an app that can handle nicely markdown files, syncing I can do myself e.g. (Synology, rsync) or use some file syncing service (Dropbox, OneDrive, whatever).
Zettlr does the trick for me without interfering with what I write.
"Custom" would be the way Apple Notes or Evernote stores their data in opaque binary blobs. SQLite is standard and you can open it with plenty of third-party tools, but I see your point about plain text files being more convenient for certain tasks.
I sync Joplin via Dropbox across phone and 2 laptops. In theory a prob? But in practice rare to never bc im only one user on one device at a time. And im making small changes at a time. There was 1 minor conflict once and Joplin saw it and i quickly resolved it.
> Just give me an app that can handle nicely markdown files
You know what does that well? The filesystem.
I've tested pretty much all note-taking software out there. What ended up working for me is a bunch of markdown files inside folders, synced using Github.
I have search, formatting and preview thanks to VSCode, and I can access my notes on any machine that syncs with Github.
> Why bother? Just give me an app that can handle nicely markdown files
Markdown (and any other markup) really sucks for anything that is more than just plaintext with some formatting. The best markdown-app we have at the moment are those like Obsidian or Logseq, and they are very low-key compared with a proper richtext-app, like Notion or even a mature word processor.
And looking and the hard struggle of obsidian and their community-plugins, it might be really time to get a proper open richtext-format for the notes-space, to liberate us from markups and their limitations. Maybe something json-based, to bring the notebook-movement into the ring too.
I was never able to get encrypted syncing working with Joplin. I tried every year or something for a while but it never worked. I kept looking for an Evernote alternative for years. The closest that got there is Leanote, which is a Chinese company's open source product. (https://github.com/leanote)
I finally gave up the search. Switched to unencrypted plain text md files synced with syncthing. On Linux I use Kate. It has a directory tree view and recursive search in said directories. It works great. On Android I am using Markor to point to the same shared directory. I don't think I'll ever start looking for a note taking app again. I also found I don't really take notes much. So there's that. :)
It really is very good. What made me not stick with it? Trying to remember. I think it was the fact that it is a little heavy and support/issues is in Chinese, which I don't speak. Later I simplified my setup and made everything local markdown files, handling sync myself.
You can actually try their hosted service for free. Though looking at it now, most of that is in Chinese too.
I wrote my own note-keeping system[0] and very much wanted all of the notes to just be markdown files on the disk. It turns out that there are trade-offs to this. If you want plaintext markdown files on disk AND want fancy features like file versioning, a search index, tags, etc then you need to store all of that metadata somewhere and you're down writing a half-assed implementation of a DBMS.
Now, you can certainly bite the bullet and full-ass the implementation like Dokuwiki did, but that is really quite a lot of work and effort against simply `import sqlite` and writing a couple of tutorial-level queries. And it turns out that exporting all of your documents to plaintext, if you should so choose, is a one-line command away.
Piping content from the Internet to bash is a terrible way to distribute applications on Linux, I'd recommend making the official method a Flatpak instead. It'll allow you to sandbox your application, which is good for the user, and it'll handle the integration (e.g. app icon etc) correctly.
No user should ever be urged to install anything with that method, it's unsafe.
Is the issue with telling people to pipe URL output into bash? Or is the issue with any distribution method that isn't flatpak or something similarly privilege-limited?
I see how flatpak is an improvement, but I don't see how piping into bash is any worse than "install this .deb file / npm package / pip package." If the package author wanted to do something malicious, it's just as easy (if not easier) to put the malicious code in the package itself rather than a bash installer for the package.
If the installer is a precompiled binary, not much, though this is mostly a Windows-ism these days.
If we're considering the same batch script: You can read it,it before running and be sure that the endpoint doesn't dynamically give you different results depending on how you fetch it.
In either case, the proposal here was flatpak, which does provide security benefits like sandboxing.
If you trust the author of tool you are installing and the installer is by the same author, then why wouldn't you trust the installer too?
> It's 100% trivial to have it run rm or shred on all files you have access to while simultaneously printing correct looking install progress messages.
I've been using Joplin for a few years now. But only recently I've been exploring writing my own plugins for it.
I've never written a plugin for anything before but it's been very easy, and overall a very pleasant experience. My plugin basically lets you automate moving notes to specified folders based on what tags are present.
Some pros of Joplin that go unnoticed vs other note taking apps:
1- Available on F-Droid (unofficially)
2- Available as a Flatpak (unofficially)
3- Supports syncing to file system (thus syncing via syncthing)
4- Supports encrypting the exported files
5- Open source
6- Can handle a lot of notes (I have around 5k, but some of those are large notes)
7- Dark Mode
These, among many other features make it my note editor of choice for the past 5 years.
My phone recently died and had to move to a new device and resynchronize my Joplin "vault".
I have tens of thousands of notes and the Android app just cannot complete the first sync. I left it running all night (sync gets slower and slower as it progresses) with "stay awake" enabled on Android (because Joplin stops synching as soon as the screen locks or the app is not in focus) and even after restarting multiple times, sync never completes (it claims it finished, but most recent notes are still nowhere to be found).
This is using the WebDAV backend as that's the only option I have (so long as there's no Google Drive backend).
I am looking for alternatives (with a web clipper extension and native apps on windows/linux/mac/android).
These are the types of applications that I really love. It stores the data in a cloud service that already has enough free capacity for say a notes app. It's like how we can store pass(1) passwords on a git repository (Sync it with Github) and use that as the destination of Android Password Store[1], and you have a easy password manager that syncs across devices.
The ideal “knowledge base” app I’ve been searching for is as follows:
- Self-hosted
- Attractive web client that loads very quickly and works well on mobile
- Can point it at a nested directory of text/markdown and image/pdf files (no sql database)
- Text files are editable in place (no “edit” button, etc.)
- Markdown displays in a plain-text view (no hidden formatting characters, no “rich text” editor)
Every app I’ve tried misses at least of these. The closest I’ve found, strangely, is vscode-server, which is just too bloated and mobile-unfriendly to work for me. I’m perpetually a millimeter away from writing my own, but I feel like I need to stop doing that.
Like I said, the "database" is just a directory of files. You can use anything you want to keep it synced. I've used OneDrive, Dropbox and iCloud to sync mine.
I'd much prefer "syncing" to be something I set up once, and then forget about it.
If it is "anything I want to do to keep it synced", then I'll be half-assing it forever, losing notes and so forth. Already doing that, and the 500 pages of notes from 3 years ago on Google drive, to the "attach it in Gmail to a draft so I can look it over at home", hell even a few somewhere on iCloud. For some things others might be interested in, I've even got a few github gists.
This, for me, is a problem that is central to notes software. It might be the one problem that makes or breaks them. At least with the pricey subscription garbage apps, they know enough to know that I don't want to have to think about syncing.
I use markor (https://f-droid.org/en/packages/net.gsantner.markor/) on android and it does everything I need. It's all a bunch of files, synchronized with syncthing, so I can use it on my desktop with any editor (maybe https://thiefmd.com/, maybe another one). No need for a server, I can use it while offline, it's lightweight to install and maintain.
I want to be able to access the same content from my laptop, phone, and tablet. I used Obsidian for a while with a convoluted setup (a Git repo with an iOS shortcut that fetched when the Obsidian app was launched), but it proved too slow and error-prone to continue using.
I want the whole stack to be open source, which is why I’m not using Obsidian Sync or an iOS Syncthing client. So while I don’t technically need web client, I don’t know of any other solution that would work for me.
I understand your concern, personally syncthing does a perfect job for me. I'm never editing from multiple devices at the same time, and by the time I switch to another device the content is synced. If not, I give it a little time and it makes me pause and use computers a little bit less, so it's not that much of a downside.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 242 ms ] threadI tried both a couple of years ago and much preferred obsidian, although I know long term Joplin fans who have pretty tight workflows and love it
Switched from Joplin to Obsidian and haven't looked back. Both apps are great initiatives though!
I really ought to give it a shot again when I've got a clear head.
If you want a FOSS alternative to Obsidian that's just as simple you could try Zettlr, but currently it's rather rough. You have to change the UI settings to get the folders/file view that Obsidian has, and I found readability to be rather poor. Initially there's no way to make in text larger without zooming in the entire UI, font, and the themes that are available aren't the best for writing or reading notes (and if you like one specific theme you're sod out of luck if you want a darker version of it) – if you want to change things to your liking you have to experiment with the experimental Custom CSS option.
As an additional note, I will add that despite Obsidian being closed-source, I actually feel more comfortable with my data there than with Joplin, primarily because all my data is just common markdown. With Joplin, if I archive content, I have no guarantee the notes on the file format will exist in 10 years (they probably will, but it's still a real possibility). With Obsidian, it's plaintext. There's nothing to need to rediscover, no file format to decode, just good old plain-text. In 40 years I'll still be able to read those files (though the storage media is a very different story). Sure Obsidian can change plans mid-stream, and I don't trust they wont, but all I gotta do is go back to my markdown editor and vim. No sweat.
With Joplin, you can easily archive as Markdown+FrontMatter and that format will still be readable 40 years from now with text and metadata included.
Additionally, in case you forgot to make a backup, and 40 years later all traces of Joplin have disappeared from earth and you can't find an old version of the app, the backend is a simple SQLite database, so you can do `SELECT * FROM notes` and get your content back.
If you haven't already, I'd recommend voting on https://discuss.logseq.com/t/plugin-support-for-ios-android-... if you're waiting for mobile plugin support
Definitely personal preference, in my experience the UX is terrible compared to obsidian but the pricing and company are much more consumer friendly
Definitely personal preference, in my experience the Joplin UX is terrible but the pricing and company are much more consumer frienldy
In my opinion it's not worse than the desktop app (but I don't really like both of them - I'm just glad it syncs successfully)
We probably spend as much time working on it than on the desktop one, but unfortunately it is much harder to develop for mobile, especially when you have to make sure it works on the many different Android devices and iOS versions, plus the extra work to comply with the ever changing requirements from the Google and Apple stores. Many of these changes are not visible to the user, but without this boring never ending maintenance work the app simply wouldn't exist.
We do plan to update the UI/UX of the mobile app though, as we're aware it could be made more intuitive. I'm very keen on improving this and hopefully it will happen this year.
The next version will add an option to turn your Markdown tasks into a beautiful Kanban view[2] via QML. This feature will be paid but anyone will be able to compile the source with a simple CMake flag to get the PRO version for free.
Currently, it uses a DB but we aim to port it to support arbitrary folder (simple .md/.json files, depending on the complexity of the editor). I'm working on a mobile version and a built-in sync option as well.
Once the built-in syncing is complete I will probably only charge for that and the client itself will be completely free.
[1] https://github.com/nuttyartist/notes
[2] https://github.com/nuttyartist/notes/pull/574
But: I couldn't find anything about syncing my notes or mobile clients / other ways to access my notes. Even in the "vision" document. That's a must have functionality _for me_. Probably not important for everyone... therefore, good luck with your project :)
Currently, you can change the database location to your synced folder (Dropbox, etc...) in the settings, but some users reported data conflicts while others said it works fine. You can try this but I'll wait till we officially switch from DB.
1. Any chance for a mobile version with cloud sync? Qt compiles for mobile too, after all. I access my notes from my phone all the time so this is a must for me.
2. How come so many indie devs are off making their own notes app instead of pooling their efforts? For example off the top of my head QOwnNotes is a Qt widget note app, and a QML-based one I think is called Noter but which I can't find anymore now.
3. Judging from the UI I take it you're an Evernote user, or used to be? There was a post today about all the Evernote staff being laid off, so I feel pressured to move away ASAP. Other than Joplin do you have any recommendations that work on mobile?
1. We're currently using QWidgets which doesn't look good on mobile. But we plan to port the UI to Qt Quick (logic will stay in C++). Our new Kanban feature and some other widgets are already built with Qt Quick/QML. And we'll work on syncing too. I wrote that in my comment above.
2. We're actually using a major component from the maker of QOwnNotes called QMarkdownTextEdit[1] for our Markdown editor. It Works great (thanks @pbek!). Just two days ago someone managed to port the syntax highlighter to QML[2] which paves the way for us to port the UI over to QML.
3. I never used Evernote (maybe I used it for a short time but I can't remember). Because we currently don't have a mobile app I use the built-in Apple's Notes on my phone that syncs well to the Desktop app and then I'll just copy over the notes to my app.
[1] https://github.com/pbek/qmarkdowntextedit
[2] https://github.com/pbek/qmarkdowntextedit/issues/158
Notes are something very simple on surface, but can become very complicated and diversified on details. So everyone starts doing their own personalized sh*t, some are happy with this, and some learn the hardships of it and abandon their projects at some point. So we have a constant stream of half-assed notes-apps of various flavors, and some which are really well-made, to stay.
[1] https://github.com/nuttyartist/notes/issues/431
Nice little program. This is the reason I had skipped it after testing since I wanted it to use it on multiple platforms with syncing handled by me.
Btw, you're adding Kanban support?
And yes, this will be released soon for Notes v2.2.0.
Work in progress video: https://i.imgur.com/VCt0Zvg.mp4
https://github.com/zadam/trilium
Their pitch is as a privacy focused notes manager.
I'm using the Joplin sync server for keeping my stuff in sync and it has worked flawlessly.
If Laurent or anyone from the Joplin community is reading: great job everyone! <3
I don't love the default editing experience but the Rich Makdown extension solves it well for me.
The extension ecosystem is a bit of mixed bag. There are few good extensions but many are half baked.
Because of the simple folder structure, you can also use vim+fzf to search/navigate/create/edit your notes. The notational-fzf-vim plugin[2] is superb for that.
For web-clipping, I just use the markdownload[3] extension in firefox and save the markdown file in the notes folder.
Why not joplin? Mostly because joplin stores notes in an sqlite database instead of a simple folder structure making it not easily accessible by normal unix tools and editors.
Why not obsidian? Was never able to grok obsidian. Pointing it at my existing notes makes it just show up as a huge mess of unstructured notes. I guess it needs some effort to organize and link existing notes. In notable, I can tag a note as Books/CS, and CS/Books, and it'll show up in corresponding folder-like structures in the left panel. Can't do that in obsidian.
0. https://notable.app/
1. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.redsolver....
2. https://github.com/alok/notational-fzf-vim
3. https://github.com/deathau/markdownload
But instead much more accessible to any kind of software, including a five line python script. While plain text files are useful, they shouldn't be taken to be the only true and accessible way of storing data, even textual ones.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.gitjournal....
I just looked at it again, and I think they've gotten rid of the subscription and made it a one-time "pro" purchase. That's better than subscription I guess. The only added advantage I see is that syncing with git is built in.
It only supports plain text notes (with Markdown rendering), but I've got years of notes in there, and it works on every platform. It's also owned and supported by Wordpress.
You usually get better sync performance by either self-hosting or using Joplin Cloud. I don't know of any good WebDAV provider, let alone a free one, and even the paid ones have limitations that make them unusable for sync.
OneDrive and Dropbox have a free tier and work with Joplin, but they throttle the connection. But I guess it depends on how many notes you have and how you use Joplin - a lot of people use OneDrive or Dropbox and it works good enough for them.
Maybe that's changed since though.
[1] http://logseq.com/
[2] https://github.com/simonthum/git-sync
[3] https://syncthing.net/
Before it was Boostnote.
Probably the reason was both Boostnote and Joplin seems to have stopped developing the application and shifted focus to monetization.
Also I personally prefer the (much) more technical way that Logseq work. It is not a markdown editor, but a knowledge base that stores its data as plaintext files in a markdown-like format.
One question: do you have pointers to a good way to setup git sync and syncthing? I pay enough to LogSeq to have free sync but I prefer to self host and also the current sync model is somewhat flaky.
https://joplinapp.org/changelog/
https://joplinapp.org/changelog_android/
Exactly my thoughts when I looked at it a few weeks ago (minus the privacy angle that I didn't feel).
I also bounced off the slew of influencer-type blog posts and videos that promise you that Logseq will change your {life, studies, PhD, work} forever when all I saw in those videos were very, very simple outlines. The whole community (including the subreddit) seems very... promotional.
FYI, as of last year, Joplin supports profiles on both Desktop and Android that are exactly that. Though you do have to restart the app to toggle between the two.
Release notes: https://joplinapp.org/news/20220606-release-2-8/
Open issue for multiple instances ala Firefox: https://github.com/laurent22/joplin/issues/591
I have personally tried many alternatives (obsidian among them) but nothing comes close to what logseq offers _to me_, despite its few shortcomings (it's not a lightning fast implementation, it bugs sometimes).
Hope it helps.
That's why ios apps generally either use their own sync, or use iCloud. As someone that has a mix of devices (iOS, Linux desktop, macbook for work), this leave me with very few cross-platform options.
This background process issue may prevent optimal operation, but I've never seen a file not being synced quickly in practice.
Just get Möbius Sync (https://www.mobiussync.com/) and don't overthink it.
Just checking ... yes, I have Syncthing running on Android.
This app works great on Android: https://www.f-droid.org/packages/com.nutomic.syncthingandroi...
My only complaint is that embedded images are saved at the root level by default. Would be nice if I could hide those or move them to an /Images folder,
I'm not sure if I understand your complaint, which is something that can easily be changed.
Open Settings (cmd-,) > Files & Links, and look for Attachment folder path and change to whatever path you like.
I sync it through cloud between mobile, desktop and laptop.
It is simply awesome. One of the most important tools I use everyday.
Specifically, things like swipes for navigation and for selecting or deleting notes. Also, many of the buttons are just too damn small for my sausage fingers. It's dumb, I know. Still, I find myself attempting to swipe to open the side bar then realizing my mistake after the second try and fumbling to reach the too small hamburger in the very top left of the screen.
Notes are something I reference at my desktop but generally write while on the go, so having a easy to use mobile app is a requirement for me. It's a shame though cause the desktop experience is so good.
By note sharing on mobile, what do you mean? I believe you can share some text from any app to Joplin. And there's also a way to share from Joplin to any other app (from the context menu). Or is it not currently working?
Wanted to thank you for the great app! I left Evernote a year ago and it’s helped me get my journaling back on track. I use Dropbox sync and it wonderfully. I don’t remember the last time I had issues with it.
Only thing I hope for one day is the ability to see the article tags on each note in the list view so I can see which notes have which tags in common without having to click on the tag.
Keep up the great work!
By sharing I mean the notebook sharing feature that is available on desktop but not yet mobile. https://discourse.joplinapp.org/t/share-notebooks-and-collab...
My use case is sharing lists etc (e.g a shopping list, task lists) with my wife who barely ever goes on a desktop computer, and have her be able to share lists with me, update them etc.
Thanks again!
Gestures / swipe-navigation gets me every time too. There’s also a new enhanced editor on iOS but it’s a little clunky so I switched back to the plain textbox one. I still use and love Joplin, but tolerate some rough edges on mobile because it’s truly open source.
Joplin on desktop with the MacOS theme-plugin is great. The markdown editor on an actual Macbook outshines whatever is packaged with Linux, but both are very usable. Several other nice plugins on desktop that I rely on are inline-tags, simple backup, templates and the outline sidebar.
Overall, love Joplin and can’t wait to see more improvements as time goes on.
Self-hosted LiveSync extension works wonders after you tune it a bit.
If I ever went back to a desk job I’d switch back to orgmode instantly. For now it’s OneNote + whatever is nearby that I can write on (and maybe Obsidian!).
Zettlr does the trick for me without interfering with what I write.
Tends not to play well with things like Dropbox or Syncthing though. Although I guess you can use litestream or something for the replication instead.
Both sync. You now have a conflict.
With text files, you at least have obvious merge strategies. With SQLite it isn't quite as easy.
I still don't mind SQLite in Joplin. It has advantages, as well.
See trilium: https://github.com/zadam/trilium
Apple Notes uses SQLite.
I was wondering though, since my Nextcloud storage is encrypted, does the SQLite file get synced as well?
You know what does that well? The filesystem.
I've tested pretty much all note-taking software out there. What ended up working for me is a bunch of markdown files inside folders, synced using Github.
I have search, formatting and preview thanks to VSCode, and I can access my notes on any machine that syncs with Github.
[0]: https://github.com/AGWA/git-crypt
Markdown (and any other markup) really sucks for anything that is more than just plaintext with some formatting. The best markdown-app we have at the moment are those like Obsidian or Logseq, and they are very low-key compared with a proper richtext-app, like Notion or even a mature word processor.
And looking and the hard struggle of obsidian and their community-plugins, it might be really time to get a proper open richtext-format for the notes-space, to liberate us from markups and their limitations. Maybe something json-based, to bring the notebook-movement into the ring too.
I finally gave up the search. Switched to unencrypted plain text md files synced with syncthing. On Linux I use Kate. It has a directory tree view and recursive search in said directories. It works great. On Android I am using Markor to point to the same shared directory. I don't think I'll ever start looking for a note taking app again. I also found I don't really take notes much. So there's that. :)
What made you not stick with it?
You can actually try their hosted service for free. Though looking at it now, most of that is in Chinese too.
Now, you can certainly bite the bullet and full-ass the implementation like Dokuwiki did, but that is really quite a lot of work and effort against simply `import sqlite` and writing a couple of tutorial-level queries. And it turns out that exporting all of your documents to plaintext, if you should so choose, is a one-line command away.
[0]: https://github.com/cu/silicon
No user should ever be urged to install anything with that method, it's unsafe.
Do you have the mental fortitude to format it and go through it line by line looking for possible exploits?
It's 100% trivial to have it run rm or shred on all files you have access to while simultaneously printing correct looking install progress messages.
I see how flatpak is an improvement, but I don't see how piping into bash is any worse than "install this .deb file / npm package / pip package." If the package author wanted to do something malicious, it's just as easy (if not easier) to put the malicious code in the package itself rather than a bash installer for the package.
If we're considering the same batch script: You can read it,it before running and be sure that the endpoint doesn't dynamically give you different results depending on how you fetch it.
In either case, the proposal here was flatpak, which does provide security benefits like sandboxing.
> It's 100% trivial to have it run rm or shred on all files you have access to while simultaneously printing correct looking install progress messages.
The same is true of the tool itself, too.
How is installing something from Homebrew any more secure?
I've never written a plugin for anything before but it's been very easy, and overall a very pleasant experience. My plugin basically lets you automate moving notes to specified folders based on what tags are present.
1- Available on F-Droid (unofficially) 2- Available as a Flatpak (unofficially) 3- Supports syncing to file system (thus syncing via syncthing) 4- Supports encrypting the exported files 5- Open source 6- Can handle a lot of notes (I have around 5k, but some of those are large notes) 7- Dark Mode
These, among many other features make it my note editor of choice for the past 5 years.
This is using the WebDAV backend as that's the only option I have (so long as there's no Google Drive backend).
I am looking for alternatives (with a web clipper extension and native apps on windows/linux/mac/android).
[1] https://github.com/android-password-store/Android-Password-S...
Does this app exist?
The "database" is just a bunch of directories you can sync with any tool you want.
And even if it's in there, $8/month for syncing seems to defeat the point of "self-hosted".
If it is "anything I want to do to keep it synced", then I'll be half-assing it forever, losing notes and so forth. Already doing that, and the 500 pages of notes from 3 years ago on Google drive, to the "attach it in Gmail to a draft so I can look it over at home", hell even a few somewhere on iCloud. For some things others might be interested in, I've even got a few github gists.
This, for me, is a problem that is central to notes software. It might be the one problem that makes or breaks them. At least with the pricey subscription garbage apps, they know enough to know that I don't want to have to think about syncing.
Its an electron app.
I use markor (https://f-droid.org/en/packages/net.gsantner.markor/) on android and it does everything I need. It's all a bunch of files, synchronized with syncthing, so I can use it on my desktop with any editor (maybe https://thiefmd.com/, maybe another one). No need for a server, I can use it while offline, it's lightweight to install and maintain.
I want the whole stack to be open source, which is why I’m not using Obsidian Sync or an iOS Syncthing client. So while I don’t technically need web client, I don’t know of any other solution that would work for me.
https://github.com/zadam/trilium
And while it does use a db backend, it allows you to extend the interface with inline JavaScript. It’s extremely underrated