Self hosted Google Keep alternative

woodgen@lemm.ee to Selfhosted@lemmy.world – 161 points –

Any recommendations for a self hosted note taking app that runs on everything with a screen and is designed for multi device usage?

Also a modern, powerful and puristic UI would be a must have to compete with Keep.

I am looking for this app every now and then but am always disappointed by the choices.

I recently tried Joplin on Android, but was very dissatisfied with the usabilty.

The FOSS self hosted alternatives for smart home and porn are better than the commercial ones, can't be that hard for notes, can it?

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Mind sharing what were your issues with Joplin?

My only issue is that it does not have any widgets on Android. So, I use Nextcloud Notes when I need that. But Joplin is actually great. You can self host a joplin server or sync using a Nextcloud server. It supports advanced markdown and I like the UI as well.

You can try Bookstack, but it will work on a web browser only. Another option is Obsidian, but I think only the apps are FOSS, the backend is not.

I like Joplin too, and I use it when I can instead of Keep. It supports a pretty good range of synchronization mechanisms. But it doesn't have the collaboration capability of Keep, so when I'm doing shared shopping lists or to do lists, I still end up using Keep.

I think Joplin is the best too, but I wish they will rewrite their app using Tauri or flutter for better performance and native app integration. Feature wise it is the best one that is FOSS.

Right, obsidian didn't appeal to me since it's proprietary.

I probably will look into setting up a Joplin server and maybe write a frontend for it. Also didn't try frontend options on PC yet.

Until now I only tried the Android app and while it looked quite mature, I didn't get quite the UX from it I was anticipating.

Some things that bothered me:

  • Creating a note requires 2 clicks, 1 should be fine.I want to start writing and decide whether its a todo later.

  • Tag management. In Keep #tags are parsed from text automatically. Although there is a conflict with markdown syntax, having to issue 3 clicks to add a tag seems bothersome

  • Tags are not shown in the main menu, but are another view.

  • Didn't figure out what notebooks are supposed to be, but i guess some kind of directory system. Don't see the point when having a tag system. In the end they are too prominent in the UI.

But the synchronization options and markdown capabilities are a big plus. mardown is actually a feature missing in keep.

I'm a Joplin contributor and if you think the android app is halfway decent, that's a win ahahaha. The desktop apps are what makes it a superstar though, with all the plugins and community. The mobile apps have been slowly modernizing but it's real basic

Obsidian is just a glorified markdown editor and there are some open source plugins for sync that you can self host if you want!

If you like obsidian but want a FOSS alternative, you might want to try out emacs org-mode and org-roam.

Here is an example video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyhPmypHDEw

Is there any way to use org roam in vim ? I'm interested in trying it out.

I have been using an android app named orgzly and have found org-mode to work just as good as markdown for me. For markdown I was using an app called Markor.

I haven't used vim in a while, so not sure. But you can use vim key bindings in emacs with evil-mode.

Org-mode can also be exported into markdown.

Markdown is cool since it's used in a lot of places. But org-mode has so many more features and can be a drop in replacement in most cases.

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