What is your favourite FOSS notes application?

Wild Bill@midwest.social to Free and Open Source Software@beehaw.org – 59 points –

Preferably an application that you can sync and save. Not sure what alternatives are safe in terms of privacy and security.

45

I’m a huge fan of Joplin. It runs on everything and syncs to either your or their cloud. Been using it for a few years now.

2nd for Joplin. Love it to bits. It has its quirks, but they're ones I can live with. The sync support is pretty awesome.

Been playing with Logseq recently as well. Logseq is more for knowledge management/brain dump kind of notetaking, but it's really cool that it's so flexible. It helps that I really like using lists in the first place

Does Joplin have a search function within notes? And it is fully FOSS, yes?

I'm not sure what EXACTLY you'd be looking for from a search feature as I'm mostly a light user myself, but there's a search option which will search the contents of all your notes. I can't tell you how robust it is, but it does have exclusion (desiredTerm -excludeTerm) search at least, and there's standard Find/Replace functionality once you're in the specific note.

Joplin itself is AGPL. Unfortunately, Joplin Server is under "JOPLIN SERVER PERSONAL USE LICENSE".

While I really like Joplin, I'm thinking of making the switch to something fully open source.

not sure I follow your comment. Joplin Server would be relevant when you sync your notes through them, no? Or how does it affect the app?

You don't need the server. It happily works with storing notes as files and syncing them with syncthing.

Joplin server is a separate product that is for if you want to run a web server to sync and collaborate on notes.

I used to work at video game company and Joplin was the code name for one of our projects, so now every time I see that word, I instantly think of that game. I think it was dragon age lol. Anyway, if I can get past that PTSD I might check out this editor! lol /s

Just to add to the noise.. I'm shocked that Obsidian is not the number one app that people are talking about. Didn't even know there were so many other great options, to be honest.

Edit: it's because it's not open source. The plugins all have to be open source, and it is free as in beer. I'm keeping this comment up.

I just use whatever text editor I have and make MD files synced with Syncthing. On mobile I use Markor.

I've tried several different methods, and as much as I try to be organised, I feel pretty good with my folder of files.

Your post 🤝 mine. It's a mess but it's my mess!

Simple, platform agnostic, just works.

Notesnook. There's quite a lot of private, secure, foss note taking apps, take your pick. Just check what features they have, eg some of them have no encryption at rest

I'm excited to see they're going fully open source. Looks like the last steps to making the sync server self-hostable are in the works. Do you use their paid service? If so: any complaints or caveats?

I do use their paid service, though I'm considering cancelling to switch to using a markdown editor with syncthing for notes. I wouldn't have any complaints about the paid service specifically. I'd say it's a fair enough deal if you can get it on a sale. My reasons for wanting to switch are because I don't like using cloud services when unnecessary, and to a lesser extent I'd prefer a native app over an electron app

Markor on Android, MarkText on desktop. I sort notes in category folders and use Syncthing to keep devices... well, synced.

QOwnNotes for me. Also such a catchy name. Seriously though, ignore the stupid name, just give it a try.

I tried most of what people have mentioned, but eventually found that MD files just worked best for me. So Nextcloud Notes became my default.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=it.niedermann.owncloud.notes

That's my go to for my quick scratch pad notes, generally something I only need for a one time deal.

I use the Bit Warden secure note feature for more permanent things.

If it is a more ongoing documentation deal that needs organization I like Bookstack.

All depends on the purpose one uses it for.

NeutriNote. It can save and sync to local folders, probably with some external app you can configure it to sync to cloud. It has auto mirror/backup features.

What I like is the way you can navigate through notes and its powerful search function. It also has some extra features which I don't use.

I've tried them all. I use Quillpad for Google Keep replacement (shopping/packing lists, etc) but have been using and loving Obsidian. I know it's closed source, but the hierarchy of simple text files is fantastic and I haven't found a FOSS alternative I like as much.

Believe it or not... Vimwiki (&& syncthing for synchronisation across my machines)

it's rather no nonsense idk. I'm not even a vim wizard, I just know the bare basics

I’d recommend Anytype if they’d ever add a pure black theme — the low contrast gray text on gray background hurts my eyes and I won’t be able to use it until they make some color changes.

@clark I used Notally at first, but I wanted cross-device syncing at some point. So I discovered this app by a developer called Bill The Farmer, which this is insanely small (just a few KB). I keep my notes in pCloud. I'm not sure how private it is, but I am thinking of storing them inside a veracrypt container, synced with pCloud instead, and I am also keeping an eye on other options that have the ability of storing notes as Markdown files.

I'm keeping an eye for now on Quillpad ver. 1.5 but I'm open to other options as well. 😁

I'm gonna try out Quillpad. Seems relatively okay, gonna read some reviews later. Pretty cool you can save your notes in a zip document if you don't have NextCloud.

Cherrytree, no question. You can make hierarchical lists/notes, hyperlink to files, folders, websites and other nodes (lists). You can also insert tables and images in your entries and format text. The whole thing is saved as a single file and you can choose for it to be encrypted if you want. I sync it between devices using Syncthing. Both are FOSS, private and secure. Cherrytree's UI doesn't look especially modern but is very effective and you can make your own themes for it in the preferences if you want to glam it up a bit. You can pretty much use it as a wiki for your entire life. In fact, if I could only have one application on my computer it would be this!

I like Org Mode, but that's sort of… Begrudgingly. I like any FOSS notes app better than any closed source notes app. That's not even me having strong feeling about FOSS (which I do), it's more about… I am very picky about note apps. Org Mode (with org-roam) does the best job of getting out of my way and letting me write and resurface notes.

If you have nextcloud and use linux: Iotas

It is really simple but suits my needs! Also looks great on the GNOME desktop.

I migrated from Logseq to Trilium (on maintainance mode) because of the sync feature on server, so I access locally to notes on all my devices. The new project Trilium Next just released a beta version for testing, same UI but lot of changes on backend. It does not have a big plugin ecosystem but it's powerful on itself.

I use logseq with nextcloud, works even on Android, 0 issues so far.

At work I use VNote because it uses Git as its back-end. I regularly push my notes up to our in-house Git server to back them up as well as share them with everybody else at work. At home I use Bookstack for note-taking.

On a desktop/laptop (or really anywhere I can run CLI apps and use a proper keyboard) it's mostly plain text files in Vim or Emacs. On my phone I recently switched from Standard Notes to Notesnook. Standard Notes is pretty powerful, uses end-to-end encryption by default, and can be self-hosted. The premium subscription is pretty expensive though. (Yes, it also requires a license when self-hosting. It's cheaper, but still kinda expensive). Last year, there was also some controversy about the licensing. They recently got acquired by Proton.

Notesnook is fully FOSS, but they still haven't released a self-hostable sync server. They are working on it though. It's currently my go-to option.

I just discovered a new app called Beaver Notes that I'm very excited to try out.

Joplin is another great option, it's available on all platforms and even has a CLI, it also supports E2EE, but it has to be enabled manually. Can be self-hosted: https://github.com/etechonomy/joplin-server. I think I will switch to self-hosted, end-to-end encrypted Joplin in the long term, so I can have all my notes unified in one app. The CLI app is really useful for me, as I already use the Terminal to take notes when using a desktop/laptop.

Ooo vi how fancy! (The jealous inner dialogue wishing I knew more vi commands) 😝🤣

edit: it's like when you're programming and you need to use regex, but like you don't know it, but you should, and you need help from that "one person that KNOWS regex". That feeling. I need to get that regex card game and play that vi adventures game. lol

edit2: I actually love vim it's a good tool