Best/usable free Evernote alternative

TheInsane42@lemmy.world to Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world – 50 points –

Ok, Evernote committed hara-kiri, so time to move on. (no way I'll pay for ransomware) Any tips for good alternatives for Linux/Android platform? My wife used Nimbus note a while back, recovered her account there, ColorNote pops up when looking for alternatives as well.

Also, my wife has about 15k of recepies in evernote, is there an option to export them all and recover them? If not, she knows the most important ones by heart and/or where she found them.

We both run Linux, but I haven't found an evernote application that is still maintained for Linux. (I have a Windows VM somewhere to battle shenanigans like this)

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Joplin is an open source alternative. The app is free, but I believe there is a small monthly fee to enable sync across all devices if you need that.

I sync across devices by saving the notes folder to Nextcloud and pointing all clients to it.

This is the way I implement it as well.

I've also heard of folks using syncthing. I'm sure there's plenty of ways to sync up but I already had a nextcloud instance so I went with that.

I like Joplin too. My only issue is that the developer is weirdly against implementing any kind of encryption or password protection suggesting that users should do that on their end (at least last time I looked).

So I ended up using QOwnNotes which has this feature. But I can't put that on my android phone so I've got this stupid setup with obsidian on the phone, QOwnNotes on my pc and resilio sync keeping it all synced.

I'm not sure what you mean, as far as I understand Joplin has e2e-encryption

Basically this https://discourse.joplinapp.org/t/encrypting-individual-notes/841/4

Oh I see, so basically it's missing the possibility of encrypting or password-protecting individual notes. That would be great indeed, too bad the devs don't want to do it

Yep, I didn't explain that well in my first comment. But if they'd just implement that I wouldn't have any real reason to not use Joplin instead.

Obsidian is my fav. It's not FOSS but it uses a flat folder of plain markdown files so it's very portable and open.

Notion is decent as well but smells like at some point it will enshittify. If you are okay with the pain of jumping platforms eventually you could give it a shot.

Joplin is FOSS and I've heard good things about it but idk where it stacks up against the other two.

Notion would be the greatest piece of consumer software EVER, if it was e2e-encrypted and usable offline. I've used it for a couple of years and, in multiple cases, I was not able to access my notes because of some problems they had with their domain. Not great.

Appflowy and Anytype seem to be the best open alternatives yet, but they both are still immature and lack some features

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Joplin is already mentioned but I'd point out it can import those 15k recipes. You do have to do a notebook at a time though (that took me a bit as I had over 300).

There are plugins for various functionality like OCR and hotfolders (auto import). I hear the webclipper isn't great but I've never used it in my workflow in Evernote or Joplin.

I finally bailed after 13+ years of Evernote about a year ago to Joplin and am very happy overall.

What happened to Evernote? I'm using it now and never heard about any issues.

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I've used both Joplin and Obsidian recently and for now I'm sticking with Obsidian. Usability isn't ideal but it does the job and once you're used to it, it's easy to use. I've found Joplin to be relatively more obtuse and buggy.

There is a huge number of alternatives, depending on what features you need. Joplin is probably the most famous open-source alternative. You can also subscribe to Joplin Cloud to have e2e-encrypted note synchronization between devices.

If you don't need a web clipper, look into Standard Notes (FOSS and e2e encryoted, also available via web interface - that's what I use ATM), Simple Notes (FOSS but not encrypted), Obsidian (great but maybe a bit overkill and expensive if you want to sync) or Anytype (also a bit overkill and still in beta, but also very promising)

Alternativeto.net can be helpful in making a choice

EDIT: for each of the softwares I've mentioned there is a way to import Evernote notes in bulk

I'm using free Standard Notes account for couple of years and it's pretty solid for basic note taking. It obviously lacks all the bells and whistles of paid version, but I'm fine with this for the great price of $0.

I'm using the paid version (I have a Professional plan but I still pay 49.99$ a year, which was the old price I believe). It's pretty great, but markdown support can sometimes be janky and I also have problems with sync from time to time. Also the apps make me re-login randomly, and one time the app thought I had a free subscription instead of a paid one and, because of that, ALL of my markdown notes were turned into plaintext notes. I still have to re-set them all, one by one, to markdown.

There is also 100GB cloud support for files, subscription sharing and a bunch of other stuff, but I'd rather see them work on making the whole experience more robust, instead of adding new features.

With the current prices I would not recommend upgrading to a paid version, and I'm also looking to switch to something more flexible and robust.

There's Notesnook, which looks like pretty much the same thing. Might be worth checking out.

I recently tried UpNote which is pretty cross platform.

Maybe give that a try and if you like it, they have a lifetime license.

(I'm not affiliated with them but I've tried every major note taking app and recently landed on this one that I've been pretty happy with)

The AppImage route seems the least poluting one on the Linux systems, so we'll give that a try. Thanks for the tip.

Thanks, sounds like an option as well. (The most promising at the moment)

Quick check shows no web interface. (or we can't find it) Linux app goes via snap (yuck) or appimage (never heard off). Also the clipper (which we don't need, we just want to enter text) requires the app installed on the computer. It's still the closest thing I've seen so far though.

You might want to look into Loqseq and Appflowy. I hear the cool kids today are using notion and obsidian and these two are FOSS alternatives to those.

I love trilium, I can self host. Doesn't have user support so I host two instances for me and wife. We then use mealie for recipes. It's worked really well

I hadn't seen that news. I have tons of notes, being a user from way back. Then I stopped - it got so bloated and not easy to use anymore. I'll go export mine - thanks for posting.

I use UpNote. Multiplatform, no sub, one time reasonable payment for lifetime. Copy and paste images wsywig with text from the web.

AnyType is my current favourite. It's new, but open source and has 1gb free sync. The encryption leaves something to be desired but for my need it's great.

orgzly+syncthing

emacs org-mode on desktop

I admit, it is not terribly easy to get started. I think the emacs tutorial alone takes half an hour then you need to learn org-mode.

but it's pretty badass

I use Notesnook and find it great! Also check out Cryptee, if you're ok with web apps.

Just wanted to chime in here to say RIP Evernote. You served well.