Yet another request for a note taking app

Free and Open Source Software@beehaw.org – 45 points – 10 months ago

Hello! I'm still not satisfied with my note taking app. I tried dozen of them, read tons of lists on random blogs on the internet, without any success. I'll try to ask you then.

I'm looking for a note taking app with just this 3 features:

richtext/WYSIWYG (i don't want to write plain text and then press a button to see it rendered)
it has to support CHECKBOXES! Most of the apps I tried does not support them, or supported them only if all the note was a checklist. I don't want a checklist, I want a note where I can put some checkbox inside!
FOSS and active

The one I'm currently using is obsidian, but it's not FOSS and it feels very overcomplicated for a simple note apps.

Any suggestion is welcome!

EDIT: forgot to mention, I'm talking about Android XD

Logseq. I love it so much I bought the sync-access to support the project!

I may look into this. I would much rather pay developers that give a shit about the project then pay Evernote who is clearly just in it for the money and their devs have lost their way.

Why has the fdroid version the "tracks or refers on your activities" warning?

If you mean the IzzyOnDroid one:

The app uses Sentry, which is enabled by default and sends reports to Sentry.io.

Logseq is very very similar to obsidian but is FOSS.

Supports checkboxes

It's not WYSIWYG, though, it uses markdown (like Lemmy/Reddit). I prefer markdown since I don't want to fiddle with UI buttons while typing, but it's not what OP is asking for.

OP, why do you want WYSIWYG (on mobile)? I could see it, maybe, on desktop, but a note taking app should be focused on efficient input, imho, so markdown just makes more sense to me. Triple-# for an h3 is way faster than navigating to a Style menu and clicking Heading 3 in a UI dropdown (or whatever).

Regardless, I like Logseq so much that it's the first open source project I regularly contribute to financially. It's a game changer for me and managing my ADHD across 6 devices. (Lots of different work and personal machines/devices).

I would argue that it is as close as you can get to WYSIWYG without being it. Logseq works with blocks, which in most cases are only a line or two long. Every block on the page, except the one you're actively clicked on /working on are WYSIWYG.

There's no rendering etc, you just click off the block and you see it

It looks like it's on the road map at least

Triple-# for an h3 is way faster than navigating to a Style menu and clicking Heading 3 in a UI dropdown (or whatever).

of course it is, and ideally if the app supports it I'd use it more than the button. the WYSIWYG thing is not in the input, but rather in what is displayed while I type: if I type ###, I want the line to become a title, hiding the ### imediately, not after I click a "render" button

for instance, on desktop marktext checks all my points. I'm looking for a mobile app with similar features. The mobile version of Marktext will take some time to come out sadly

I downloaded the fdroid app but... I'm not able to use checkboxes. If I type

- something

it is not converted into a bullet list

- [ ] something
[ ] something
[] something

are not converted to checklists
and if I click on the checklist icon in the toolbar LATER appears instead of a checkbox... am I missing something?

In the block, the first word should be TODO Then when you click off it, it adds a checkbox at the start

Everything is already a bullet list, that's the logseq design, so if you also want numbering then use the command key / and search for numbering

Hope that helps!

Have you tried/looked into Joplin yet? If I understand right, I think the one box it doesn't tick unfortunately is the first (at least in the Android app), as it supports markdown which is only rendered after leaving edit mode.

However, it does have checkboxes and the whole note doesn't have to be a checklist. You can write a description, add your checklist, add a horizontal separator line, another description, another checklist, all in the same note. It's also FOSS and actively updated. Bonus as well is that it can be used with Syncthing to sync notes to your other devices, and there's a desktop version which has some more flexibility over the Android app.

It has a WYSIWYG editor on desktop at least

I sound like a broken record but check also https://silverbullet.md

It should check all of your boxes + it has local files like obsidian (which is why I love it), and the main dev is very active both on discord and forum.

I can't find the application on fdroid, does it have an android app or do I need to use it in a browser?

I checked better, it can only be used as PWA, which means I cannot use it offline :(

It's not open source yet, but that is on their roadmap. Acreom behaves in a similar way to Obsidian in that it's text files on the local file system. But it actually handles check boxes much better than Obsidian.

That said, the Android app requires use of their cloud sync, which I'm not a fan of because like you I'd rather manage my own sync. I've encouraged the dev to consider it on Android but I seem to be the only one bringing it up at all.

It looks very nice, I hope the Dev will listen to you!

Notesnook is quite nice, though it has like cloud sync. May put you off a bit if you don't want that. But the android app is quite nice regardless

This is actually pretty nice, it checks all my conditions. I'm trying to understand where the notes are stored on the device, as I'd prefer to use synching to sync my notes on my devices

Thanks for the reality good suggestion!!!

It uses an internal db from my understanding, not the filesystem. I think? (haven't checked recently) it's possible to self host the sync server if that's your thing. You could also do regular backups (these are automated) as a workaround way of manual syncing I guess.

uh, that's a shame. I think I'll settle with this one for now, but if I'll find an alternative that can store notes as plain text I'll switch

If you happen to have a Nextcloud instance, there is a decently robust Notes app that can be used from either the web browser or from a standalone app on Android (available on f-droid and Google Play).

After much fighting with and trying of other solution, that's what I ended up settling with.

Emacs org mode could work if you're okay with tinkering a bit. There are keyboard shortcuts for check/uncheck, and you can do a lot of customization of how it renders in Emacs. Search might be a problem though.

Emacs in org mode can do anything. Doesn't mean its an easy or good for the use case.

Emacs is actually one of the easier editors to use in my opinion. The ribbon at the top makes most functionality accessible even without knowing any of the keyboard shortcuts.

Sorry I forgot to clarify, I'm talking about Android XD

I updated OP to explain it

Thanks for the tip anyway!

I use orgzly for android, with syncthing to synchronise the files.

https://f-droid.org/packages/com.orgzly/

It's very flexible, but I'm not sure it's quite what you're looking for.

Emacs does have an Android version, though it's kind of buggy and not worth it (especially not without a physical keyboard).

I know someone else already mentioned it but I'm going to do the same. Notesnook. I have been using it for around six months now.

I have been looking for the perfect note taking up for a long time. I have some of the same concern as you and Standard Notes looked like a promising app for me but it also looked really overpriced and kind of over complicated.

Notesnook pretty much had everything I wanted. The most important thing for me is that it is completely cross-platform. It has perfect feature parity no matter where you are, no matter if you're on the web app, the iOS app or the Android app, the Mac app, whatever. It has everything on all apps.

It's important to me because some apps are primarily developed for one platform and you can tell that while you pay the same price on another, you're still a second class citizen. And you also get some apps which are in general scattered around feature-wise. So some client gets some features and other don't. It's weird. I mean look at the whole Proton suite between iOS and Android.

It can sync with its own service, it works well enough, and it's end to an encrypted which I love.

And it's fully open source! Which is the cherry on top.

My only gripe with it is its editor. It supports markdown but it's not really markdown. It's a rich text editor with markdown support for formatting which is very different. The results are sensibly the same but more often than not if you copy and paste something that is already formatted from a markdown editor into the app, it won't format it. You will get # and * everywhere but they won't do what they're meant to be doing. Because it's made to interpret Markdown as you type it.

I wish we could get an actual simple, rock solid Markdown editor. But other than that? Notesnook is the nest Note taking app I've used and I've tried plenty.

Thanks for the detailed answer! I downloaded it and the UI is very nice, but sadly the notes seem to be stored in an internal db, so I can only see them using the app itself. I'd rather an app that saves the files as plain text, so that I can sync them however I want and open them with whatever app I want

It's however the best one I tried so far, so I'll probably settle with this! thanks for the suggestion!

I'm looking for the same thing but with the added difficultly of wanting live collaboration in notes, primarily so I can use it for grocery shopping with my partner, but for other stuff we do together, too. Hedgedoc 2.0 is what I have my eye on the most.

The current Hedgedoc checks boxes 2 and 3 for you, but not box 1. You can check/uncheck checkboxes in view mode, though. I'm at the point now where I don't really care too much about having a wysiwyg editor for my workflow, but I understand if it's not what you need.

They have a demo here: https://demo.hedgedoc.org/

The other biggest downside is how 1.x handles navigating to different notes. It uses a "history" page which works alright, but isn't very organized. 2.0 will include an "explore" page that will be much better.

https://noteapps.info

seems interesting, but I can't find the "checkbox" feature in the list :(

Just use Simplenote.

I just downloaded it and it won't make me use the app without an account... This is not a good start

It’s a fairly normal start, and “must not force you to use an account” wasn’t listed in your set of requirements. The account is because the app supports completely free syncing across multiple mobile and desktop platforms. Just use any throwaway google account or create a new one just for the purpose. No subscription and it is FOSS.

Have you already tried Zettel Notes? It is FOSS, active and has everything you mentioned.

I just downloaded it, the UI is pretty neat, but it is not actually richtext, just plaintext with the "view" button to view the formatted output (readonly). Is there a setting I missed to change this behavior?

thanks for the suggestion!

I missed the point about richtext. sorry. Unfortunately, I'm not aware of such a setting.