Joplin – An open-source note taking and to-do application with synchronisation

How does this compare with NoteNook? (Open-source, local-first)

Really happy with Joplin! It's one of those pieces of software that Just Works (TM) and allows me to not worry about it.

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

Hey!

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

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.

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

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.