Live data from Hacker News

Joplin is an open source note-taking app

joplinapp.org

11–20 of 110 posts

Re: Joplin is an open source note-taking app

#11

I like Joplin’s sync server, which can be self hosted. I just wish it didn't require having the app loaded to use. I actually use it with another editor on Linux. (It works surprisingly well with VS Code for example.) But it's the best we have for Android, sadly.

I chose Joplin over Obsidian because they offer webdav sync and it’s trivial to set up sync with a synology NAS. Obsidian doesn’t offer it as it competes with their sync commercial offering.

Re: Joplin is an open source note-taking app

#12
My only concerns about using Joplin were security-related, when handling sensitive notes (financial data, logins, etc). The interface looked awesome.

Have Joplin plugins been secured/sandboxed yet, or are they still able to exfiltrate data? That's one reason I never used it for very secure notes, same with Obsidian. Joplin also used to store notes unencrypted locally, not sure if that's still the case. Of course most people don't mind, but I was investigating the highest-security note tool I could find at the time.

Re: Joplin is an open source note-taking app

#13
post #3

I'm an Evernote refugee struggling with Joplin and Obsidian this morning. I've got thousands of PDF notes going back decades, and the ability to search on their OCR has kept me on Evernote for years. But the latest Joplin includes OCR out of the box, and Obsidian has the Omnisearch/Text Extractor plugins to add it. Both of those use Tesseract to do OCR locally. I've got it working on Joplin fairly well. But it hardly…

Could recoll help?

https://www.lesbonscomptes.com/recoll/pages/index-recoll.htm...

Re: Joplin is an open source note-taking app

#14
post #6

My problem with Joplin is that on my M1 Macbook pro it really shows how much of an Electron app it really is, in the worst ways. Extreme memory use and UI lag for an application which displays text. That said, aside from performance it's quite satisfying to use. It's very simple and does its job well. I recently migrated to Obsidian and although the learning curve is steeper, I'm quite happy with the results.

I went from Notion to Joplin for note taking: I drop 1000s of images in a note and annotate them and publish them. Notion crashed all the time; so badly that support apologised and had to delete things for me. Joplin has 0 issues with it; it scrolls super fast, is a pleasure to work with. Also on a m1. I cannot say I noticed any bad behaviour compared to others, included Obsidian.

Re: Joplin is an open source note-taking app

#15
post #9

Joplin works well for what it does and is good enough for regular note-taking. Has most features like live view, webclipper, sync & plugins for that extra missing functionality. What you don't get is a "polished" UI with a WYSIWYG editor. The storage format is markdown, but it has its own way of organizing files[1]. If your notetaking process includes multiple editors(other than joplin apps) then joplin may not be th…

I came to the comments to find some insight about the format it stores notes on, so thanks.

That's a big advantage for me as usually the issue I had with other note taking apps in the past is how hard they lock you in, particularly after years of using them.

Re: Joplin is an open source note-taking app

#16
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not really what these tools are made for. Look into zotero or devontjink and use the note taking app for notes.

Thanks for the leads, but I need it on Linux and Android. You appear to be right about this use case being a stretch for Joplin/Obsidian.

Zotero for the win then.

Re: Joplin is an open source note-taking app

#17

I like Joplin’s sync server, which can be self hosted. I just wish it didn't require having the app loaded to use. I actually use it with another editor on Linux. (It works surprisingly well with VS Code for example.) But it's the best we have for Android, sadly.

For a long time Joplin's support on Android was buggy and late on releases, it's why I switched away. Is it better now?

Re: Joplin is an open source note-taking app

#18
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the leads, but I need it on Linux and Android. You appear to be right about this use case being a stretch for Joplin/Obsidian.

Zotero for the win then.

How do you work with a Zotero collection on Android?

Re: Joplin is an open source note-taking app

#19
Would appreciate any folks here who have tried both Obsidian and Joplin to summarize the key differentiators for them and which one they ended up on.

(on x platform, Windows/iOS use case here, but just post your needs)

I tried to move to Obsidian from Evernote after they raised the subscription price but wasn't able to onboard successfully - Obsidian seemed powerful but was too customizable for me, had to get back to more pressing day job needs before I could figure out a setup that would work for me, ended up just paying the Evernote fee another year.

Re: Joplin is an open source note-taking app

#20
Related:

Joplin – an open source note taking and to-do application with synchronization - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27520906 - June 2021 (74 comments)

Joplin – an open source note taking and to-do application with sync - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22439485 - Feb 2020 (36 comments)

Joplin – a note taking and to-do application with synchronization capabilities - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21555238 - Nov 2019 (150 comments)

Joplin – A note-taking and to-do app with builds for desktop, mobile, terminal - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15815040 - Nov 2017 (204 comments)

Post reply on HN