Currently, I’m using Joplin, which ticks the right boxes but I don’t really care for its UI/UX across the devices I use it on.
What I’m looking for:
Free syncing. E2E encryption is welcome and preferred but not necessary. Joplin does provide this capability, with encryption, through Dropbox. Though I suppose one thing that’s always rubbed me the wrong way about this is I don’t care to use Dropbox and would rather use something else. My biggest gripe with this part of Joplin is how unresponsive the syncing is. I’ve found that if I’m not careful, I end up generating conflicts between my clients far more often than I’d like.
A web client. Joplin does not provide this. I’d like this for the ability to access it if I’m using a machine than I normally do not. I use an android app for mobile and an Electron desktop app.
Markdown capability.
A couple options I’m currently considering using instead:
Simplenote. It does tick all of my boxes and this is a real option, but there’s just something about Automattic…
Self-hosted NextCloud. Yeah, all right. Probably the ideal, just not sure if I have the time to set this up at the moment. As of now, it’s undoubtedly where I’d like to end up though.
I know it sounds a bit cliché, but I recommend Obsidian. My setup is pretty simple: Obsidian + Syncthing + Git.
Why Obsidian? File over app: your notes are just Markdown files, always accessible and never locked inside an app. Everything is local-first.
If you want to see a clean way to use it, check out how the CEO uses it: How I use Obsidian. It’s really well explained. It is a simple guide, and I like it so much.
For syncing between devices, Syncthing is a solid free option (continuous file synchronization). There’s also Obsidian Sync, which costs around 4$ per month and includes end-to-end encryption.
I also use Git to have full control over my notes: change history, commits, and the ability to revert if something goes wrong… basically treating notes like code. It works really well. After that you can turn Obsidian into whatever you want: a personal Wikipedia, a second brain, Zettelkasten… there are tons of videos on YouTube.
If you use any LLM, use Obsidian MCP to let you query all your notes, improve them, or just ask questions about their content. It’s pretty cool.
Edit: I forgot to mention that Kepano has also developed some interesting tools. An extension to “scrape” text from any website and save it directly into your Obsidian vault. You can find it as Obsidian Web Clipper. Recently, it offers something similar called Defuddle. It’s the same idea: convert the content of any website to Markdown.
I think I’ll give Obsidian a solid look, even if it doesn’t have a web client. I’m sure I can manage to at least make them accessible for me to reference over the web even if I don’t have total control and I think that’d be enough.
All the talk has got me interested in NextCloud again too. I’ll see if I can find a way for it to make sense for me to set it up on my homelab. It looked like a considerable amount of learning the last time I attempted it so I was initially put off, but I’m sure that it’d be worth it if I just push through.
I will also look into Trillium notes. I hadn’t heard of that before so it’s definitely something I’d like to educate myself about.
The biggest benefit of Obsidian, like Marknote, is that it basically works from a Notes folder, and the entire contents are folders and SANELY named markdown files which you can open and read/edit in any application from any location.
I only really heard about it out after Proton bought them and let them continue working as usual. Since it was not added to the Proton subscription package I never got around to testing it at the time.
I actually explored the note-taking rabbit hole years ago. So, if anyone is interested, you can also try Anytype. It’s much more similar to Notion. By default, it runs locally and works with local p2p synchronization without any configuration. It follows some interesting concepts like decentralization and protection under a seed phrase to encrypt your notes. The only problem I found is that the notes are locked inside the application, which ties you to Anytype, which is why I discarded it.
Markdown isn’t ‘old school’ - for forum users it’s ‘the best current school going’… but actually you don’t even ‘gotta know markdown’ to use them, it’s basically just Plain Text with a few enhancements.
Take away those enhancements and you have this post… This is markdown. Takes five minutes to learn the basics.
Markdown takes back the pain of word processors, takes us back to the old text editors (not WSYWIG) and simplified life.
As someone who spends time in a university, all I can say is - it’s a lot of Google Docs, and the main alternative is Markdown - that’s the ‘de facto standard’.
University students, also writers - Markdown has taken off in just the last 3-4 years.
For non-technical users, Google Docs is probably the most widely used of all… they’re also most supported by institutions that have Google Workspace accounts.
The single most desirable feature of a modern note-taking application is for it to function as a file browser/editor so that the ‘notebook structure’ is basically synonymous with the file structure.
just blatantly ignoring one note and how it’s basically free for all uni students world wide, including the NA and Europe, and is easily the most widely used note taking app out there lol
Standard Notes is a great suggestion. I gave it a whirl and I think it absolutely solves my UX issue with Joplin. Extremely clean and well thought out interface.
It does come with some sacrifices. Markdown and folder organization are hidden behind a rather steep first paid tier($90/year) which far exceeds what I’d be willing to throw down for a note taking application. Though the free version does support tags and those could be used for organization instead.
If I wanted to go with that route, I’d just have to think about how much I really want markdown/rich text capability.
I know it is unintentional, but I do find it funny to recommend the one app they currently use and want to try to get away from if a better alternative exists.
In any case, I have never used or even tried Joplin yet. What are some of the things you like most about it compared to other apps?
