17 ms·

Joplin – A note-taking and to-do app with builds for desktop, mobile, terminal

474 points by PleaseHelpMe 9y ago

dawnbreez 9y ago
Why is this better than Orgmode? Orgmode is human readable, opens in any text editor, handles everything from bullet points to tables, and Github even has a Markdown-like renderer for Orgmode files.
- coldtea 9y ago
  >Why is this better than Orgmode? Not having to bother with Emacs is a huge plus.
  - JustSomeNobody 9y ago
    So, we're going to trade that for Electron and React-Native?
    - bschwindHN 9y ago
      I dunno, you could make your own better version?
    - rufugee 9y ago
      Yes.
    - jrs95 9y ago
      Electron really pisses me off, and even I would rather use an Electron app than learn Emacs.
      - julienmarie 9y ago
        Spacemacs :)
    - dawnbreez 9y ago
      Sublime Text has an orgmode plugin, as does Vim.
- baldfat 9y ago
  Mobile? EDIT: There is a Android App - https://github.com/orgzly/orgzly-android https://github.com/orgzly/orgzly-android
- danielvf 9y ago
  First, it’s markdown based. That’s probably not an advantage for you, but it’s a syntax people are used too. Secondly, syncing is built in. Sure you could use git on your org mode file, but that’s requires effort. Thirdly, this handles attachments and images. Fourth, the user does not have to learn EMacs. Fifth, it runs on phones. So it does have advantages for some people. If your already an orgmode master, it may mean less for you.
  - vesak 9y ago
    1) Granted. 2) You can put your org file in Dropbox, all the mobile clients support that too. 3) Org-mode probably does this too. 4) Granted :) 5) orgzly for Android, beorg for ios.
- rubenbe 9y ago
  The obvious advantage is that all platforms share the same code. As such it's easier to add new features. While for org mode emacs, orgzly, etc are separate projects that have to be kept in sync
  - gmfawcett 9y ago
    Org is really just a text format, like Markdown, and the core format hasn't changed in ages. So I don't think there's a sync problem here with respect to the applications themselves. The more likely pain-point is that on one device you have extra tools/configuration set up (e.g., org-latex), but these tools aren't available elsewhere (such as in orgzly). But I assume that this is a given for orgzly users: they probably don't expect they can do everything that org-mode enables in Emacs (like producing PDFs via LaTeX). They just want to do basic edits, and don't want to lose data when the document round-trips between Emacs and orgzly. (I don't use orgzly, but I assume that safe round-tripping is a feature...)
- zaarn 9y ago
  Outside of using emacs, which I don't, orgmode is rather useless in my experience and at some times even a major pain. It should also not be forgotten that the project linked has some features in addition to just note-taking and to-do lists, so it's definitely not directly comparable either.
- divanvisagie 9y ago
  Who said it was?
- ndh2 9y ago
  Why did you click on this link? Are you unhappy with orgmode? Why? If not, why bother writing a comment? These "questions" invariably come across as "this thing sucks because it's not the thing that I am used to".
Jedd 9y ago
I've played with a bunch of note tools, but once you need collaborative and painless synchronisation across platforms, your options really shrink. (I ended up with Google Keep, but it's not ideal.) As soon as we get Keybase FS on Android, this kind of tool becomes extremely interesting.
- splike 9y ago
  I'm using Dynalist, which is definitely an improvement over Google Keep, but I'm starting to find it quite restricting that everything has to be in bullet point lists. What I really want is something thats between Dynalist with its Zooming mechanism, and Typora with its super nice markdown editor.
  - Jedd 9y ago
    I haven't heard of any of those! Forcing dot points for everything would be tiring. Clearly list-focused rather than note-focused, and that's okay. For tasks I use trello, and occasionally the separation between notes and tasks is a bit blurry. Ultimately long-term storage of knowledge is stored in my personal wiki, so the whole suite is not entirely seamless yet. Typora looks like a lovely interface, but appears to be non-free, no support on mobile, not collaborative.
    - splike 9y ago
      I just wanted to point out Typora as a nice interface for a markdown editor, it's not really a note taking app.
      - idlewan 9y ago
        How is a markdown editor not a note taking app? Sometimes leaving search and sync to the system/other programs (grep, dropbox, syncthing) is a valid approach.
- strawcomb 9y ago
  I also use Keep and agree it's not ideal. Would be nice to easily export all the notes to file. Would be even nicer if could store and make changes to notes on local filesystem and have them sync to cloud, google drive style.
Grumbledour 9y ago
Since I can't test it right now: Does this use some kind of database to store the notes? The readme talks about syncing, including to the file system. Why are the notes not simply stored as files in the first place? Would this not be much easier than constant exporting/importing to various providers?
- roryisok 9y ago
  That's exactly what I just built for myself. Flatnote, on the windows store (and soon on mac/Linux/mobile) is a rich-edit note app which stores files as .md files in the file system. Sync is handled by just putting your notes folder in Dropbox
  - florianletsch 9y ago
    Where can I follow your project? I currently use QOwnNotes on Linux which does exactly that, but would be keen to try some alternatives, in particular if you're working on a mobile version.
    - roryisok 9y ago
      Here's a very basic page you can follow http://roryok.com/flatnote/ http://roryok.com/flatnote/ Not open-sourced yet but will be very soon
  - laurent123456 9y ago
    That's interesting, I've tried to use plain text files at the beginning too but it didn't quite work. Also if I'm not mistaken on mobile Dropbox sync is not built-in so you'll need to implement it on top of their API (including conflict handling) which is probably the most difficult part in any app like this. That's also why having a local SQLite is useful because you can more easily compare your local state to what they have.
    - roryisok 9y ago
      You're right, when I build mobile I'll have to build my own sync to dropbox, but there are plenty of libraries for that. Hopefully one that already does conflict handling =( I do have a local database store, but the Windows Store app is written in JS so I'm using NeDB which is basically just a mongo style interface for a JSON file. At the moment I really only use it to track recently opened files. On other platforms I'll probably use SQLite, but I won't be storing the data in there, just the metadata (access times, paths, previews, wordcounts etc) As one dev to another I have to say I love what you've built in Joplin. I love the name, I love the terminal app idea (Why didn't I think of that!) - its really a great achievement. You've built for multiple platforms and here I am hijacking the thread to peddle my half-built markdown-editor-with-a-file-list =D
HugoDaniel 9y ago
I want to try notion.so, some friends use it at work with great success. But would prefer something like it but with a business model other than freemium SaaS.
jamesu 9y ago
Still waiting for a nice rich text note taking tool that can compete with the likes of DevonThink and EverNote. I don't get the underlying fascination with using markdown.
- norswap 9y ago
  Simplicity, freedom to really migrate your data. Sure, you theoretically can migrate your notes from, say OneNote to Evernote (and vice-versa), but doing so is a great experience in frankensteining. I'm not even very confident there isn't outright data loss in some places, and with a high volume of notes, it's not feasible to check manually. Even with no loss, lots of stuff look ugly and/or do not work anymore, even if there is an equivalent on the target platform.
  - beaconstudios 9y ago
    writing your notes in markdown is a bit ass-backwards though - it's great as a storage medium but having to manually reformat a markdown document because you're not live-editing the output is a needless pain. I'd much rather write using your usual rich text interface and have that export markdown for me.
    - wikibob 9y ago
      There are some editors that live preview your markdown. It’s pretty nice. Take a look at Bear on Mac & iOS, and DayOne (my favorite but lacking full markdown support). Also Dropbox paper is interesting and live previews markdown and has nice table support
    - meebs 9y ago
      Depending on what you use to write there is probably a live preview. Vim does it. :)
- pritambarhate 9y ago
  >I don't get the underlying fascination with using markdown As a programmer, most of the notes, I take, have code snippets. With markdown notes, I get nice code highlighting in my notes. Also a lot of times HTML/RTF notes end up having hidden invisible characters. So it messes up commands. That's why I prefer plain text notes over rich formatted notes.
borne0 9y ago
What about recurring to-dos?
deleted 9y ago
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reacharavindh 9y ago
I'm currently using Apple Notes on my Mac and iPhone. It works just great! It synchronises perfectly I can drag and drop images to it, no problem. Cmd + C, Cmd + V, Cmd + B, Cmd + I all work as expected. I can even add to-do lists and cross out "Done" I think it even supports tables, But I don't use them. Export as PDF, html, airdrop, email whatever, works easily What doesn't work: If I ever get out of Apple ecosystem, it won't work. Apple has my data, and I need to trust them. Give me something with the same ease of use, and make it self-hostable without pain. I'd be happy to pay. I don't need Markdown or anything else. Text + Drag & Drop images support are a must for me.
- sbarre 9y ago
  Useful tip (that I didn't know until recently) is you can also access your notes via any modern browser at https://www.icloud.com/ https://www.icloud.com/ I recently moved to a Windows machine as my day-to-day home machine and thought I'd have to abandon Apple Notes (which I use on my phone and my work Macbook) but the web interface is basically identical to the apps.
  - merpnderp 9y ago
    That's great to know. I found how awesome Notes had become in Sierra, and now have hundreds of notes - this is an app I use every single day multiple times a day. But I don't like the new offering of MBP's and wanted to move off the mac ecosystem, so started work on something just as easy to use and as secure as Notes, coupled with sharing notes. It's just a mobile first web app hooked up to firebase with nothing making it to the server that hasn't been encrypted on the client first. Shared notes will require users to share a password, unless I find a better solution. But if iCloud Notes is just as good, maybe I'm wasting my time. I trust Apple's security, and Notes really is exactly what I want as a dev (their limited markup is nearly as useful as markdown, and I love that it is limited to a few choices).
  - criddell 9y ago
    The web interface actually lets you do one thing you can't on iOS - create nested folders.
mallow 9y ago
Windows issue: The installer assumes you want it on your c drive. grumble grumble.
- ahypeverse 9y ago
  ....most, if not every single windows application makes this assumption.
  - sbarre 9y ago
    That's not my experience at all. Most installers let you choose your installation folder.
- laurent123456 9y ago
  Good point, so far I've just used the default build options but I see there's a "allowToChangeInstallationDirectory" option so I'll enable this on the next build.
blunte 9y ago
This looks great. I hope you might prioritize adding a web clipper. For me, the Evernote Web Clipper plugin/extension is the killer app. The rest of Evernote isn't great, but their web clipper is incredibly useful to me.
- dkarl 9y ago
  I used Evernote for years before bothering with the web clipper, but when I started running into dead links in my years-old notes I realized it was essential. Now I use it pretty often to make sure that a note doesn't become impossible to understand because its context is gone. It's also great for recipes, which I often find on personal blogs and other sites where you can't depend on a link being permanent.
- charliedevolve 9y ago
  The web clipper is the killer app for me as well. I've been looking for a replacement for a long time and thus far have found nothing comparable that is open, self-hostable, cross-platform & syncable, and saves web media or pdf natively. I will also kick in to a Patreon if a web clipper is promised.
- gt_ 9y ago
  Yes, Evernote is pretty clunky but I’ve got a good 8 years of junk in in and that web clipper is a beast.
  - copperx 9y ago
    The web clipper is Evernote's core product. It hasn't been replicated commercially or in open source successfully.
    - Harelin 9y ago
      I enjoy using OneNote's web clipper: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/onenote-web-clipper/gojbdfnpnhogfdgjbigejoaolejmgdhk?hl=en-US https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/onenote-web-clippe...
Philipp__ 9y ago
Currently I am very happy with my note taking setup, it consists of 3 modules: 1. Black Moleskine notebook where I write down ideas, and explain myself some complicated code for example. I use it more as a "mind-organiser" if I may say so... 2. Emacs' org-mode, where I write down my dev. progress on weekly level, lay down monthly plans and goals and write down some of the random stuff that I like to order into lists. And I use it more since I found out really good iOS app for org mode called "beorg". It is really awesome, I sync it with Dropbox and it works really, really well. 3. Apple Notes as my scribble kind of thing since synchronization works instantaneously between my iPhone and Macs. I use it mostly as my iPhone on-the-go noting system, and later on if I find something important I pass it to the org file or write it down into the black notebook.
- KenanSulayman 9y ago
  I have black Moleskine notebooks with me all the time, they are a miracle; I tried all kinds of notebooks and their paper does best with gel pens (even though they have moved their production to China iirc?) It seems to be less common these days, but when I write down an algorithm or visualize it on paper it's so much easier to grasp - I always wondered why I can work with "real paper" better than with ePaper (et al.) even when it's a scan of my handwriting. Is that a thing of routine?
  - juandazapata 9y ago
    Why a miracle?
    - KenanSulayman 9y ago
      They are light (at an A5 form factor), have a very good paper quality, and covers with textures that fit comfortably in the hand; they also fit comfortably in my pocket. (there's also some with hardcover, but I find them too heavy)
      - dhimes 9y ago
        FWIW, I like grid-paper, so I use "graph-ruled" composition books.
terraforming 9y ago
May I suggest QOwnNotes as an alternative to this? It's also cross-platform (not sure about mobile) and it's not another shitty electron app.
- r3bl 9y ago
  To counter this a bit, I would rather run an Electron app than be greeted with this as the default interface: http://www.qownnotes.org/var/bekerle/storage/images/_aliases/frontpage_slider_full2/qownnotes/frontpage-slider/qownnotes-main-screen-linux/374-25-eng-GB/QOwnNotes-Main-Screen-Linux.png http://www.qownnotes.org/var/bekerle/storage/images/_aliases... I'll take an app that uses a bit more resources over something that looks like an IDE instead of a note-taking app any day. Currently using Inkdrop[0], which is not open source (but subscription based) and has a rather basic Android client, but it's cross-platform (macOS, Windows, Android, iOS, Ubuntu and other Linux-based distributions), has a pretty intuitive interface (as in, doesn't look like an IDE), backs up its database to my Nextcloud instance, and supports dragging and dropping images. [0] https://www.inkdrop.info/ https://www.inkdrop.info/
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - terraforming 9y ago
    You can pretty much hide everything on QOwnNotes. I've mine to pretty much mirror every other note-taking app (just 3 columns)
  - pbek 9y ago
    The default interface of QOwnNotes has pretty much everything turned off in it's "minimal" workspace (that is used by default).
    - pbek 9y ago
      sorry for the "it's" typo :)
    - 9y ago
tomlong 9y ago
This is very close to ideal for me. I've been moving away from Google Keep (and google in general recently, using Fastmail, microg fork of LineageOS on Fairphone 2, orgzly, vim org-mode Nextcloud etc etc) and the one thing that I missed was easily been able to dump photos and images into notes. I've had a play with this briefly and I will be using it full time. As soon as it offers nextcloud sync it really ticks all of my boxes. The terminal client is a really nice touch.
- omaranto 9y ago
  How do you handle syncing in orgzly? My current approach is "remember to hit the sync button", but apparently I suck at that. :) At least it's easy to fix sync conflicts in Emacs using ediff.
  - SJetKaran 9y ago
    I use tasker to sync orgzly every one hour.
  - tomlong 9y ago
    I think newer builds have an auto-sync feature. I got mine recently from f-droid.
- vodkaPong 9y ago
  How stable and usable is LineageOS on Fairphone 2? I also have one and am intrigued to try it.
  - tomlong 9y ago
    Sorry for the late reply. I have found it very good. The first build or two rebooted a couple of times a day but the recent builds are rock solid. I've stopped updating it now regularly but when I do the builds just work. I normally stop by the fairphone forums before I stick a new build on just to see if there's any chatter. I much prefer lineage to any other android experience I've ever had fwiw. Everything just works (except I haven't figured out how to nor really care to spend much time investigating snapchat with lineage).
mwexler 9y ago
The one thing missing: web. Esp. in places with restricted installs, having a web front end would be nice.
supergoober 9y ago
thank you. this is something i've wanted to make for a long time. will look forward to helping contribute.
noio 9y ago
This is great! I'm happy that more apps are converging on what I've started doing already anyway (keep plain markdown files on my disk). I got burned a few times too many trying to export/migrate my notes from some service's proprietary format.
djhworld 9y ago
Does it support inline images? I'm using Quiver for Mac, but really a cross platform solution would be more appropriate. I tend to take notes/drawings on paper then take pictures of the useful stuff and put it into Quiver so I can see it in context
t1o5 9y ago
I refuse to install any more Electron apps on my desktop.
- criddell 9y ago
  Since the number of Electron apps probably isn't going to decline anytime soon, I think I can save you some work. I could write you a little application that scans HN a few times every day and if it finds a discussion about an Electron-based project it will post a comment letting everybody know that you won't be installing it because it uses Electron. If you are interested, let me know. I can knock it out in a day or so and it will work on any platform you use because it's based on Electron.
  - tomludus 9y ago
    Really made me laugh!
ddevault 9y ago
I take notes like this: vim ~/documents/notes
- icedchai 9y ago
  I just send an email to myself. If it's something ongoing, I'll leave a draft open for a few days.
mcrider 9y ago
I like the idea of an app with integrated notes and todos, and love that its open source, but this is really lacking in the todo department. No drag-and-drop reordering and no deadlines/grouping by date makes it pretty useless for anything approaching a decent workflow. I've tried pretty much everything and still haven't found anything with the features/ease-of-use/good design of Wunderlist (which is still lacking in features, and has a fast approaching EOL). Considering todo apps are the modern version of hello world I would think we'd have a lot of good options (or does that reasoning actually mean there are a lot of half-baked options?)
- boundlessdreamz 9y ago
  I used https://ticktick.com/ https://ticktick.com/ for quite some time and then moved to Memorigi - https://tinbits.io/ https://tinbits.io/ (Android only). I have tried wunderlist, todoist and some others but nothing clicked except these two. Recurring tasks are what I use todo apps most for and these two supported it best
Radim 9y ago
Any tips or recommendations for a "note-taking and to-do" mobile app that would allow dictation, speech to text? My use-case is recording quick notes and TODOs, which often come at the weirdest of moments (no computer, no paper). I feel there's a market for something super simple: a speech recognition fast enough and good enough that I can later read and understand what I said. Everything I've tried so far was either too cumbersome (I need it to start recording fast, just like taking a snap picture) or its transcriptions too crappy (no idea what was said, even conceptually).
- jherdman 9y ago
  > "no computer, no paper" Sounds like you really just ought to make a habit of keeping pen and paper near you, or your mobile phone. Either of these fit your use case nicely at (probably) no extra cost.
  - icebraining 9y ago
    or your mobile phone Well, Radim is looking for a mobile app, so I'm assuming there's one around.
- oddlyaromatic 9y ago
  Not an app, but I have used ifttt recipes for this in the past, where I call the number and leave a message, then receive an email with transcription and link to audio in case the transcription was bad. Then I was automatically tagging those emails in Gmail to be able to go through my notes. The IFTTT number was saved in my contacts with an easily pronounced word. So when driving I could tell Siri "call Bender" and then not have to worry about any launch/navigation etc, just start talking
- m0skit0 9y ago
  Google Keyboard has speech-to-text, that should work with any note-taking app.
mihaela 9y ago
Electron, no thnx.
- bovermyer 9y ago
  Just use the terminal client then.
dingdingdang 9y ago
OK, once: "Coming features All: End to end encryption" is implemented then I'm up for giving this a try. The plain text format and markdown support is good features.
- DiThi 9y ago
  I'm giving this a try, using Seafile for synchronization with encryption instead of the app's own system. As an extra, I can self host it and I can revert any changes if I need to.
- nathancahill 9y ago
  Check out Standard Notes: standardnotes.org
gameofthrowaway 9y ago
Side question: why did you name the application Joplin? (My hometown is Joplin, MO and I'm curious if you're also from or living there.) My other two guesses for its etymology are Janis Joplin and Scott Joplin.
- adrianmonk 9y ago
  Not the author here, but my guess is that it's named after the composer since the software deals with notes. Also, though Scott Joplin's ragtime musical style has a lot in common with some very informal music, his own approach was more educated, sophisticated, and precise. Every note was in its place for a reason, and he was known to prefer his pieces to be performed exactly as written. So you could say that compared to the people who came before him, his notes were more organized.
  - laurent123456 9y ago
    Good guess, that's exactly it :) I love this composer and was listening to him a lot while developing this app. Additionally I think this is a name that's easy to remember and type, so it felt like a good choice.
    - roryisok 9y ago
      I agree, its a great name =)
- fowkswe 9y ago
  Me too! WHOAREYOU :)
slackstation 9y ago
I wish this app's creator had a Patreon so I could donate to it's development. Money is far more portable than development time especially since there is a sunk cost in starting up. Please set one up and msg me and I'll gladly contribute. I'm a daily, heavy Evernote user and I would love some competition to this great app and the ability to have an open-source option.
denibertovic 9y ago
Interesting app. I'm currently using todo.txt [1] and am quite happy with it. It's not really a note taking app (although I could use it that way) but rather a todo app and it uses a pure text file and syncs with dropbox nicely. I use an Android app as well [2]. There's a bunch of plugins for it but I haven't used any of them yet. [1]: http://todotxt.org/ http://todotxt.org/ [2]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=nl.mpcjanssen.todotxtholo&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=nl.mpcjanssen....
jubes 9y ago
Just installed (https://github.com/laurent22/joplin/releases/download/v0.10.28/Joplin-Setup-0.10.28.exe https://github.com/laurent22/joplin/releases/download/v0.10....) on Windows 7. Went straight into Options to see what's what...noted that geo-location of notes is on by default and wasn't able to switch this off. I know generally where I am when I take notes...I don't need this on by default. Uninstalled.
- laurent123456 9y ago
  There's a weird bug at the moment in the Option screen - if you click on a checkbox, the change is registered but the checkbox will still appear as ticked (That can be verified by exiting the Option screen and going back to it). So if you disable geo-location and for example auto-update that should already work. The Option screen display issue will be fixed in the next release. The backend of these apps is quite reliable (I've never lost a synced note for instance), but there are quite a few ugly bugs like this one in the front end. That's in part because I wasn't planning to release this officially just yet (it got picked up somehow by omgubuntu and then here).
  - jubes 9y ago
    Thanks for response. I assumed it was a bug and i'm sure there are quite a few start outs which find themselves on here via the power of copy pasta. That said it was the idea of having geolocation on by default which irked me. Is there a reason for this?
    - MikusR 9y ago
      Is there a reason it shouldn't be? When i take notes i would like to capture as much metadata as possible. So when i reference them later i get full picture.
      - jubes 9y ago
        Yes. I like transparency and I would like to live in a world where the products I consume don't assume and give me the choice of what data is sent on the back of my actions. In this case because the option was binary it was assumed I wanted geo-location data being sent. Let's consider the scenario where the data store containing these notes and their associated metadata was breached and owned. You then have the potential for learning additional facts about people which wasn't their intended choice. If you chose to allow for certain data to be sent then ultimately the onus is on the you. Because you want as much metadata attached to notes doesn't mean everyone does and therefore we should be given the option.
madebysquares 9y ago
This is something I have been wanting for a while a note taking app with a terminal app and syncing... unfortunately installing all these tools from an unknown source makes me a bit leery.
ape4 9y ago
Interesting to see AppImage actually in use. https://appimage.org/ https://appimage.org/
alexnewman 9y ago
Not supported on my chromebook. Please allow me to install the chromebook app on android.
itissid 9y ago
the only thing I want to ask is weather these apps will last about 30 years+. When the support for a note taking app dies it causes a lot of head aches. Remember google notebook?
vast_majority 9y ago
Nice work
inthewoods 9y ago
I've used www.simplenote.com in the past.
jungletime 9y ago
I've been using Typora to make my todo lists recently. It's a markdown editor too. Super simple to type, and you can really got some professional looking layout, with headings and titles quickly too. Recently they built in a file browser. Open one file in a directory, and it will show you all the files in side panel. Which in my case are just todo lists for day of the week. But it could be any type of notes. Highly recommend it. For Example typing ###Title would give a large title typing - [ ] will give you a checkbox, and so on
- therealdrag0 9y ago
  That looks nice. Does it have keyboard shortcut with fuzzy searching to open other files in side panel?
mxuribe 9y ago
Neat app...but where is the sqlite database located on a windows installation?
nucleartacos 9y ago
If you're working in a terminal, all you need to take notes is vi or emacs. No need to complicate things.
- stormthebeach 9y ago
  How do you organize your notes? I find that after a while I end up with way too many .md files with long names to easily comb through and end up spending way too much time searching for old notes.
- aagha 9y ago
  For you. As one example: Those notes are unlikely simple to access when you're on your phone away from your terminal.
spoxaka 9y ago
While we are at it. Has anyone tried Dropbox Paper for note taking?
- bovermyer 9y ago
  I have. It works fine, just like a myriad of other note-taking methods. I don't know that I'll ever settle on just one note-taking method. I'm too everywhere to have a single system.
EGreg 9y ago
Question for the people here ... are there any good SOCIAL apps like this? I mean, for example, being able to assign tasks to others (like in Redmine / JIRA) and be notified of progress/completion. Or collaboration on notes and permissions etc. Straight from your phone instead of some google doc. And maybe turning those notes into tasks later. What would you use?
elnurmen 9y ago
Please change the name))) "Jopa" means ass in Russian... And, well...Joplin sounds like a resident of "Ass"-town
- bovermyer 9y ago
  Janis Joplin was an icon of American music culture. I wouldn't be surprised if this program was named after her. Not to be insensitive to other cultures, but "this name sounds vaguely like this vulgar thing in another language" is not a strong reason to rename a project of this kind.
  - otterpro 9y ago
    Yeah, I was thinking Janis Joplin, too. Another musician, Scott Joplin, also comes to mind.
mvidal01 9y ago
Is it possible to export a note? Are notes sharable?
disease 9y ago
Bit of a left-field question here: how hard would it be to integrate with Google Home where you could dictate your notes, listen to them or mark todos as completed?
Dowwie 9y ago
Good job, @laurent22!
cylentwolf 9y ago
Just downloaded it and was checking it out. What is the difference between a todo and a note? Am I missing something? I am just using the UI not the terminal at this time.
- aagha 9y ago
  I'd think a todo is a task that needs to be completed, whereas a note is just a set of information that needs to be stored.
trevor-e 9y ago
This looks very nice, well done. I'm surprised that nobody mentioned Workflowy in here, it's what I mainly use and found it fits my frame of mind the best. It's just infinitely recursive lists that let you zoom in on a particular subset. Next up on my list is learning Emacs + org mode to see how I like that.
- spraak 9y ago
  You may like Dynalist.io which is inspired by Workflowy. I never used the latter but I really like the former.
  - trevor-e 9y ago
    Wow, this looks amazing, thanks for the suggestion.
0x445442 9y ago
Every time I see a post like this on HAN I think of this guy... https://www.flickr.com/photos/hawkexpress/sets/72157594200490122/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/hawkexpress/sets/7215759420049...
- spraak 9y ago
  Wow, that's amazing. I've been following the GTD related space since I first got on IRC (about 15 years ago) and find more analog solutions (Hipster PDA etc.) so fascinating, but this one really wins.
justinh 9y ago
I recently went farther down the note-taking rabbit hole than I care to admit. I wanted the app to be cross platform (macOS/win10/Arch (Gnome)). What I found was that by separating my two use cases -- web clipping and Markdown/Gist-like notes -- I was able to find a sweet spot (for now). the abbreviated version of my setup is this: AmazonBasics dotted notebook as my primary note taking device. I use a system similar to a bullet journal. Microsoft OneNote for web clipping. The web client is good enough if I need to read notes on linux. I use Boostnote for programming notes / Markdown. Then, at the end of the day, I type my notes from my physical notebook in to OneNote for searchability. I know that my setup is not earth shattering. But that's kind of my point. I spent a lot of time searching high and low for a fully digital solution. I assumed that I would find several excellent cross-platform note taking applications to choose from. I was wrong. They were either not very good at taking notes, or the few that are good, are not cross platform. Honorable mention to Simplenote and Quiver. Quiver is solid if you're only on a Mac.
SZJX 9y ago
I honestly just think that org-mode should receive more widespread adoption and attention, especially within the developer community. It does everything. All those new products are sort of reinventing the wheels, and in a 100 times less feature-rich manner. The only gripe I have with org-mode is its awkward mobile support. But Orgzly does a decent job on Android and I rarely type on mobile, which is hugely ineffective anyways.
aagha 9y ago
Good job. A bit too clunky on Windows for me (e.g., setting an alarm for a task), but I like the concept and the multi-environmental access aspect. I've recently started using TickTick (https://ticktick.com https://ticktick.com) and been pretty happy with it, thought not accessible from a terminal.
jeffmcmahan 9y ago
Good God - it's a note taking app that installs sqlite, sharp, and more than 300 other things... well into the millions of lines of code.
tebura 9y ago
why does android app have to access user location at time of installation.

474 points by PleaseHelpMe 9y ago

Why is this better than Orgmode? Orgmode is human readable, opens in any text editor, handles everything from bullet points to tables, and Github even has a Markdown-like renderer for Orgmode files.

coldtea 9y ago
>Why is this better than Orgmode? Not having to bother with Emacs is a huge plus.
- JustSomeNobody 9y ago
  So, we're going to trade that for Electron and React-Native?
  - bschwindHN 9y ago
    I dunno, you could make your own better version?
  - rufugee 9y ago
    Yes.
  - jrs95 9y ago
    Electron really pisses me off, and even I would rather use an Electron app than learn Emacs.
    - julienmarie 9y ago
      Spacemacs :)
  - dawnbreez 9y ago
    Sublime Text has an orgmode plugin, as does Vim.
baldfat 9y ago
Mobile? EDIT: There is a Android App - https://github.com/orgzly/orgzly-android https://github.com/orgzly/orgzly-android
danielvf 9y ago
First, it’s markdown based. That’s probably not an advantage for you, but it’s a syntax people are used too. Secondly, syncing is built in. Sure you could use git on your org mode file, but that’s requires effort. Thirdly, this handles attachments and images. Fourth, the user does not have to learn EMacs. Fifth, it runs on phones. So it does have advantages for some people. If your already an orgmode master, it may mean less for you.
- vesak 9y ago
  1) Granted. 2) You can put your org file in Dropbox, all the mobile clients support that too. 3) Org-mode probably does this too. 4) Granted :) 5) orgzly for Android, beorg for ios.
rubenbe 9y ago
The obvious advantage is that all platforms share the same code. As such it's easier to add new features. While for org mode emacs, orgzly, etc are separate projects that have to be kept in sync
- gmfawcett 9y ago
  Org is really just a text format, like Markdown, and the core format hasn't changed in ages. So I don't think there's a sync problem here with respect to the applications themselves. The more likely pain-point is that on one device you have extra tools/configuration set up (e.g., org-latex), but these tools aren't available elsewhere (such as in orgzly). But I assume that this is a given for orgzly users: they probably don't expect they can do everything that org-mode enables in Emacs (like producing PDFs via LaTeX). They just want to do basic edits, and don't want to lose data when the document round-trips between Emacs and orgzly. (I don't use orgzly, but I assume that safe round-tripping is a feature...)
zaarn 9y ago
Outside of using emacs, which I don't, orgmode is rather useless in my experience and at some times even a major pain. It should also not be forgotten that the project linked has some features in addition to just note-taking and to-do lists, so it's definitely not directly comparable either.
divanvisagie 9y ago
Who said it was?
ndh2 9y ago
Why did you click on this link? Are you unhappy with orgmode? Why? If not, why bother writing a comment? These "questions" invariably come across as "this thing sucks because it's not the thing that I am used to".

Jedd 9y ago

I've played with a bunch of note tools, but once you need collaborative and painless synchronisation across platforms, your options really shrink. (I ended up with Google Keep, but it's not ideal.) As soon as we get Keybase FS on Android, this kind of tool becomes extremely interesting.

splike 9y ago
I'm using Dynalist, which is definitely an improvement over Google Keep, but I'm starting to find it quite restricting that everything has to be in bullet point lists. What I really want is something thats between Dynalist with its Zooming mechanism, and Typora with its super nice markdown editor.
- Jedd 9y ago
  I haven't heard of any of those! Forcing dot points for everything would be tiring. Clearly list-focused rather than note-focused, and that's okay. For tasks I use trello, and occasionally the separation between notes and tasks is a bit blurry. Ultimately long-term storage of knowledge is stored in my personal wiki, so the whole suite is not entirely seamless yet. Typora looks like a lovely interface, but appears to be non-free, no support on mobile, not collaborative.
  - splike 9y ago
    I just wanted to point out Typora as a nice interface for a markdown editor, it's not really a note taking app.
    - idlewan 9y ago
      How is a markdown editor not a note taking app? Sometimes leaving search and sync to the system/other programs (grep, dropbox, syncthing) is a valid approach.
strawcomb 9y ago
I also use Keep and agree it's not ideal. Would be nice to easily export all the notes to file. Would be even nicer if could store and make changes to notes on local filesystem and have them sync to cloud, google drive style.

Grumbledour 9y ago

Since I can't test it right now: Does this use some kind of database to store the notes? The readme talks about syncing, including to the file system. Why are the notes not simply stored as files in the first place? Would this not be much easier than constant exporting/importing to various providers?

roryisok 9y ago
That's exactly what I just built for myself. Flatnote, on the windows store (and soon on mac/Linux/mobile) is a rich-edit note app which stores files as .md files in the file system. Sync is handled by just putting your notes folder in Dropbox
- florianletsch 9y ago
  Where can I follow your project? I currently use QOwnNotes on Linux which does exactly that, but would be keen to try some alternatives, in particular if you're working on a mobile version.
  - roryisok 9y ago
    Here's a very basic page you can follow http://roryok.com/flatnote/ http://roryok.com/flatnote/ Not open-sourced yet but will be very soon
- laurent123456 9y ago
  That's interesting, I've tried to use plain text files at the beginning too but it didn't quite work. Also if I'm not mistaken on mobile Dropbox sync is not built-in so you'll need to implement it on top of their API (including conflict handling) which is probably the most difficult part in any app like this. That's also why having a local SQLite is useful because you can more easily compare your local state to what they have.
  - roryisok 9y ago
    You're right, when I build mobile I'll have to build my own sync to dropbox, but there are plenty of libraries for that. Hopefully one that already does conflict handling =( I do have a local database store, but the Windows Store app is written in JS so I'm using NeDB which is basically just a mongo style interface for a JSON file. At the moment I really only use it to track recently opened files. On other platforms I'll probably use SQLite, but I won't be storing the data in there, just the metadata (access times, paths, previews, wordcounts etc) As one dev to another I have to say I love what you've built in Joplin. I love the name, I love the terminal app idea (Why didn't I think of that!) - its really a great achievement. You've built for multiple platforms and here I am hijacking the thread to peddle my half-built markdown-editor-with-a-file-list =D

HugoDaniel 9y ago

I want to try notion.so, some friends use it at work with great success. But would prefer something like it but with a business model other than freemium SaaS.

jamesu 9y ago

Still waiting for a nice rich text note taking tool that can compete with the likes of DevonThink and EverNote. I don't get the underlying fascination with using markdown.

norswap 9y ago
Simplicity, freedom to really migrate your data. Sure, you theoretically can migrate your notes from, say OneNote to Evernote (and vice-versa), but doing so is a great experience in frankensteining. I'm not even very confident there isn't outright data loss in some places, and with a high volume of notes, it's not feasible to check manually. Even with no loss, lots of stuff look ugly and/or do not work anymore, even if there is an equivalent on the target platform.
- beaconstudios 9y ago
  writing your notes in markdown is a bit ass-backwards though - it's great as a storage medium but having to manually reformat a markdown document because you're not live-editing the output is a needless pain. I'd much rather write using your usual rich text interface and have that export markdown for me.
  - wikibob 9y ago
    There are some editors that live preview your markdown. It’s pretty nice. Take a look at Bear on Mac & iOS, and DayOne (my favorite but lacking full markdown support). Also Dropbox paper is interesting and live previews markdown and has nice table support
  - meebs 9y ago
    Depending on what you use to write there is probably a live preview. Vim does it. :)
pritambarhate 9y ago
>I don't get the underlying fascination with using markdown As a programmer, most of the notes, I take, have code snippets. With markdown notes, I get nice code highlighting in my notes. Also a lot of times HTML/RTF notes end up having hidden invisible characters. So it messes up commands. That's why I prefer plain text notes over rich formatted notes.

borne0 9y ago

What about recurring to-dos?

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reacharavindh 9y ago

I'm currently using Apple Notes on my Mac and iPhone. It works just great! It synchronises perfectly I can drag and drop images to it, no problem. Cmd + C, Cmd + V, Cmd + B, Cmd + I all work as expected. I can even add to-do lists and cross out "Done" I think it even supports tables, But I don't use them. Export as PDF, html, airdrop, email whatever, works easily What doesn't work: If I ever get out of Apple ecosystem, it won't work. Apple has my data, and I need to trust them. Give me something with the same ease of use, and make it self-hostable without pain. I'd be happy to pay. I don't need Markdown or anything else. Text + Drag & Drop images support are a must for me.

sbarre 9y ago
Useful tip (that I didn't know until recently) is you can also access your notes via any modern browser at https://www.icloud.com/ https://www.icloud.com/ I recently moved to a Windows machine as my day-to-day home machine and thought I'd have to abandon Apple Notes (which I use on my phone and my work Macbook) but the web interface is basically identical to the apps.
- merpnderp 9y ago
  That's great to know. I found how awesome Notes had become in Sierra, and now have hundreds of notes - this is an app I use every single day multiple times a day. But I don't like the new offering of MBP's and wanted to move off the mac ecosystem, so started work on something just as easy to use and as secure as Notes, coupled with sharing notes. It's just a mobile first web app hooked up to firebase with nothing making it to the server that hasn't been encrypted on the client first. Shared notes will require users to share a password, unless I find a better solution. But if iCloud Notes is just as good, maybe I'm wasting my time. I trust Apple's security, and Notes really is exactly what I want as a dev (their limited markup is nearly as useful as markdown, and I love that it is limited to a few choices).
- criddell 9y ago
  The web interface actually lets you do one thing you can't on iOS - create nested folders.

mallow 9y ago

Windows issue: The installer assumes you want it on your c drive. grumble grumble.

ahypeverse 9y ago
....most, if not every single windows application makes this assumption.
- sbarre 9y ago
  That's not my experience at all. Most installers let you choose your installation folder.
laurent123456 9y ago
Good point, so far I've just used the default build options but I see there's a "allowToChangeInstallationDirectory" option so I'll enable this on the next build.

blunte 9y ago

This looks great. I hope you might prioritize adding a web clipper. For me, the Evernote Web Clipper plugin/extension is the killer app. The rest of Evernote isn't great, but their web clipper is incredibly useful to me.

dkarl 9y ago
I used Evernote for years before bothering with the web clipper, but when I started running into dead links in my years-old notes I realized it was essential. Now I use it pretty often to make sure that a note doesn't become impossible to understand because its context is gone. It's also great for recipes, which I often find on personal blogs and other sites where you can't depend on a link being permanent.
charliedevolve 9y ago
The web clipper is the killer app for me as well. I've been looking for a replacement for a long time and thus far have found nothing comparable that is open, self-hostable, cross-platform & syncable, and saves web media or pdf natively. I will also kick in to a Patreon if a web clipper is promised.
gt_ 9y ago
Yes, Evernote is pretty clunky but I’ve got a good 8 years of junk in in and that web clipper is a beast.
- copperx 9y ago
  The web clipper is Evernote's core product. It hasn't been replicated commercially or in open source successfully.
  - Harelin 9y ago
    I enjoy using OneNote's web clipper: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/onenote-web-clipper/gojbdfnpnhogfdgjbigejoaolejmgdhk?hl=en-US https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/onenote-web-clippe...

Philipp__ 9y ago

Currently I am very happy with my note taking setup, it consists of 3 modules: 1. Black Moleskine notebook where I write down ideas, and explain myself some complicated code for example. I use it more as a "mind-organiser" if I may say so... 2. Emacs' org-mode, where I write down my dev. progress on weekly level, lay down monthly plans and goals and write down some of the random stuff that I like to order into lists. And I use it more since I found out really good iOS app for org mode called "beorg". It is really awesome, I sync it with Dropbox and it works really, really well. 3. Apple Notes as my scribble kind of thing since synchronization works instantaneously between my iPhone and Macs. I use it mostly as my iPhone on-the-go noting system, and later on if I find something important I pass it to the org file or write it down into the black notebook.

KenanSulayman 9y ago
I have black Moleskine notebooks with me all the time, they are a miracle; I tried all kinds of notebooks and their paper does best with gel pens (even though they have moved their production to China iirc?) It seems to be less common these days, but when I write down an algorithm or visualize it on paper it's so much easier to grasp - I always wondered why I can work with "real paper" better than with ePaper (et al.) even when it's a scan of my handwriting. Is that a thing of routine?
- juandazapata 9y ago
  Why a miracle?
  - KenanSulayman 9y ago
    They are light (at an A5 form factor), have a very good paper quality, and covers with textures that fit comfortably in the hand; they also fit comfortably in my pocket. (there's also some with hardcover, but I find them too heavy)
    - dhimes 9y ago
      FWIW, I like grid-paper, so I use "graph-ruled" composition books.

terraforming 9y ago

May I suggest QOwnNotes as an alternative to this? It's also cross-platform (not sure about mobile) and it's not another shitty electron app.

r3bl 9y ago
To counter this a bit, I would rather run an Electron app than be greeted with this as the default interface: http://www.qownnotes.org/var/bekerle/storage/images/_aliases/frontpage_slider_full2/qownnotes/frontpage-slider/qownnotes-main-screen-linux/374-25-eng-GB/QOwnNotes-Main-Screen-Linux.png http://www.qownnotes.org/var/bekerle/storage/images/_aliases... I'll take an app that uses a bit more resources over something that looks like an IDE instead of a note-taking app any day. Currently using Inkdrop[0], which is not open source (but subscription based) and has a rather basic Android client, but it's cross-platform (macOS, Windows, Android, iOS, Ubuntu and other Linux-based distributions), has a pretty intuitive interface (as in, doesn't look like an IDE), backs up its database to my Nextcloud instance, and supports dragging and dropping images. [0] https://www.inkdrop.info/ https://www.inkdrop.info/
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- terraforming 9y ago
  You can pretty much hide everything on QOwnNotes. I've mine to pretty much mirror every other note-taking app (just 3 columns)
- pbek 9y ago
  The default interface of QOwnNotes has pretty much everything turned off in it's "minimal" workspace (that is used by default).
  - pbek 9y ago
    sorry for the "it's" typo :)
  - 9y ago

tomlong 9y ago

This is very close to ideal for me. I've been moving away from Google Keep (and google in general recently, using Fastmail, microg fork of LineageOS on Fairphone 2, orgzly, vim org-mode Nextcloud etc etc) and the one thing that I missed was easily been able to dump photos and images into notes. I've had a play with this briefly and I will be using it full time. As soon as it offers nextcloud sync it really ticks all of my boxes. The terminal client is a really nice touch.

omaranto 9y ago
How do you handle syncing in orgzly? My current approach is "remember to hit the sync button", but apparently I suck at that. :) At least it's easy to fix sync conflicts in Emacs using ediff.
- SJetKaran 9y ago
  I use tasker to sync orgzly every one hour.
- tomlong 9y ago
  I think newer builds have an auto-sync feature. I got mine recently from f-droid.
vodkaPong 9y ago
How stable and usable is LineageOS on Fairphone 2? I also have one and am intrigued to try it.
- tomlong 9y ago
  Sorry for the late reply. I have found it very good. The first build or two rebooted a couple of times a day but the recent builds are rock solid. I've stopped updating it now regularly but when I do the builds just work. I normally stop by the fairphone forums before I stick a new build on just to see if there's any chatter. I much prefer lineage to any other android experience I've ever had fwiw. Everything just works (except I haven't figured out how to nor really care to spend much time investigating snapchat with lineage).

mwexler 9y ago

The one thing missing: web. Esp. in places with restricted installs, having a web front end would be nice.

supergoober 9y ago

thank you. this is something i've wanted to make for a long time. will look forward to helping contribute.

noio 9y ago

This is great! I'm happy that more apps are converging on what I've started doing already anyway (keep plain markdown files on my disk). I got burned a few times too many trying to export/migrate my notes from some service's proprietary format.

djhworld 9y ago

Does it support inline images? I'm using Quiver for Mac, but really a cross platform solution would be more appropriate. I tend to take notes/drawings on paper then take pictures of the useful stuff and put it into Quiver so I can see it in context

t1o5 9y ago

I refuse to install any more Electron apps on my desktop.

criddell 9y ago
Since the number of Electron apps probably isn't going to decline anytime soon, I think I can save you some work. I could write you a little application that scans HN a few times every day and if it finds a discussion about an Electron-based project it will post a comment letting everybody know that you won't be installing it because it uses Electron. If you are interested, let me know. I can knock it out in a day or so and it will work on any platform you use because it's based on Electron.
- tomludus 9y ago
  Really made me laugh!

ddevault 9y ago

I take notes like this: vim ~/documents/notes

icedchai 9y ago
I just send an email to myself. If it's something ongoing, I'll leave a draft open for a few days.

mcrider 9y ago

I like the idea of an app with integrated notes and todos, and love that its open source, but this is really lacking in the todo department. No drag-and-drop reordering and no deadlines/grouping by date makes it pretty useless for anything approaching a decent workflow. I've tried pretty much everything and still haven't found anything with the features/ease-of-use/good design of Wunderlist (which is still lacking in features, and has a fast approaching EOL). Considering todo apps are the modern version of hello world I would think we'd have a lot of good options (or does that reasoning actually mean there are a lot of half-baked options?)

boundlessdreamz 9y ago
I used https://ticktick.com/ https://ticktick.com/ for quite some time and then moved to Memorigi - https://tinbits.io/ https://tinbits.io/ (Android only). I have tried wunderlist, todoist and some others but nothing clicked except these two. Recurring tasks are what I use todo apps most for and these two supported it best

Radim 9y ago

Any tips or recommendations for a "note-taking and to-do" mobile app that would allow dictation, speech to text? My use-case is recording quick notes and TODOs, which often come at the weirdest of moments (no computer, no paper). I feel there's a market for something super simple: a speech recognition fast enough and good enough that I can later read and understand what I said. Everything I've tried so far was either too cumbersome (I need it to start recording fast, just like taking a snap picture) or its transcriptions too crappy (no idea what was said, even conceptually).

jherdman 9y ago
> "no computer, no paper" Sounds like you really just ought to make a habit of keeping pen and paper near you, or your mobile phone. Either of these fit your use case nicely at (probably) no extra cost.
- icebraining 9y ago
  or your mobile phone Well, Radim is looking for a mobile app, so I'm assuming there's one around.
oddlyaromatic 9y ago
Not an app, but I have used ifttt recipes for this in the past, where I call the number and leave a message, then receive an email with transcription and link to audio in case the transcription was bad. Then I was automatically tagging those emails in Gmail to be able to go through my notes. The IFTTT number was saved in my contacts with an easily pronounced word. So when driving I could tell Siri "call Bender" and then not have to worry about any launch/navigation etc, just start talking
m0skit0 9y ago
Google Keyboard has speech-to-text, that should work with any note-taking app.

mihaela 9y ago

Electron, no thnx.

bovermyer 9y ago
Just use the terminal client then.

dingdingdang 9y ago

OK, once: "Coming features All: End to end encryption" is implemented then I'm up for giving this a try. The plain text format and markdown support is good features.

DiThi 9y ago
I'm giving this a try, using Seafile for synchronization with encryption instead of the app's own system. As an extra, I can self host it and I can revert any changes if I need to.
nathancahill 9y ago
Check out Standard Notes: standardnotes.org

gameofthrowaway 9y ago

Side question: why did you name the application Joplin? (My hometown is Joplin, MO and I'm curious if you're also from or living there.) My other two guesses for its etymology are Janis Joplin and Scott Joplin.

adrianmonk 9y ago
Not the author here, but my guess is that it's named after the composer since the software deals with notes. Also, though Scott Joplin's ragtime musical style has a lot in common with some very informal music, his own approach was more educated, sophisticated, and precise. Every note was in its place for a reason, and he was known to prefer his pieces to be performed exactly as written. So you could say that compared to the people who came before him, his notes were more organized.
- laurent123456 9y ago
  Good guess, that's exactly it :) I love this composer and was listening to him a lot while developing this app. Additionally I think this is a name that's easy to remember and type, so it felt like a good choice.
  - roryisok 9y ago
    I agree, its a great name =)
fowkswe 9y ago
Me too! WHOAREYOU :)

slackstation 9y ago

I wish this app's creator had a Patreon so I could donate to it's development. Money is far more portable than development time especially since there is a sunk cost in starting up. Please set one up and msg me and I'll gladly contribute. I'm a daily, heavy Evernote user and I would love some competition to this great app and the ability to have an open-source option.

denibertovic 9y ago

Interesting app. I'm currently using todo.txt [1] and am quite happy with it. It's not really a note taking app (although I could use it that way) but rather a todo app and it uses a pure text file and syncs with dropbox nicely. I use an Android app as well [2]. There's a bunch of plugins for it but I haven't used any of them yet. [1]: http://todotxt.org/ http://todotxt.org/ [2]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=nl.mpcjanssen.todotxtholo&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=nl.mpcjanssen....

jubes 9y ago

Just installed (https://github.com/laurent22/joplin/releases/download/v0.10.28/Joplin-Setup-0.10.28.exe https://github.com/laurent22/joplin/releases/download/v0.10....) on Windows 7. Went straight into Options to see what's what...noted that geo-location of notes is on by default and wasn't able to switch this off. I know generally where I am when I take notes...I don't need this on by default. Uninstalled.

laurent123456 9y ago
There's a weird bug at the moment in the Option screen - if you click on a checkbox, the change is registered but the checkbox will still appear as ticked (That can be verified by exiting the Option screen and going back to it). So if you disable geo-location and for example auto-update that should already work. The Option screen display issue will be fixed in the next release. The backend of these apps is quite reliable (I've never lost a synced note for instance), but there are quite a few ugly bugs like this one in the front end. That's in part because I wasn't planning to release this officially just yet (it got picked up somehow by omgubuntu and then here).
- jubes 9y ago
  Thanks for response. I assumed it was a bug and i'm sure there are quite a few start outs which find themselves on here via the power of copy pasta. That said it was the idea of having geolocation on by default which irked me. Is there a reason for this?
  - MikusR 9y ago
    Is there a reason it shouldn't be? When i take notes i would like to capture as much metadata as possible. So when i reference them later i get full picture.
    - jubes 9y ago
      Yes. I like transparency and I would like to live in a world where the products I consume don't assume and give me the choice of what data is sent on the back of my actions. In this case because the option was binary it was assumed I wanted geo-location data being sent. Let's consider the scenario where the data store containing these notes and their associated metadata was breached and owned. You then have the potential for learning additional facts about people which wasn't their intended choice. If you chose to allow for certain data to be sent then ultimately the onus is on the you. Because you want as much metadata attached to notes doesn't mean everyone does and therefore we should be given the option.

madebysquares 9y ago

This is something I have been wanting for a while a note taking app with a terminal app and syncing... unfortunately installing all these tools from an unknown source makes me a bit leery.

ape4 9y ago

Interesting to see AppImage actually in use. https://appimage.org/ https://appimage.org/

alexnewman 9y ago

Not supported on my chromebook. Please allow me to install the chromebook app on android.

itissid 9y ago

the only thing I want to ask is weather these apps will last about 30 years+. When the support for a note taking app dies it causes a lot of head aches. Remember google notebook?

vast_majority 9y ago

Nice work

inthewoods 9y ago

I've used www.simplenote.com in the past.

jungletime 9y ago

I've been using Typora to make my todo lists recently. It's a markdown editor too. Super simple to type, and you can really got some professional looking layout, with headings and titles quickly too. Recently they built in a file browser. Open one file in a directory, and it will show you all the files in side panel. Which in my case are just todo lists for day of the week. But it could be any type of notes. Highly recommend it. For Example typing ###Title would give a large title typing - [ ] will give you a checkbox, and so on

therealdrag0 9y ago
That looks nice. Does it have keyboard shortcut with fuzzy searching to open other files in side panel?

mxuribe 9y ago

Neat app...but where is the sqlite database located on a windows installation?

nucleartacos 9y ago

If you're working in a terminal, all you need to take notes is vi or emacs. No need to complicate things.

stormthebeach 9y ago
How do you organize your notes? I find that after a while I end up with way too many .md files with long names to easily comb through and end up spending way too much time searching for old notes.
aagha 9y ago
For you. As one example: Those notes are unlikely simple to access when you're on your phone away from your terminal.

spoxaka 9y ago

While we are at it. Has anyone tried Dropbox Paper for note taking?

bovermyer 9y ago
I have. It works fine, just like a myriad of other note-taking methods. I don't know that I'll ever settle on just one note-taking method. I'm too everywhere to have a single system.

EGreg 9y ago

Question for the people here ... are there any good SOCIAL apps like this? I mean, for example, being able to assign tasks to others (like in Redmine / JIRA) and be notified of progress/completion. Or collaboration on notes and permissions etc. Straight from your phone instead of some google doc. And maybe turning those notes into tasks later. What would you use?

elnurmen 9y ago

Please change the name))) "Jopa" means ass in Russian... And, well...Joplin sounds like a resident of "Ass"-town

bovermyer 9y ago
Janis Joplin was an icon of American music culture. I wouldn't be surprised if this program was named after her. Not to be insensitive to other cultures, but "this name sounds vaguely like this vulgar thing in another language" is not a strong reason to rename a project of this kind.
- otterpro 9y ago
  Yeah, I was thinking Janis Joplin, too. Another musician, Scott Joplin, also comes to mind.

mvidal01 9y ago

Is it possible to export a note? Are notes sharable?

disease 9y ago

Bit of a left-field question here: how hard would it be to integrate with Google Home where you could dictate your notes, listen to them or mark todos as completed?

Dowwie 9y ago

Good job, @laurent22!

cylentwolf 9y ago

Just downloaded it and was checking it out. What is the difference between a todo and a note? Am I missing something? I am just using the UI not the terminal at this time.

aagha 9y ago
I'd think a todo is a task that needs to be completed, whereas a note is just a set of information that needs to be stored.

trevor-e 9y ago

This looks very nice, well done. I'm surprised that nobody mentioned Workflowy in here, it's what I mainly use and found it fits my frame of mind the best. It's just infinitely recursive lists that let you zoom in on a particular subset. Next up on my list is learning Emacs + org mode to see how I like that.

spraak 9y ago
You may like Dynalist.io which is inspired by Workflowy. I never used the latter but I really like the former.
- trevor-e 9y ago
  Wow, this looks amazing, thanks for the suggestion.

0x445442 9y ago

Every time I see a post like this on HAN I think of this guy... https://www.flickr.com/photos/hawkexpress/sets/72157594200490122/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/hawkexpress/sets/7215759420049...

spraak 9y ago
Wow, that's amazing. I've been following the GTD related space since I first got on IRC (about 15 years ago) and find more analog solutions (Hipster PDA etc.) so fascinating, but this one really wins.

justinh 9y ago

I recently went farther down the note-taking rabbit hole than I care to admit. I wanted the app to be cross platform (macOS/win10/Arch (Gnome)). What I found was that by separating my two use cases -- web clipping and Markdown/Gist-like notes -- I was able to find a sweet spot (for now). the abbreviated version of my setup is this: AmazonBasics dotted notebook as my primary note taking device. I use a system similar to a bullet journal. Microsoft OneNote for web clipping. The web client is good enough if I need to read notes on linux. I use Boostnote for programming notes / Markdown. Then, at the end of the day, I type my notes from my physical notebook in to OneNote for searchability. I know that my setup is not earth shattering. But that's kind of my point. I spent a lot of time searching high and low for a fully digital solution. I assumed that I would find several excellent cross-platform note taking applications to choose from. I was wrong. They were either not very good at taking notes, or the few that are good, are not cross platform. Honorable mention to Simplenote and Quiver. Quiver is solid if you're only on a Mac.

SZJX 9y ago

I honestly just think that org-mode should receive more widespread adoption and attention, especially within the developer community. It does everything. All those new products are sort of reinventing the wheels, and in a 100 times less feature-rich manner. The only gripe I have with org-mode is its awkward mobile support. But Orgzly does a decent job on Android and I rarely type on mobile, which is hugely ineffective anyways.

aagha 9y ago

Good job. A bit too clunky on Windows for me (e.g., setting an alarm for a task), but I like the concept and the multi-environmental access aspect. I've recently started using TickTick (https://ticktick.com https://ticktick.com) and been pretty happy with it, thought not accessible from a terminal.

jeffmcmahan 9y ago

Good God - it's a note taking app that installs sqlite, sharp, and more than 300 other things... well into the millions of lines of code.

tebura 9y ago

why does android app have to access user location at time of installation.