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Joplin – a note taking and to-do application with synchronization capabilities

368 points by adulau 7y ago

bhl 7y ago
If you search 'Markdown' on HackerNews, it'd seem like the 'market' for markdown editors is fragmented: there isn't a single dominant editor yet. I think every week there's a new editor posted (Joplin is an exception given that it's been here for a while). Why is that the case?
- SwellJoe 7y ago
  Joplin isn't a Markdown editor, it's a note taking and todo list app. It just happens to use Markdown as its entry format. It seems like it's a "Markdown editor" in the same way as reddit or github.
  - smartbit 7y ago
    I gave Joplin a try and syncing with Dropbox wasn’t flawless. Still searching for a markdown editor that runs on both iOS & Linux and does auto save & auto sync.
    - omarhaneef 7y ago
      Isn’t any text editor compatible with Dropbox? I mean Dropbox does the syncing and your editor just saves the file there, right? You don’t even need the same editor. You can use one on Linux, one on iOS and another on Windows.
      - smartbit 7y ago
        I miss worded: Looking for a note taking app with markdown to replace Apple notes. Autosync & auto save should work with self hosted service. In the discussion above saw many good suggestions, none that fitted the requirements.
- blondin 7y ago
  well this looks more like a todo program than a markdown editor
- angleofrepose 7y ago
  I think it is because each comes with its own opinionated workflow, and missing features. Each has a way of writing markdown/connecting notes that is novel, which means each other option is missing that feature. A take away from this scenario might be that this design space is wanting for a meta-editor. Some tool which allows feature creation in the same context as these markdown/note tools. An analogy might be that this meta-editor is to digital note keeping as racket is to programming languages. Of course all the obvious requirements apply. Has to be usable out of the box, has to just work, has successfully convey it's ability to be changed to the end user. I think emacs is such a solution, there are no features in the list of hn posts under the search "markdown" that it doesn't have. But emacs is missing all the requirements. It is not usable out of the box. I think this meta editor could best be built on top of emacs, but this will require a lot of work. I have been playing around with this idea for a couple of years now and it's slow going but fun to think about.
  - crazypython 7y ago
    Typora: Format a paper iA Writer: Write something eloquent
  - bhl 7y ago
    I've been looking at the ProseMirror as a way of building this meta-editor that could have plug-and-play components. The issue is, although the library is open-source, there hasn't been many open-sourced components that people have built. Ideally, we could go one step forward and abstract away the npm library; then everybody could build their custom editor by mixing components. One editor that sort of does this is StandardNotes but I haven't tried building something for it yet. [1] https://prosemirror.net/ https://prosemirror.net/ [2] https://standardnotes.org/extensions https://standardnotes.org/extensions
- fabiospampinato 7y ago
  The reason is that existing solutions are inadequate/not-powerful-enough, so the moment a developer is limited by what the app has to offer there's a chance a new note-taking app gets developed to solve that specific need.
hollander 7y ago
I'm looking for an Evernote alternative since long. Evernote is one of my favourite applications, but I fear the moment when Amazon or Google or Microsoft buys it like Fitbit or Nest. It is going to happen, and I put more and more info into that app. I'm definitely going to try this and I truly hope it is good enough for me.
- bobbylarrybobby 7y ago
  Notion.so is a good one
  - detaro 7y ago
    I'm not sure the best response to "I'm worried the cloud service I use might get bought and changed" is recommending another VC funded cloud service. But I've heard good things about Notion as a product too.
    - aspaceman 7y ago
      They have export features so in theory you’re not tied down.
  - joppy 7y ago
    I found that Notion had great features, but I found it to just be terribly slow in general. The app takes upwards of 25 seconds to open on my phone, and even on my computer where the app opens quickly, I still can't flick back and forth between different notes without the app trying to re-sync with the server and slowing everything down.
nico_h 7y ago
I’m looking for a multi-platform (linux-mac-ios) markdown editor that saves at regular interval and keeps history and sync via git. Is there anything like that? How hard would it be to extend joplin to write a service driver to sync via Git(-hub / -lab / your own server)?
- stuzenz 7y ago
  Check out boostnote to see if that meets your needs https://boostnote.io/ https://boostnote.io/ https://medium.com/boostnote/boostnote-mobile-how-to-synchronize-with-dropbox-95d845581eea https://medium.com/boostnote/boostnote-mobile-how-to-synchro...
- DenseComet 7y ago
  I'm currently using Typora and have it set up to automatically open to a certain folder and autosave. That folder is a git repository, and in cron, I simply have an hourly task that stages all files, commits, and pushes. This might not be an ideal solution, but if you find an editor you really like, its an easy way to add git and backup to your notes.
- top_coder 7y ago
  Have you considered Emacs + Org-mode? Works wherever Emacs works (Linux, Mac) and there are apps for Android and iOS. Org files are basically text files that you can commit to git or sync via Google drive, Dropbox, OneDrive etc. Not exactly markdown but GitHub renders org file pretty well. After trying out multiple note taking apps this is what I settled on. You can use it as simple as a note taking app or configure it to do lots of complicated things like managing your to-dos, appointments, agendas. And my favorite feature is inline code-block that I can execute.
  - mickael-kerjean 7y ago
    org-mode is awesome, there's clients for everyone's taste. I wrote one that look like this: https://demo.filestash.app/login?next=/view/org/emacs.org#type=git&epo=https://github.com/mickael-kerjean/nuage_org_demo https://demo.filestash.app/login?next=/view/org/emacs.org#ty...
schuke 7y ago
After years of searching I’ve pretty much settled on one note-taking app: Apple Notes. Quite unexpected to me as well because I started off just to sort of “cache” random notes in it before sorting them out in OneNote. Then I found myself almost stopped using OneNote. It’s just ubiquitous enough when you have a few extra PC devices, (unlike say, Bear) and versatile enough so it’s not limited to texts like Notational Velocity or SimpeNote, and quick and easy enough so I never have to wait for launching or syncing like with OneNote. It’s not enjoy-sparking to use and the text is a bit cramped. But it gets stuff done and I forget about it most of the time. So it’s just almost perfect for me.
- EricE 7y ago
  If you have any amount of Apple devices in your daily orbit, it's pretty amazing how useful Apple Notes is.
  - PowerfulWizard 7y ago
    I like it too and I think due to connecting the mail app to my gmail all my notes end up on gmail under a "Notes" tag which is very convenient.
- throwaway0xb 7y ago
  I was a big Apple Notes user, but I've read horror stories about losing notes in upgrades, which bothers me. Exporting notes for backup is tedious, too. I've switched to Notion for notes and it's been excellent minus one thing: it's slow to start. Otherwise I haven't really missed Apple Notes.
  - sorum 7y ago
    How's the latency these days while you work with it? For me it was the latency while using it that was just a bit too annoying
    - allset_ 7y ago
      It saves locally and the syncs to the cloud every few seconds. Latency is zero.
russellbeattie 7y ago
I replaced Evernote with Joplin a year or so ago and am pretty happy. It's a little rough around the edges, but it works great and is actively updated. And all my data is stored where I want it to be, with no monthly bill, and no one trying shove "chat" or "enterprise" features down my throat. Also, as the desktop client is a JavaScript app, it was relatively easy to go in and change a few things that I wanted tweaked. I hate MarkDown with a passion, so I just turned off all that stuff in the toolbar and use it as a plain text notepad that syncs. Works great. (At some point I need to make the effort to figure out the options dialogs they have and submit a pull request where this can be turned off/on permanently.) I do wish it would clean up the weird note/todo item duality (at least in the options). You can treat a note as a todo item, so the list of notes acts as your list of todos. Or you can just use a note and put the todo items in it (which is what I do). I just don't think the folder interface works well for the todo item paradigm. Anyways, highly recommended if you're still spending money on Evernote and don't use any advanced features. If you're using web clips or other stuff, someone else will have to chime in.
- freetonik 7y ago
  Genuinely curious why do you hate Markdown with a passion?
The_Colonel 7y ago
Another alternative is Trilium Notes which ticks the boxes from the title (sync, note, todo) but goes in a bit different direction (unlimited hierarchy, WYSIWYG, scriptability) - https://github.com/zadam/trilium https://github.com/zadam/trilium
samdamsamm 7y ago
I moved to Joplin from Evernote a little over a year ago. It has had ongoing development and new features being added the entire time. The development is very iterative, and functionality comes before fashion, but the UI has been getting improved too. The backup/sync system is great. Fully encrypted and numerous cloud configuration options. I use it with Fastmail’s $5/mo. service and it’s very easy to setup. The iOS app could use some more improvements but far better than not having one at all. Overall Joplin is highly recommended because of it’s compatibility, flexibility, privacy, and no-frills functionality.
crazypython 7y ago
I use DevonThink. It's great-- excellent capture-from-web features. It has See Also, and folders.
- mastercheif 7y ago
  I’m 20 days into my trial of DevonThink and I’m getting close to pulling the trigger. I’m using it as a hybrid read-later pocket replacement + personal knowledge database. The combination of “See Also” auto suggestions for inbox sorting and deep search capabilities is everything I had been wanting in a PKM suite. I wish they had extended the auto-sorting/suggestions to the tags feature, it’s my favorite feature of Pocket.
  - arbie 7y ago
    Is there a Windows or Web client for DevonThink?
    - mastercheif 7y ago
      DevonThink Server has a feature limited Web interface
      - arbie 7y ago
        Can the Server be launched on a Windows machine?
dmix 7y ago
This subpackage called Webclipper would be cool for parsing articles like Instapaper but instead of a better web version it saves to a markdown file than opens in Vim (or similar). For some reason I like those old long readme.txt files from the 1990s. The ones formatted with max 80-120 characters wide per line, black background, etc. https://github.com/laurent22/joplin/blob/master/readme/clipper.md https://github.com/laurent22/joplin/blob/master/readme/clipp... I haven't tried this one yet. But the biggest problem with that approach is the links typically don't work, nor will citations render properly for Wikipedia. So maybe it's preferable using Lynx or w/e just for long-term reading or articles on news sites with disaster web design.
fandaa 7y ago
I would recommend https://standardnotes.org/ https://standardnotes.org/ after trying all other (OneNote, Boostnote, QOwnNotes, etc.) note taking SWs. Encrypted linked storage (S3, Dropbox, ...) for files, encrypted notes, multiplatform, multiple editors (code, 2FA, markdown, spreadsheets, your own!, ...) & can be self hosted. Easy (also encrypted) backups. I only miss the diagrams tool (like draw.io) or handwriting (touch/pen) support.
- evil-olive 7y ago
  I was a Standard Notes user, including a premium plan, but recently switched to Joplin and I've been very happy with it. I like Standard Notes' no-nonsense business model, with the downside that the free version is heavily feature-crippled (not even a Markdown editor, just plain text). The Standard Notes server is self-hostable, but it requires a dedicated backend server [0] which was more hassle than I wanted to deal with. Joplin integrates much more nicely with Syncthing for self-hosted but still peer-to-peer replication. 0: https://standardnotes.org/help/47/can-i-self-host-standard-notes https://standardnotes.org/help/47/can-i-self-host-standard-n...
  - tbrock 7y ago
    Just did the same thing. Greatest benefit of standard notes is also that the notes are just plain text.
  - mikece 7y ago
    The reason to use Standard Notes, IMO, is the zero-knowledge encryption. I’ll check out Joplin and the others I’m learning about in this thread but I’m happy with Standard Notes at the moment though.
- wdr1 7y ago
  Does it support Google Drive?
  - fandaa 7y ago
    Yes. There is a CloudLink extension for saving the history & notes itself I think, which supports Dropbox, Google Drive & OneDrive. Backup can be also sent daily by the email. And then there is a FileSafe for files - you will simply generate the key (there's a button for it) and upload you files, which will be offline encrypted and then uploaded to your configured cloud storage - Dropbox, Google Drive, WebDAV, AWS S3. The size is currently limited to 50MB (because of the offline encryption).
threatofrain 7y ago
What do people who also want Latex use? So far I haven’t found anything better than VSC.
- fabiospampinato 7y ago
  We have KaTeX (and AsciiMath) support in Notable (https://notable.md https://notable.md).
- mickael-kerjean 7y ago
  emacs. On a daily basis, I write using org-mode and compile to latex
- mindv0rtex 7y ago
  I use LaTeX in Joplin with no issues. It uses the KaTeX lib to render the equations.
- maxai 7y ago
  Joplin supports Latex-like equations. And Typora and Mark Text have inline Latex support, but they're only on desktop. So there's not really any mobile & desktop solution that has Latex and Markdown as a priority feature.
hirundo 7y ago
> Recognition data - Evernote images, in particular scanned (or photographed) documents have recognition data associated with them. It is the text that Evernote has been able to recognise in the document. This data is not preserved when the note are imported into Joplin. However, should it become supported in the search tool or other parts of Joplin, it should be possible to regenerate this recognition data since the actual image would still be available. This is the feature that has me locked in to Evernote and no one else seems to have. I'll be watching this repo and jump over as soon as it becomes supported.
roktiw 7y ago
I recommend Ulysses app due it ability to sort notes by drag and drop an export multiple notes as one document. Didn’t find this functionality so far in any other app. Only minus is Ulysses it is fact that runs only Apple devices
braindongle 7y ago
Is there anything like this that is Vim-centric? Pretty please?
- Stratoscope 7y ago
  What does Vim-centric mean? Not asking to disagree, just wondering what this refers to. Thanks for any clarification. I don't use vim, so it's just a matter of curiosity for me - but it's always interesting to hear what kinds of tools other developers like to use.
  - braindongle 7y ago
    I checked out the CLI for Joplin and it's a multi-pane environment with a command line at the bottom. This is also true of Vim, especially if you like panes, or "splits". For those of us hooked on Vim (I am silent on its merits), there is a state of flow that is quite pleasant, and you find that you want that flow wherever you can get it. The arrow keys just are j,k,l,; for example, and just lifting a hand from the home row position feels awkward if you're in deep enough. :)
- frankish 7y ago
  Todo.txt [1] is not VIM-only, but text-based and simple. I use and enjoy both the Android and CLI clients, but since it's text-based and (typically) Dropbox synced, you could feel free to edit with VIM, which I do from time-to-time. [1] http://todotxt.org/ http://todotxt.org/
- infinitezest 7y ago
  I've been using [vim-pad](https://github.com/fmoralesc/vim-pad https://github.com/fmoralesc/vim-pad) with Dropbox and it's been wonderful. It just saves markdown files to a directory so you could swap Dropbox for Syncthing or what have you.
- ktaylor 7y ago
  Joplin just released support for Vim keybindings. But, it also has a button you can press to edit a note in your favorite editor, such as Vim.
ddsea 7y ago
I felt that Evernote was becoming increasingly constraining and slow/flaky, so after trying a few alternatives (text files/dirs, SimpleNote, Apple Notes, BoostNotes, Zim, etc), I've made a leap of faith to Joplin. My requirements: multi-platform, multi-device, auto-sync (more than 2 devices in free ver.), tags, webclip-ability, preferably markdown format with code rendering. Text diagramming such as PlantUML is a big plus. The idea of owning my notes is very appealing. My early attempts at synchronizing encrypted notes over OneDrive experienced repeated hiccups (stopped syncing for no apparent reason), so currently trying without encryption. Win10 and Android clients seem to chug along just fine, but the Linux client shows weird errors in the log - trying to hunt down the root cause. The fact that Joplin is WIP and open source is encouraging. I'd like to be able to have separate DBs, e.g. for personal and business use. ADDED: forgot to mention that the lack of dark mode on Windows EN client was a constant source of irritation.
- ddsea 7y ago
  More on color schemes: in addition to Joplin including a few built-in themes, the appearance of rendered pages can be adjusted via CSS. Playing with it felt more liberating for me than I care to admit.
- m-p-3 7y ago
  Sadly my experience with the Android app has been less than inpressive, with a memory leak related to React that has yet to be patched, and slows down the keyboard system-wide.
  - fingerlocks 7y ago
    Could you provide a link to the memory leak bug report? I’d like to know more and cannot find one that isn’t closed or doesn’t affect a small subset of devices under particular conditions.
- henrysarabia 7y ago
  It sounds like what you're looking for is Notion. It checks most of your boxes, I believe.
agravier 7y ago
To add to the list for those willing to try alternatives, here is a multiplatform markdown note taking application I've been using for a while: https://tamlok.github.io/vnote/en_us/ https://tamlok.github.io/vnote/en_us/
fabiospampinato 7y ago
Disclosure: I work at a competitor note-taking app called Notable [0], so I'm somewhat biased. I've made a comparison table [1] comparing Joplin and other popular note-taking apps, you may find it useful. Joplin could have been my go-to note-taking app, but IMO they made a few bad design decisions and there are few things I really don't like about it, maybe listing some of them from my point of view could be useful either to Joplin's maintainers or potential users: - Notebooks are indefinitely nestable but tags are not, why? - Joplin's icon is SO out of proportions, it looks way out of place in my dock, it may sound silly but I might not have used it just because of this alone. - There's a button for opening the current note via a third-party editor, this is quite powerful because it means you can use all the fancy plugins and capabilities your general purpose text editor has, but why are all metadata about a particular note stored who-knows-where rather than putting them in the note itself as YAML front matter so I could have edited them directly too? - Attachments are stored on disk as plain files, that's great because now you can find them and edit them without going through Joplin if necessary, but those files are named with unique ids so actually finding the files you're looking for will be a problem. - And why not storing all notes on disk directly too, so that you could have done fancy things like running a global search and replace on them, run git on them...? Storing them in a database is generally better for performance, but you can do both. - Notes have a separate title field, why wouldn't I want to write my titles in an H1 heading in the Markdown content directly instead? The default notes look a bit silly because of this, coming effectively with 2 identical titles. - The UI looks pretty ugly, there are too many buttons, the interface isn't properly responsive (at some widths the toolbar gets cropped, labels spawn multiple lines etc.), useless things like the "Watching..." label are displayed etc. - The database location is not customizable, if it were you would have the ability to store multiple notes collections separately, and you could achieve synchronization for free just by putting your database inside Dropbox for instance. - Some shortcuts are weird and/or missing, for example there's a shortcut for cycling between previewing, editing, and the split editor. That might be useful sometimes, but don't people just want to toggle between editing and previewing or between previewing and the split-editor most of the times? There should be shortcuts for doing that instead. [0] https://notable.md https://notable.md [1] https://github.com/notable/notable#comparison https://github.com/notable/notable#comparison
- 7y ago
bakoo 7y ago
I've replaced both Evernote and my markdown file hierarchy with Joplin (on linux and windows, trying android next), and love it! Only thing I really miss is the ability to have completely separate instances. While it's theoretically possible to script different configs, they can't be used simultaneously. Syncing works well both through Syncthing and Google Drivw. Haven't tried syncing through OneDrive, and IIRC the docs had some warning about it.
oefrha 7y ago
Off topic, but anyone else annoyed by these walls of contributor avatars in READMEs popular in the JS ecosystem? Occasionally they only include a handful of project members, with roles, so it could be mildly useful, but more often than not it’s a pointless list of just avatar and handle of everyone who ever fixed a typo, and if I want to see the list I’d better click on “contributors” which is built into every GitHub project. To me, this seems to be a manifestation of today’s front end devs’ utmost disrespect for people’s bandwidth. Ironically, this README loads more than a hundred images but I can’t even find a desktop screenshot.
- laurent123456 7y ago
  The avatar list I guess is a way to thank the contributors, and it's at the bottom of the readme so shouldn't be a big annoyance for most readers. There's a screenshot of the desktop app at the top of the readme.
- lilfatbitch 7y ago
  Yeah it's pretty annoying and unnecessary thanks to the Contributors tab on github. Plus, imagine the commit spam, everytime someone new contributes they have to add themselves or someone else has to. That might even deter potential contributors from wanting to contribute if adding themselves to that list is a requirement.
384028345 7y ago
One great aspect is that joplin supports iOS 8+. My Ex needed to write a big dissertation that she just couldn't make progress on (unsurprisingly). Her work laptop is too bulky to carry around every day unfortunately. So at some point I figured she could use my old ipad mini 1 with a size-fitted logitech "ultrathin keyboard" (that magnetically holds onto the ipad, making it one piece for storage) that I impulse bought and never used. So hardware was there, but looking for a markdown editor that supported sync and that old device + her windows laptop was not fruitful. Except well, short story: joplin is awesome for that. She could use the ipad to write a few minutes here and there during transit and was able to complete it. The markdown file is then converted to latex/pdf using pandoc + pandoc-citeproc (for citations using a bibtex-file). Support for antiquated iOS versions is rare (making the ipad mini 1 useless in many cases although it still appears to be a capable device) even though many apps don't seem to have a need for higher versions. I suspect that most apps use frameworks that have a version cutoff to reduce complexity if that even makes sense.
arthurofbabylon 7y ago
Sometimes all you want is a notebook. If it needs to be digital... -> www.minimal.app
Meph504 7y ago
This application makes use of ip-api.com by default, this site is free for non-commercial use only. this should probably be reconsidered, or least made clear to everyone.
- leppr 7y ago
  I don't see any commercial offering here, seems to be based entirely on donations.
  - Meph504 7y ago
    This doesnt just apply to if the application was sold, but if it is used in a commercial environment, I.E. If you plan on using it at work, this would likely be considered commercial use.
wiradikusuma 7y ago
I read few comments against OneNote, may I know what's the problem with that? (Other than no Markdown—but even Evernote doesn't support it)
- rosybox 7y ago
  I use OneNote, and it works beautifully. I've used it for years. I use it for planning events, I use it for meal prepping, I use it for just about anything. It's like a second memory bank for me.
- kerng 7y ago
  Onenote is by far the best option, wish they would stop shooting themselves in the foot with there new crippled versions
standup75 7y ago
Had the same problem, decided to make my own. With pouchdb / couchdb for sync. Https://tagidea.net All free
kerng 7y ago
Nothing compares to Microsoft OneNote - I wish it would work with just regular file storage, rather then requiring OneDrive. It has all the best features, including client side encryption, while still enabling collaboration.
- sturakov 7y ago
  There's some good news on this front, they are bringing back the desktop version support: https://www.thurrott.com/cloud/office-365/221340/microsoft-brings-onenote-2016-back-from-the-dead https://www.thurrott.com/cloud/office-365/221340/microsoft-b...
gsich 7y ago
Issues when I tried Joplin last time (this year): Android: no auto-save. type something, close it, lose everything. Scrolling is a pain. Need to reach the end very fast? Forget it. https://github.com/laurent22/joplin/issues/899 https://github.com/laurent22/joplin/issues/899
godelmachine 7y ago
Relevant but not directly related - I use iOS. I have been looking for a note taking app that will directly save my notes to my Google Drive as soon as I take it. For past 4 years I have been using the default Apple Notes. Back then, I noticed I can configure Notes to be synced with my Google account, and a new label called Notes is created in Gmail. But what I missed is that a separate Google account folder is created Notes and I need to save all my notes there in order for it to be uploaded to my Gmail in real time, and this I noticed only last week. So, for the past 4 years, I have been saving all my notes on my iPhone, in the default folder. And now there’s no other way except to manually upload all notes , one by one, which I have collected over the past 4 years, which goes in thousands, to Gmail. Last week I downloaded Google Keep. There’s one big difference I noted between Apple Notes and Google Keep. In Apple Notes, the Notes which you have recently created / edited / modified / updated, automatically comes to the top, whereas that’s not the case with Google Keep. I love this feature of Apple Notes so much that I decided to stick to Apple Notes despite the disappointment I faced earlier of missing out on the separate Google folder in Apple Notes Does anyone know of a way to upload all of my Apple Notes, which I have accumulated over the past 4 years, to Gmail directly in one go? Any workflows available to make this happen? Any suggestion from anyone would be reciprocated with disproportionate gratitude _/\_ Memento Mori PS - I am looking for a free software.
- _28jh 7y ago
  A really weird way to end a comment.
sorenjan 7y ago
When it comes to todo lists I really prefer nested checkboxes, like Dynalist[0] has. That enables me to make a list of projects, where each project has their own todo items, and maybe they have sub items, and so on. I like being able to divide stuff into smaller and smaller chunks, and then checking them off as I go. [0] https://dynalist.io/ https://dynalist.io/
- dmix 7y ago
  So basically a new take on Workflowy? I've always felt that text+shortcut first approach beats all of the prettiest heavy categorized approaches. This sort of thing is best in a disposable fast changing format. Life is too chaotic and motivation varies where heavily organized and category driven systems often fail long term without vigilance. Which is why simple txt/markdown (combined with some text editor integration like vim-tasks to add things like lists of todo items which can be marked as finished + archived on demand) files remain the ideal solutions..
- ddsea 7y ago
  Looks like a strong candidate to replace Google Keep when they suddenly decide to shut it down.
  - reacharavindh 7y ago
    And what happens when dynalist shuts down? That’s why I prefer self-hosted or plain old Apple Notes :-)
    - mercacona 7y ago
      Of even SimpleNote, which everybody did buried when Automattic buy it, but still in development and working.
    - BiosElement 7y ago
      Daily export to Google Docs/Dropbox for paid users and free manual export to html, text and I believe cvs for anyone. One huge selling point for Dynalist, and why I don't mind paying for it, is the data portability is perfect.
hagoseyu 7y ago
I have been using Joplin in my Linux laptop for the last two month. A good note taking for meeting, journal and even technical documents. It sync well with dropbox.
mstijak 7y ago
Tdo is built for handling many little tasks by using only a keyboard. Feature-wise, markdown is used for formatting, RegEx and custom CSS task highlighting, search supports logical operators (AND, OR), Firebase enables realtime sync, etc... [1] https://github.com/codaxy/tdo https://github.com/codaxy/tdo
snissn 7y ago
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/nirvana-for-gtd/id1022913190 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/nirvana-for-gtd/id1022913190 Nirvana hq and David Allen GTD are great for being organized and feeling in charge of all your tasks
surfsvammel 7y ago
I haven’t found something that does it all for me. I still use Evernote. Every time I get a real paper mail, an invoice or a receipt, I scan it with my phone and save to Evernote. For the PDF OCR search. Thats my only Evernote usecase. For notes I use Bear. Which is, IMO, the best UX for note taking on iOS. But. It doesn’t have a web GUI or a Linux app. So. I can’t really keep using it. I’ve tried them all. Joplin, SimpleNote, Evernote, Turtl, Laverna, you name it. But none of them have both Linux Apps and a great iOS app/experience. (80% of my notes is done from iOS). One day I’ll have to go out to write something myself.
- cpach 7y ago
  I started with Evernote some years ago and so far I haven’t found anything better. The PDF OCR is great and having a web interface is also very convenient, e.g. for using it at work.
- freetonik 7y ago
  BTW, Google drive does OCR search within PDF and images files. It can even convert scans to Google docs.
- gab007 7y ago
  > One day I’ll have to go out to write something myself. I resonate with that. I need to be able to add attachments to my notes - ideally with OCR capabilities. Evernote does that, but I've had a hard time finding something else for the Linux desktop. It's 2019 (almost 2020) and a cross-platform note taking application that does notes + attachments + OCR it's still not available (I am not referring to "workarounds" or "tweaks", attachments as links, etc). If anyone knows one I would love to hear about it. I am currently using a web app that I have built myself, it does notes and attachments but I am still working on implementing OCR via Tesseract (form images and PDF attachments). @surfsvammel, if you decide to go that way and start building something, give me a shout - email in my profile.
- benhurmarcel 7y ago
  Bear is working on a web app. But they give no timeline for now.
dariosalvi78 7y ago
I use it every day, it's great and very portable. All the data is backed on Dropbox. Only a bit too heavy considered that runs on Electron.
godelmachine 7y ago
Can this be synchronized with Google Drive using any driver? Thanks
merricksb 7y ago
Also discussed 2 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15815040 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15815040 (Not a dupe, link posted for info purposes.)
steveharman 7y ago
Big company evil, let's take ownership of our own data etc. But if Dropbox is supported as a sync conduit - why is Google Drive missing? Especially noticable on Android where Google is obviously omnipresent
lordgrenville 7y ago
Switched from Evernote and I'm very happy. As often happens, Evernote took on VC money and then were obligated to keep growing and adding features, while increasing the pressure to monetize (see also: Any.do). Joplin does the simple things I want, well. They are also adding features pretty quickly, but I'm happy with it the way it is.
ab_io 7y ago
Since none of the top comments seem to directly discuss Joplin itself, let me just say that I’ve been using it for years, and it’s great.
- arbie 7y ago
  If it (or Notion.so) supported Inking, I would switch completely from my combination of GDocs, GKeep and GoodNotes5. Will see if I can contribute to this project.
TheCabin 7y ago
I tried a few note taking apps but in the end came to the realization that regular editors are actually better at the job. My reasoning: * _Sync_ should not be solved by the note app (applications that implement sync themselves are usually buggy, I prefer to outsource sync to nextcloud / dropbox / ...) * I want the same _editing capabilities_ as usual (block edit etc., note apps are usually less power full editors) * A _tree organization_ is important to me, which is trivially solved using editors and the file system * There are _Markdown_ packages for pretty much every editor. Note taking apps tend to ship these features but are not as mature as editors are.
rwha 7y ago
Why are new applications still adding dot folders/files to the home directory and not following freedesktop standards?
noisy_boy 7y ago
I use WriterPlus [0] on Android and ReText [1] on Linux for taking notes (markdown supported). Syncing notes is via Syncthing [2]. All plain text files so not much dependency on the apps themselves. Works perfectly. Update: This thread prompted me to re-check the options on Android and I found Markor [3]. Much more polished and I was able to point it to the notes folder. Now I have the option of using it or WriterPlus (though seems to me that Markor's option of opening notes in preview mode by default + more customization options makes it better than WriterPlus). [0]: https://writerp.fileplanet.com/apk https://writerp.fileplanet.com/apk [1]: https://github.com/retext-project/retext https://github.com/retext-project/retext [2]: https://syncthing.net/ https://syncthing.net/ [3]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.gsantner.markor&hl=en_US https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.gsantner.m...
mattlockyer 7y ago
Would you consider data privacy and features that enhance protections for end users becoming popular? Bear Notes just added a "vault" style feature. With all the leaks, hacks, and mis-use of personal data, surely there's something brewing in the market?
brakus127 7y ago
I've been using Joplin for a few months now. So far it seems to fit my requirements better than any other note taking app I've tried - and I've tried plenty - including my own Jupyter based solution. - future proof (it's open source) - standard/open format for notes (uses mark down which is easy to write and easy enough to parse if needed in the future) - sync support and conflict detection - Kudos to their implementation here, it's very versatile. I use Syncthing and it's worked very well for me. - support for multiple clients (I use Linux, Android, OS X and Windows) - stable (no issues so far) The major issue I have is it doesn't support stylus based notes like Onenote. A partial solution would be to extend Joplin to support additional file types so I can keep all my notes together when they are different types. For now, I keep my written notes separate. If stylus support isn't a requirement for you, I strongly recommend Joplin. I've tried a number of closed and open source note taking tools - Joplin hits the sweet spot for me. For a long time I used Jupyter for taking notes with custom scripts for Search. It's been pretty good however it had two major shortcomings: no android client and the Jupyter client had poor conflict detection when using a a file based sync tool like Syncthing.
amaccuish 7y ago
OneNote on Linux, if only such a thing existed.
tobiasbischoff 7y ago
wow thats the worst mac desktop app i've seen for a while.

368 points by adulau 7y ago

bhl 7y ago

If you search 'Markdown' on HackerNews, it'd seem like the 'market' for markdown editors is fragmented: there isn't a single dominant editor yet. I think every week there's a new editor posted (Joplin is an exception given that it's been here for a while). Why is that the case?

SwellJoe 7y ago
Joplin isn't a Markdown editor, it's a note taking and todo list app. It just happens to use Markdown as its entry format. It seems like it's a "Markdown editor" in the same way as reddit or github.
- smartbit 7y ago
  I gave Joplin a try and syncing with Dropbox wasn’t flawless. Still searching for a markdown editor that runs on both iOS & Linux and does auto save & auto sync.
  - omarhaneef 7y ago
    Isn’t any text editor compatible with Dropbox? I mean Dropbox does the syncing and your editor just saves the file there, right? You don’t even need the same editor. You can use one on Linux, one on iOS and another on Windows.
    - smartbit 7y ago
      I miss worded: Looking for a note taking app with markdown to replace Apple notes. Autosync & auto save should work with self hosted service. In the discussion above saw many good suggestions, none that fitted the requirements.
blondin 7y ago
well this looks more like a todo program than a markdown editor
angleofrepose 7y ago
I think it is because each comes with its own opinionated workflow, and missing features. Each has a way of writing markdown/connecting notes that is novel, which means each other option is missing that feature. A take away from this scenario might be that this design space is wanting for a meta-editor. Some tool which allows feature creation in the same context as these markdown/note tools. An analogy might be that this meta-editor is to digital note keeping as racket is to programming languages. Of course all the obvious requirements apply. Has to be usable out of the box, has to just work, has successfully convey it's ability to be changed to the end user. I think emacs is such a solution, there are no features in the list of hn posts under the search "markdown" that it doesn't have. But emacs is missing all the requirements. It is not usable out of the box. I think this meta editor could best be built on top of emacs, but this will require a lot of work. I have been playing around with this idea for a couple of years now and it's slow going but fun to think about.
- crazypython 7y ago
  Typora: Format a paper iA Writer: Write something eloquent
- bhl 7y ago
  I've been looking at the ProseMirror as a way of building this meta-editor that could have plug-and-play components. The issue is, although the library is open-source, there hasn't been many open-sourced components that people have built. Ideally, we could go one step forward and abstract away the npm library; then everybody could build their custom editor by mixing components. One editor that sort of does this is StandardNotes but I haven't tried building something for it yet. [1] https://prosemirror.net/ https://prosemirror.net/ [2] https://standardnotes.org/extensions https://standardnotes.org/extensions
fabiospampinato 7y ago
The reason is that existing solutions are inadequate/not-powerful-enough, so the moment a developer is limited by what the app has to offer there's a chance a new note-taking app gets developed to solve that specific need.

hollander 7y ago

I'm looking for an Evernote alternative since long. Evernote is one of my favourite applications, but I fear the moment when Amazon or Google or Microsoft buys it like Fitbit or Nest. It is going to happen, and I put more and more info into that app. I'm definitely going to try this and I truly hope it is good enough for me.

bobbylarrybobby 7y ago
Notion.so is a good one
- detaro 7y ago
  I'm not sure the best response to "I'm worried the cloud service I use might get bought and changed" is recommending another VC funded cloud service. But I've heard good things about Notion as a product too.
  - aspaceman 7y ago
    They have export features so in theory you’re not tied down.
- joppy 7y ago
  I found that Notion had great features, but I found it to just be terribly slow in general. The app takes upwards of 25 seconds to open on my phone, and even on my computer where the app opens quickly, I still can't flick back and forth between different notes without the app trying to re-sync with the server and slowing everything down.

nico_h 7y ago

I’m looking for a multi-platform (linux-mac-ios) markdown editor that saves at regular interval and keeps history and sync via git. Is there anything like that? How hard would it be to extend joplin to write a service driver to sync via Git(-hub / -lab / your own server)?

stuzenz 7y ago
Check out boostnote to see if that meets your needs https://boostnote.io/ https://boostnote.io/ https://medium.com/boostnote/boostnote-mobile-how-to-synchronize-with-dropbox-95d845581eea https://medium.com/boostnote/boostnote-mobile-how-to-synchro...
DenseComet 7y ago
I'm currently using Typora and have it set up to automatically open to a certain folder and autosave. That folder is a git repository, and in cron, I simply have an hourly task that stages all files, commits, and pushes. This might not be an ideal solution, but if you find an editor you really like, its an easy way to add git and backup to your notes.
top_coder 7y ago
Have you considered Emacs + Org-mode? Works wherever Emacs works (Linux, Mac) and there are apps for Android and iOS. Org files are basically text files that you can commit to git or sync via Google drive, Dropbox, OneDrive etc. Not exactly markdown but GitHub renders org file pretty well. After trying out multiple note taking apps this is what I settled on. You can use it as simple as a note taking app or configure it to do lots of complicated things like managing your to-dos, appointments, agendas. And my favorite feature is inline code-block that I can execute.
- mickael-kerjean 7y ago
  org-mode is awesome, there's clients for everyone's taste. I wrote one that look like this: https://demo.filestash.app/login?next=/view/org/emacs.org#type=git&epo=https://github.com/mickael-kerjean/nuage_org_demo https://demo.filestash.app/login?next=/view/org/emacs.org#ty...

schuke 7y ago

After years of searching I’ve pretty much settled on one note-taking app: Apple Notes. Quite unexpected to me as well because I started off just to sort of “cache” random notes in it before sorting them out in OneNote. Then I found myself almost stopped using OneNote. It’s just ubiquitous enough when you have a few extra PC devices, (unlike say, Bear) and versatile enough so it’s not limited to texts like Notational Velocity or SimpeNote, and quick and easy enough so I never have to wait for launching or syncing like with OneNote. It’s not enjoy-sparking to use and the text is a bit cramped. But it gets stuff done and I forget about it most of the time. So it’s just almost perfect for me.

EricE 7y ago
If you have any amount of Apple devices in your daily orbit, it's pretty amazing how useful Apple Notes is.
- PowerfulWizard 7y ago
  I like it too and I think due to connecting the mail app to my gmail all my notes end up on gmail under a "Notes" tag which is very convenient.
throwaway0xb 7y ago
I was a big Apple Notes user, but I've read horror stories about losing notes in upgrades, which bothers me. Exporting notes for backup is tedious, too. I've switched to Notion for notes and it's been excellent minus one thing: it's slow to start. Otherwise I haven't really missed Apple Notes.
- sorum 7y ago
  How's the latency these days while you work with it? For me it was the latency while using it that was just a bit too annoying
  - allset_ 7y ago
    It saves locally and the syncs to the cloud every few seconds. Latency is zero.

russellbeattie 7y ago

I replaced Evernote with Joplin a year or so ago and am pretty happy. It's a little rough around the edges, but it works great and is actively updated. And all my data is stored where I want it to be, with no monthly bill, and no one trying shove "chat" or "enterprise" features down my throat. Also, as the desktop client is a JavaScript app, it was relatively easy to go in and change a few things that I wanted tweaked. I hate MarkDown with a passion, so I just turned off all that stuff in the toolbar and use it as a plain text notepad that syncs. Works great. (At some point I need to make the effort to figure out the options dialogs they have and submit a pull request where this can be turned off/on permanently.) I do wish it would clean up the weird note/todo item duality (at least in the options). You can treat a note as a todo item, so the list of notes acts as your list of todos. Or you can just use a note and put the todo items in it (which is what I do). I just don't think the folder interface works well for the todo item paradigm. Anyways, highly recommended if you're still spending money on Evernote and don't use any advanced features. If you're using web clips or other stuff, someone else will have to chime in.

freetonik 7y ago
Genuinely curious why do you hate Markdown with a passion?

The_Colonel 7y ago

Another alternative is Trilium Notes which ticks the boxes from the title (sync, note, todo) but goes in a bit different direction (unlimited hierarchy, WYSIWYG, scriptability) - https://github.com/zadam/trilium https://github.com/zadam/trilium

samdamsamm 7y ago

I moved to Joplin from Evernote a little over a year ago. It has had ongoing development and new features being added the entire time. The development is very iterative, and functionality comes before fashion, but the UI has been getting improved too. The backup/sync system is great. Fully encrypted and numerous cloud configuration options. I use it with Fastmail’s $5/mo. service and it’s very easy to setup. The iOS app could use some more improvements but far better than not having one at all. Overall Joplin is highly recommended because of it’s compatibility, flexibility, privacy, and no-frills functionality.

crazypython 7y ago

I use DevonThink. It's great-- excellent capture-from-web features. It has See Also, and folders.

mastercheif 7y ago
I’m 20 days into my trial of DevonThink and I’m getting close to pulling the trigger. I’m using it as a hybrid read-later pocket replacement + personal knowledge database. The combination of “See Also” auto suggestions for inbox sorting and deep search capabilities is everything I had been wanting in a PKM suite. I wish they had extended the auto-sorting/suggestions to the tags feature, it’s my favorite feature of Pocket.
- arbie 7y ago
  Is there a Windows or Web client for DevonThink?
  - mastercheif 7y ago
    DevonThink Server has a feature limited Web interface
    - arbie 7y ago
      Can the Server be launched on a Windows machine?

dmix 7y ago

This subpackage called Webclipper would be cool for parsing articles like Instapaper but instead of a better web version it saves to a markdown file than opens in Vim (or similar). For some reason I like those old long readme.txt files from the 1990s. The ones formatted with max 80-120 characters wide per line, black background, etc. https://github.com/laurent22/joplin/blob/master/readme/clipper.md https://github.com/laurent22/joplin/blob/master/readme/clipp... I haven't tried this one yet. But the biggest problem with that approach is the links typically don't work, nor will citations render properly for Wikipedia. So maybe it's preferable using Lynx or w/e just for long-term reading or articles on news sites with disaster web design.

fandaa 7y ago

I would recommend https://standardnotes.org/ https://standardnotes.org/ after trying all other (OneNote, Boostnote, QOwnNotes, etc.) note taking SWs. Encrypted linked storage (S3, Dropbox, ...) for files, encrypted notes, multiplatform, multiple editors (code, 2FA, markdown, spreadsheets, your own!, ...) & can be self hosted. Easy (also encrypted) backups. I only miss the diagrams tool (like draw.io) or handwriting (touch/pen) support.

evil-olive 7y ago
I was a Standard Notes user, including a premium plan, but recently switched to Joplin and I've been very happy with it. I like Standard Notes' no-nonsense business model, with the downside that the free version is heavily feature-crippled (not even a Markdown editor, just plain text). The Standard Notes server is self-hostable, but it requires a dedicated backend server [0] which was more hassle than I wanted to deal with. Joplin integrates much more nicely with Syncthing for self-hosted but still peer-to-peer replication. 0: https://standardnotes.org/help/47/can-i-self-host-standard-notes https://standardnotes.org/help/47/can-i-self-host-standard-n...
- tbrock 7y ago
  Just did the same thing. Greatest benefit of standard notes is also that the notes are just plain text.
- mikece 7y ago
  The reason to use Standard Notes, IMO, is the zero-knowledge encryption. I’ll check out Joplin and the others I’m learning about in this thread but I’m happy with Standard Notes at the moment though.
wdr1 7y ago
Does it support Google Drive?
- fandaa 7y ago
  Yes. There is a CloudLink extension for saving the history & notes itself I think, which supports Dropbox, Google Drive & OneDrive. Backup can be also sent daily by the email. And then there is a FileSafe for files - you will simply generate the key (there's a button for it) and upload you files, which will be offline encrypted and then uploaded to your configured cloud storage - Dropbox, Google Drive, WebDAV, AWS S3. The size is currently limited to 50MB (because of the offline encryption).

threatofrain 7y ago

What do people who also want Latex use? So far I haven’t found anything better than VSC.

fabiospampinato 7y ago
We have KaTeX (and AsciiMath) support in Notable (https://notable.md https://notable.md).
mickael-kerjean 7y ago
emacs. On a daily basis, I write using org-mode and compile to latex
mindv0rtex 7y ago
I use LaTeX in Joplin with no issues. It uses the KaTeX lib to render the equations.
maxai 7y ago
Joplin supports Latex-like equations. And Typora and Mark Text have inline Latex support, but they're only on desktop. So there's not really any mobile & desktop solution that has Latex and Markdown as a priority feature.

hirundo 7y ago

> Recognition data - Evernote images, in particular scanned (or photographed) documents have recognition data associated with them. It is the text that Evernote has been able to recognise in the document. This data is not preserved when the note are imported into Joplin. However, should it become supported in the search tool or other parts of Joplin, it should be possible to regenerate this recognition data since the actual image would still be available. This is the feature that has me locked in to Evernote and no one else seems to have. I'll be watching this repo and jump over as soon as it becomes supported.

roktiw 7y ago

I recommend Ulysses app due it ability to sort notes by drag and drop an export multiple notes as one document. Didn’t find this functionality so far in any other app. Only minus is Ulysses it is fact that runs only Apple devices

braindongle 7y ago

Is there anything like this that is Vim-centric? Pretty please?

Stratoscope 7y ago
What does Vim-centric mean? Not asking to disagree, just wondering what this refers to. Thanks for any clarification. I don't use vim, so it's just a matter of curiosity for me - but it's always interesting to hear what kinds of tools other developers like to use.
- braindongle 7y ago
  I checked out the CLI for Joplin and it's a multi-pane environment with a command line at the bottom. This is also true of Vim, especially if you like panes, or "splits". For those of us hooked on Vim (I am silent on its merits), there is a state of flow that is quite pleasant, and you find that you want that flow wherever you can get it. The arrow keys just are j,k,l,; for example, and just lifting a hand from the home row position feels awkward if you're in deep enough. :)
frankish 7y ago
Todo.txt [1] is not VIM-only, but text-based and simple. I use and enjoy both the Android and CLI clients, but since it's text-based and (typically) Dropbox synced, you could feel free to edit with VIM, which I do from time-to-time. [1] http://todotxt.org/ http://todotxt.org/
infinitezest 7y ago
I've been using [vim-pad](https://github.com/fmoralesc/vim-pad https://github.com/fmoralesc/vim-pad) with Dropbox and it's been wonderful. It just saves markdown files to a directory so you could swap Dropbox for Syncthing or what have you.
ktaylor 7y ago
Joplin just released support for Vim keybindings. But, it also has a button you can press to edit a note in your favorite editor, such as Vim.

ddsea 7y ago

I felt that Evernote was becoming increasingly constraining and slow/flaky, so after trying a few alternatives (text files/dirs, SimpleNote, Apple Notes, BoostNotes, Zim, etc), I've made a leap of faith to Joplin. My requirements: multi-platform, multi-device, auto-sync (more than 2 devices in free ver.), tags, webclip-ability, preferably markdown format with code rendering. Text diagramming such as PlantUML is a big plus. The idea of owning my notes is very appealing. My early attempts at synchronizing encrypted notes over OneDrive experienced repeated hiccups (stopped syncing for no apparent reason), so currently trying without encryption. Win10 and Android clients seem to chug along just fine, but the Linux client shows weird errors in the log - trying to hunt down the root cause. The fact that Joplin is WIP and open source is encouraging. I'd like to be able to have separate DBs, e.g. for personal and business use. ADDED: forgot to mention that the lack of dark mode on Windows EN client was a constant source of irritation.

ddsea 7y ago
More on color schemes: in addition to Joplin including a few built-in themes, the appearance of rendered pages can be adjusted via CSS. Playing with it felt more liberating for me than I care to admit.
m-p-3 7y ago
Sadly my experience with the Android app has been less than inpressive, with a memory leak related to React that has yet to be patched, and slows down the keyboard system-wide.
- fingerlocks 7y ago
  Could you provide a link to the memory leak bug report? I’d like to know more and cannot find one that isn’t closed or doesn’t affect a small subset of devices under particular conditions.
henrysarabia 7y ago
It sounds like what you're looking for is Notion. It checks most of your boxes, I believe.

agravier 7y ago

To add to the list for those willing to try alternatives, here is a multiplatform markdown note taking application I've been using for a while: https://tamlok.github.io/vnote/en_us/ https://tamlok.github.io/vnote/en_us/

fabiospampinato 7y ago

Disclosure: I work at a competitor note-taking app called Notable [0], so I'm somewhat biased. I've made a comparison table [1] comparing Joplin and other popular note-taking apps, you may find it useful. Joplin could have been my go-to note-taking app, but IMO they made a few bad design decisions and there are few things I really don't like about it, maybe listing some of them from my point of view could be useful either to Joplin's maintainers or potential users: - Notebooks are indefinitely nestable but tags are not, why? - Joplin's icon is SO out of proportions, it looks way out of place in my dock, it may sound silly but I might not have used it just because of this alone. - There's a button for opening the current note via a third-party editor, this is quite powerful because it means you can use all the fancy plugins and capabilities your general purpose text editor has, but why are all metadata about a particular note stored who-knows-where rather than putting them in the note itself as YAML front matter so I could have edited them directly too? - Attachments are stored on disk as plain files, that's great because now you can find them and edit them without going through Joplin if necessary, but those files are named with unique ids so actually finding the files you're looking for will be a problem. - And why not storing all notes on disk directly too, so that you could have done fancy things like running a global search and replace on them, run git on them...? Storing them in a database is generally better for performance, but you can do both. - Notes have a separate title field, why wouldn't I want to write my titles in an H1 heading in the Markdown content directly instead? The default notes look a bit silly because of this, coming effectively with 2 identical titles. - The UI looks pretty ugly, there are too many buttons, the interface isn't properly responsive (at some widths the toolbar gets cropped, labels spawn multiple lines etc.), useless things like the "Watching..." label are displayed etc. - The database location is not customizable, if it were you would have the ability to store multiple notes collections separately, and you could achieve synchronization for free just by putting your database inside Dropbox for instance. - Some shortcuts are weird and/or missing, for example there's a shortcut for cycling between previewing, editing, and the split editor. That might be useful sometimes, but don't people just want to toggle between editing and previewing or between previewing and the split-editor most of the times? There should be shortcuts for doing that instead. [0] https://notable.md https://notable.md [1] https://github.com/notable/notable#comparison https://github.com/notable/notable#comparison

7y ago

bakoo 7y ago

I've replaced both Evernote and my markdown file hierarchy with Joplin (on linux and windows, trying android next), and love it! Only thing I really miss is the ability to have completely separate instances. While it's theoretically possible to script different configs, they can't be used simultaneously. Syncing works well both through Syncthing and Google Drivw. Haven't tried syncing through OneDrive, and IIRC the docs had some warning about it.

oefrha 7y ago

Off topic, but anyone else annoyed by these walls of contributor avatars in READMEs popular in the JS ecosystem? Occasionally they only include a handful of project members, with roles, so it could be mildly useful, but more often than not it’s a pointless list of just avatar and handle of everyone who ever fixed a typo, and if I want to see the list I’d better click on “contributors” which is built into every GitHub project. To me, this seems to be a manifestation of today’s front end devs’ utmost disrespect for people’s bandwidth. Ironically, this README loads more than a hundred images but I can’t even find a desktop screenshot.

laurent123456 7y ago
The avatar list I guess is a way to thank the contributors, and it's at the bottom of the readme so shouldn't be a big annoyance for most readers. There's a screenshot of the desktop app at the top of the readme.
lilfatbitch 7y ago
Yeah it's pretty annoying and unnecessary thanks to the Contributors tab on github. Plus, imagine the commit spam, everytime someone new contributes they have to add themselves or someone else has to. That might even deter potential contributors from wanting to contribute if adding themselves to that list is a requirement.

384028345 7y ago

One great aspect is that joplin supports iOS 8+. My Ex needed to write a big dissertation that she just couldn't make progress on (unsurprisingly). Her work laptop is too bulky to carry around every day unfortunately. So at some point I figured she could use my old ipad mini 1 with a size-fitted logitech "ultrathin keyboard" (that magnetically holds onto the ipad, making it one piece for storage) that I impulse bought and never used. So hardware was there, but looking for a markdown editor that supported sync and that old device + her windows laptop was not fruitful. Except well, short story: joplin is awesome for that. She could use the ipad to write a few minutes here and there during transit and was able to complete it. The markdown file is then converted to latex/pdf using pandoc + pandoc-citeproc (for citations using a bibtex-file). Support for antiquated iOS versions is rare (making the ipad mini 1 useless in many cases although it still appears to be a capable device) even though many apps don't seem to have a need for higher versions. I suspect that most apps use frameworks that have a version cutoff to reduce complexity if that even makes sense.

arthurofbabylon 7y ago

Sometimes all you want is a notebook. If it needs to be digital... -> www.minimal.app

Meph504 7y ago

This application makes use of ip-api.com by default, this site is free for non-commercial use only. this should probably be reconsidered, or least made clear to everyone.

leppr 7y ago
I don't see any commercial offering here, seems to be based entirely on donations.
- Meph504 7y ago
  This doesnt just apply to if the application was sold, but if it is used in a commercial environment, I.E. If you plan on using it at work, this would likely be considered commercial use.

wiradikusuma 7y ago

I read few comments against OneNote, may I know what's the problem with that? (Other than no Markdown—but even Evernote doesn't support it)

rosybox 7y ago
I use OneNote, and it works beautifully. I've used it for years. I use it for planning events, I use it for meal prepping, I use it for just about anything. It's like a second memory bank for me.
kerng 7y ago
Onenote is by far the best option, wish they would stop shooting themselves in the foot with there new crippled versions

standup75 7y ago

Had the same problem, decided to make my own. With pouchdb / couchdb for sync. Https://tagidea.net All free

kerng 7y ago

Nothing compares to Microsoft OneNote - I wish it would work with just regular file storage, rather then requiring OneDrive. It has all the best features, including client side encryption, while still enabling collaboration.

sturakov 7y ago
There's some good news on this front, they are bringing back the desktop version support: https://www.thurrott.com/cloud/office-365/221340/microsoft-brings-onenote-2016-back-from-the-dead https://www.thurrott.com/cloud/office-365/221340/microsoft-b...

gsich 7y ago

Issues when I tried Joplin last time (this year): Android: no auto-save. type something, close it, lose everything. Scrolling is a pain. Need to reach the end very fast? Forget it. https://github.com/laurent22/joplin/issues/899 https://github.com/laurent22/joplin/issues/899

godelmachine 7y ago

Relevant but not directly related - I use iOS. I have been looking for a note taking app that will directly save my notes to my Google Drive as soon as I take it. For past 4 years I have been using the default Apple Notes. Back then, I noticed I can configure Notes to be synced with my Google account, and a new label called Notes is created in Gmail. But what I missed is that a separate Google account folder is created Notes and I need to save all my notes there in order for it to be uploaded to my Gmail in real time, and this I noticed only last week. So, for the past 4 years, I have been saving all my notes on my iPhone, in the default folder. And now there’s no other way except to manually upload all notes , one by one, which I have collected over the past 4 years, which goes in thousands, to Gmail. Last week I downloaded Google Keep. There’s one big difference I noted between Apple Notes and Google Keep. In Apple Notes, the Notes which you have recently created / edited / modified / updated, automatically comes to the top, whereas that’s not the case with Google Keep. I love this feature of Apple Notes so much that I decided to stick to Apple Notes despite the disappointment I faced earlier of missing out on the separate Google folder in Apple Notes Does anyone know of a way to upload all of my Apple Notes, which I have accumulated over the past 4 years, to Gmail directly in one go? Any workflows available to make this happen? Any suggestion from anyone would be reciprocated with disproportionate gratitude _/\_ Memento Mori PS - I am looking for a free software.

_28jh 7y ago
A really weird way to end a comment.

sorenjan 7y ago

When it comes to todo lists I really prefer nested checkboxes, like Dynalist[0] has. That enables me to make a list of projects, where each project has their own todo items, and maybe they have sub items, and so on. I like being able to divide stuff into smaller and smaller chunks, and then checking them off as I go. [0] https://dynalist.io/ https://dynalist.io/

dmix 7y ago
So basically a new take on Workflowy? I've always felt that text+shortcut first approach beats all of the prettiest heavy categorized approaches. This sort of thing is best in a disposable fast changing format. Life is too chaotic and motivation varies where heavily organized and category driven systems often fail long term without vigilance. Which is why simple txt/markdown (combined with some text editor integration like vim-tasks to add things like lists of todo items which can be marked as finished + archived on demand) files remain the ideal solutions..
ddsea 7y ago
Looks like a strong candidate to replace Google Keep when they suddenly decide to shut it down.
- reacharavindh 7y ago
  And what happens when dynalist shuts down? That’s why I prefer self-hosted or plain old Apple Notes :-)
  - mercacona 7y ago
    Of even SimpleNote, which everybody did buried when Automattic buy it, but still in development and working.
  - BiosElement 7y ago
    Daily export to Google Docs/Dropbox for paid users and free manual export to html, text and I believe cvs for anyone. One huge selling point for Dynalist, and why I don't mind paying for it, is the data portability is perfect.

hagoseyu 7y ago

I have been using Joplin in my Linux laptop for the last two month. A good note taking for meeting, journal and even technical documents. It sync well with dropbox.

mstijak 7y ago

Tdo is built for handling many little tasks by using only a keyboard. Feature-wise, markdown is used for formatting, RegEx and custom CSS task highlighting, search supports logical operators (AND, OR), Firebase enables realtime sync, etc... [1] https://github.com/codaxy/tdo https://github.com/codaxy/tdo

snissn 7y ago

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/nirvana-for-gtd/id1022913190 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/nirvana-for-gtd/id1022913190 Nirvana hq and David Allen GTD are great for being organized and feeling in charge of all your tasks

surfsvammel 7y ago

I haven’t found something that does it all for me. I still use Evernote. Every time I get a real paper mail, an invoice or a receipt, I scan it with my phone and save to Evernote. For the PDF OCR search. Thats my only Evernote usecase. For notes I use Bear. Which is, IMO, the best UX for note taking on iOS. But. It doesn’t have a web GUI or a Linux app. So. I can’t really keep using it. I’ve tried them all. Joplin, SimpleNote, Evernote, Turtl, Laverna, you name it. But none of them have both Linux Apps and a great iOS app/experience. (80% of my notes is done from iOS). One day I’ll have to go out to write something myself.

cpach 7y ago
I started with Evernote some years ago and so far I haven’t found anything better. The PDF OCR is great and having a web interface is also very convenient, e.g. for using it at work.
freetonik 7y ago
BTW, Google drive does OCR search within PDF and images files. It can even convert scans to Google docs.
gab007 7y ago
> One day I’ll have to go out to write something myself. I resonate with that. I need to be able to add attachments to my notes - ideally with OCR capabilities. Evernote does that, but I've had a hard time finding something else for the Linux desktop. It's 2019 (almost 2020) and a cross-platform note taking application that does notes + attachments + OCR it's still not available (I am not referring to "workarounds" or "tweaks", attachments as links, etc). If anyone knows one I would love to hear about it. I am currently using a web app that I have built myself, it does notes and attachments but I am still working on implementing OCR via Tesseract (form images and PDF attachments). @surfsvammel, if you decide to go that way and start building something, give me a shout - email in my profile.
benhurmarcel 7y ago
Bear is working on a web app. But they give no timeline for now.

dariosalvi78 7y ago

I use it every day, it's great and very portable. All the data is backed on Dropbox. Only a bit too heavy considered that runs on Electron.

godelmachine 7y ago

Can this be synchronized with Google Drive using any driver? Thanks

merricksb 7y ago

Also discussed 2 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15815040 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15815040 (Not a dupe, link posted for info purposes.)

steveharman 7y ago

Big company evil, let's take ownership of our own data etc. But if Dropbox is supported as a sync conduit - why is Google Drive missing? Especially noticable on Android where Google is obviously omnipresent

lordgrenville 7y ago

Switched from Evernote and I'm very happy. As often happens, Evernote took on VC money and then were obligated to keep growing and adding features, while increasing the pressure to monetize (see also: Any.do). Joplin does the simple things I want, well. They are also adding features pretty quickly, but I'm happy with it the way it is.

ab_io 7y ago

Since none of the top comments seem to directly discuss Joplin itself, let me just say that I’ve been using it for years, and it’s great.

arbie 7y ago
If it (or Notion.so) supported Inking, I would switch completely from my combination of GDocs, GKeep and GoodNotes5. Will see if I can contribute to this project.

TheCabin 7y ago

I tried a few note taking apps but in the end came to the realization that regular editors are actually better at the job. My reasoning: * _Sync_ should not be solved by the note app (applications that implement sync themselves are usually buggy, I prefer to outsource sync to nextcloud / dropbox / ...) * I want the same _editing capabilities_ as usual (block edit etc., note apps are usually less power full editors) * A _tree organization_ is important to me, which is trivially solved using editors and the file system * There are _Markdown_ packages for pretty much every editor. Note taking apps tend to ship these features but are not as mature as editors are.

rwha 7y ago

Why are new applications still adding dot folders/files to the home directory and not following freedesktop standards?

noisy_boy 7y ago

I use WriterPlus [0] on Android and ReText [1] on Linux for taking notes (markdown supported). Syncing notes is via Syncthing [2]. All plain text files so not much dependency on the apps themselves. Works perfectly. Update: This thread prompted me to re-check the options on Android and I found Markor [3]. Much more polished and I was able to point it to the notes folder. Now I have the option of using it or WriterPlus (though seems to me that Markor's option of opening notes in preview mode by default + more customization options makes it better than WriterPlus). [0]: https://writerp.fileplanet.com/apk https://writerp.fileplanet.com/apk [1]: https://github.com/retext-project/retext https://github.com/retext-project/retext [2]: https://syncthing.net/ https://syncthing.net/ [3]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.gsantner.markor&hl=en_US https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.gsantner.m...

mattlockyer 7y ago

Would you consider data privacy and features that enhance protections for end users becoming popular? Bear Notes just added a "vault" style feature. With all the leaks, hacks, and mis-use of personal data, surely there's something brewing in the market?

brakus127 7y ago

I've been using Joplin for a few months now. So far it seems to fit my requirements better than any other note taking app I've tried - and I've tried plenty - including my own Jupyter based solution. - future proof (it's open source) - standard/open format for notes (uses mark down which is easy to write and easy enough to parse if needed in the future) - sync support and conflict detection - Kudos to their implementation here, it's very versatile. I use Syncthing and it's worked very well for me. - support for multiple clients (I use Linux, Android, OS X and Windows) - stable (no issues so far) The major issue I have is it doesn't support stylus based notes like Onenote. A partial solution would be to extend Joplin to support additional file types so I can keep all my notes together when they are different types. For now, I keep my written notes separate. If stylus support isn't a requirement for you, I strongly recommend Joplin. I've tried a number of closed and open source note taking tools - Joplin hits the sweet spot for me. For a long time I used Jupyter for taking notes with custom scripts for Search. It's been pretty good however it had two major shortcomings: no android client and the Jupyter client had poor conflict detection when using a a file based sync tool like Syncthing.

amaccuish 7y ago

OneNote on Linux, if only such a thing existed.

tobiasbischoff 7y ago

wow thats the worst mac desktop app i've seen for a while.