I’m looking for a good notes taking app to replace The Bad Ones like Evernote.
I want to have the content available over multiple devices (iOS app if possible) and preferably also a web editor.
Any ideas?
Seconding obsidian.
And you can self host the live sync plugin to keep all devices in sync with each other.
I really like Joplin
Is Joplin something you can host or fontina use their cloud?
You can self host. They even have official lemmy community at !joplinapp@sopuli.xyz
2nd vote for Obsidian.
I’ve moved from OneNote and Evernote about two years ago to Obsidian. I tried out (and still do look at) all the note-keeping apps and Obsidian beats hands down. For me, the major determiner was that it saves to plain text files that I can just transfer into any future app easily. The other aspect is that plug-ins enable you to tailor how Obsidian functions to your own working processes.
I’ve found keeping Obsidian in sync over iCloud pretty good as long as you keep the number of plug-ins on phone and iPad limited.
Obsidian is great except for the times when you can’t sync your notes to a local file system (like on a work computer). Does anyone know of a self-hosted web app that’s effective for reading/editing the markdown files?
Have you tried Remote Save plugin?
I use it to sync from a webdav on my NAS at home to work computer if I ever need it. It also syncs from services like OneDrive, Dropbox, S3 etc.
There are other versions of similar syncing.
I use Joplin. It supports syncing with OneDrive, Dropbox and NextCloud. Also supports encryption which is great if you are syncing to onedrive or dropbox.
Obsidian is popular. Markdown-based and lots of plugins. Can get super powerful.
You can try Appflowy. It’s a Notion clone written in Flutter. Open source and batteries-included for a bunch of note-taking applications.
Nextcloud notes seem to be a good evernote alternative. Just notes, nothing bigger.
Second obsidian. And if you want to self-host a sync for it you can.
There’s a selfhosted sync plugin that lets you sync changes between many devices with a couchDB handling it all.
It works pretty smooth, and keeps my computers and my phone in sync as long as I’m on the LAN or VPN.
Another vote for Trilium.
A couple of years ago Roam Research was trending, I read some articles and reviews about it and I liked the concepts it introduced. I looked for a free, open source self-hosted cross-platform alternative to Roam and found Trilium.
Its native on Windows, Mac, and Linux, while it doesn’t have any Native Mobile apps, the webapp works on great on mobile and can be installed to your phone launcher as a PWA.
It does everything I want, and I use it a lot. A bunch of my colleagues have been recently moving from Evernote or Notable, over to Obsidian, and I understand Obsidian is the new hot thing, but I think I’ll stick with Trilium.
My advice would be to try out a bunch. Note taking is surprisingly nuanced and personal preferences play a major role. Try each one for a week or two, and see which best matches your workflow and your requirements.
+1 for Trilium, been using it for about a year now and I like it over the other solutions I’ve tried: Joplin, Obsidian, and logseq.
Don’t forget about Trlium’s white board feature! I didn’t know it existed until recently - create a new “canvas” style note to get it started
Great point about this being such a personal preference thing. I was thinking that as I was reading through all these passionate replies.
I also useTrilium but I have to say that the mobile experience is pretty poor. You loose the ability to add labels and most of the desktop features are stripped away. If all you need is to simple read and write, then the mobile web app may suffice. There is also a bug where many android keyboards cause typed characters to duplicate (a ckeditor bug)
I’m still sticking with Trilium because the desktop app is super. I’m definitely looking forward to a mobile app at some point (its bound to be developed by someone!)
I agree with that, mostly. However I find I don’t really ever need to add or edit content on mobile. I only use the web app on mobile to lookup something when my laptop isn’t at hand. There is the official Trilium Sender app for Android that allows you to forward text, pictures, links, etc from your device to your Trilium server, then you organise the content when you get back to your laptop. I find that fills any gaps in functionality. I hate brain dumping or editing long or complex paragraphs of text on my mobile anyway.
Joplin works well for me.
Another vote for Joplin here, but I prefer to host Joplin server for synchronization because it’s much faster than NextCloud.
zettlr: free, open source (GPL3), no database.
I went with Nextcloud Notes, because I don’t want anything saving files locally that I then have to worry about syncing. I can just point a browser at it from wherever I am, or use an app. Also, it’s nice that Nextcloud Notes saves them as markdown, so I can easily migrate the data elsewhere if I ever want to. And those markdown files are treated like normal Nextcloud files, so if you do want to sync that stuff, your notes sync along with everything else.
I use selfhosted nextcloud instance with notes app installed. On Android I use native Nextcloud Notes.
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May I ask what is wrong with Evernote? It’s always worked well for me.
I assume privacy
Logseq + Syncthing?
No web editor though—well, they have a tutorial web app that I think you can force into editing your markdown files, but that’s not what it’s meant for.
I bounced around a bunch of different apps after leaving Evernote myself some 6-7 years ago. Evernote was cool, but started getting worse. I can only imagine how bad it is now. I also learned that migrating away from Evernote’s walled garden is a bit difficult.
I don’t have any recommendations for ones with a web editor. I specifically wanted a local app for my notes, which Evernote seemed less interested in and more interested in pushing their web app. After Evernote I’ve been using a folder of plain-old Markdown files, synced to my home server, and using various editors for those Markdown files. Things I’ve tried include VSCode, Typora, and QOwnNotes.
Today I use Obsidian and haven’t hopped around for the last 2 years. I love Obsidian and have basically no complaints about it. Again no web editing, but if you just want local files (that can sync across devices) then Obsidian is excellent.
In a different post I mentioned I’d left Dropbox, and that I was replacing Evernote with Obsidian. I had lots of good suggestions for markdown editors, and one that I’d never heard of, but I’ve been testing today is Silverbullet. It’s main appeal to me is that I can use it effectively on iOS since it has a mobile friendly web interface.
My setup is I’m using SyncThing over tailscale to keep my laptop and server in sync, I run a local instance of SilverBullet on my laptop and the wepapp on my iPhone over tailscale to a SilverBullet instance on the homelab server.
