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Notes taking app (waste-of.space)

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?

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[-] carved_beats@waveform.social 29 points 11 months ago
[-] Derkis@rammy.site 6 points 11 months ago

Another vote for Joplin here, but I prefer to host Joplin server for synchronization because it's much faster than NextCloud.

[-] sv1sjp@lemmy.world 6 points 11 months ago

Joplin with NextCloud for sychronization + pivn for having access from everywhere :')

[-] leprasmurf@lemmy.geekforbes.com 3 points 11 months ago

+1 for Joplin with Nextcloud / WebDAV sync.

[-] canofloons@lemm.ee 28 points 11 months ago
[-] tenebrisnox@feddit.uk 4 points 11 months ago

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.

[-] remus@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago

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?

[-] tenebrisnox@feddit.uk 4 points 11 months ago

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.

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[-] ruud@lemmy.world 17 points 11 months ago
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[-] douglasg14b@lemmy.world 16 points 11 months ago

Seconding obsidian.

And you can self host the live sync plugin to keep all devices in sync with each other.

[-] 00dani@lemmy.blahaj.zone 15 points 11 months ago

huge obsidian.md fan here. it doesn't have a web editor, but since your notes really are just markdown files it's easy to mix and match with other markdown editors. for quick notes i like to drop into markor on my phone rather than obsidian, since they're compatible and obsidian takes longer to load due to my love of plugins

i use syncthing to get my vault onto all my devices on the fly, plus a git repo for longer-term archival. i believe syncthing doesn't play so well on ios due to system limitations, however, so using the official "obsidian sync" service might be a better bet in your case?

[-] flubba86@lemmy.world 13 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

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.

[-] thirdBreakfast@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago

Great point about this being such a personal preference thing. I was thinking that as I was reading through all these passionate replies.

[-] cancanman@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

+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

[-] homegrowntechie@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago

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!)

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[-] om1k@sopuli.xyz 12 points 11 months ago

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.

[-] merthyr1831@lemmy.world 10 points 11 months ago

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.

[-] douglasg14b@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago

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.

[-] reflex@kbin.social 8 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

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.

[-] Bristlerock@kbin.social 7 points 11 months ago

I migrated away from Evernote a few years ago, where I kept my "paperless life" (PDFs of receipts, bills, etc) and general notes (work, study, etc). Opting to self-host most of the things I can, I moved the notes to Dokuwiki and the rest to what is now Paperless-ngx.

This year I realised that Obsidian suits my needs better than a wiki, so migrated the notes to that. If it's just for your stuff, I'd recommend the same. (Though if you collaborate with anyone, I've heard Notion is a better option specifically for that.) Obsidian has a lot of extensibility, which will steepen the learning curve, but it's worth it.

I sync Obsidian's Vault using my Synology NAS's "Drive" client, and Obsidian works perfectly with Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. The only shortcoming is iOS (because iOS), though I believe you can work around it using Obsidian Sync or at least one other tool I've seen mentioned. It might also be possible via the Obsidian Git extension, but I've not tried it with iOS and requires (from a self-hosting perspective) that you have a local Git server (for example).

[-] placq@lemmy.world 7 points 11 months ago

Use Joplin and you can stop searching. FOSS and multiplatform with selfhosted options, great sync and a lot of plugins to adjust it to your taste.

[-] thirdBreakfast@lemmy.world 6 points 11 months ago

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.

[-] ruud@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago

Ooh... Silverbullet looks really useful!! Just installed, need to figure out what I can do, looks like a lot of functionality!

[-] IlIllIIIllIlIlIIlI@lemmy.world 5 points 11 months ago

zettlr: free, open source (GPL3), no database.

[-] Tabodo@lemmynsfw.com 5 points 11 months ago

Joplin for notes, Floccus for Bookmarks.

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[-] giddy@aussie.zone 5 points 11 months ago

If you already have Nextcloud their Notes app is easy to use and has a mobile app

[-] Willem@kutsuya.dev 5 points 11 months ago

I use Trilium, it just scratched the need I had which obsidian and logseq couldn't somehow.

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[-] elyth@lemmy.world 4 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

I've used Outline for 2 years. It's honestly really nice. Pretty simple to selfhost and you can set-up internal auth with something like Authelia.

However I recently moved to Obsidian.md because of the large community and add-ons available. I love it. For device synchronisation I use Syncthing and I can't complain. It has no WebApp but it's available on every platform

[-] ZenArtist@kbin.social 3 points 11 months ago

I love outline as much as the next guy, but calling it simple to selfhost is a bit of a stretch. It has lots of moving parts and not having an auth solution built-in makes it not suitable for the average user.

That said, it does beat other wiki solutions by a wide margin!

[-] infamousbelgian@waste-of.space 4 points 11 months ago

Wow. A lot of comments! Thanks all. I will check them and see if there is something that matches my use cases!

[-] SJ0@lemmy.fbxl.net 4 points 11 months ago

Nextcloud Notes has become my go-to (Oh look, SJ is advocating for Nextcloud again! How original!)

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[-] Boolean@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago

I ditched Evernote and moved to Standard Notes. It’s everywhere for me, iOS, windows, Linux and MacOS and it has a web client which is consistent with all versions of the app. My only gripe is easy image embedding. But I’m living without it.

[-] TheBrainGuy@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago

I really like Obsidian

[-] stephenc@waveform.social 3 points 11 months ago

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.

[-] nephs@lemmygrad.ml 3 points 11 months ago

I'm finding logseq very interesting.

FOSS and filesystem based. But you have to figure out sync yourself. I'm setting it up with syncthing, but I'll have to replace it with git because I need it to work across ios and android systems.

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[-] conrad82@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago

I haven't found a good replacement. I use a combination of syncthing (files), paperless-ngx (pdf), markdown notes (text, lists), memos (todos), radicale (caldav todos), wallabag (web note/archive), images folders and my mobile phone apps (photos/gallery, zettel notes, paperless-ngx app, syncthing).

I enjoyed Evernote back in the day, but yeah..

[-] somebodyknows@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago

Trilium user here. Only thing is some issue with the keyboard when used from android.

[-] krcr@sh.itjust.works 2 points 11 months ago

I use markdown files + Nextcloud for synchronization. What I like about it is that I can use any markdown editor. Currently I use Nextcloup app on mobile and Pulsar or Nextcloud Web UI on desktop.

[-] mypasswordis1234@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago

I use selfhosted nextcloud instance with notes app installed. On Android I use native Nextcloud Notes.

[-] bill@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago

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.

[-] wrath-sedan@kbin.social 2 points 11 months ago

I currently use primarily Logseq with a little Obsidian because it’s just a really pleasant text editor and Zettlr for long form writing and research. The nice think about keeping it all Makrdown is that I can use any of them depending on what features/UI I need.

Logseq does have the web editor but it’s more of a demo (it’s literally called demo.logseq.com) but it gives you the full vanilla feature set as long as you connect a local directory. I use Logseq Sync just because I was paying to support the team anyway, and it’s worked very well so far. Just ran into an issue where my laptop with most of my notes broke and so I made a portable version of the app to put on a USB and work on a library computer and it ran and connected to my Logseq Sync remote graph surprisingly seamlessly.

[-] Xanthrax@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago
[-] Xanthrax@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago

Oh, didn't catch that part.

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this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2023
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