It's official: note taking app with 0 advantages over just plain ass notes synced via cloud signs death warrant.
For real, FOSS software that saves to a file folder and does all of this exists. They are just chasing us into their arms.
If you're looking for a name drop, Joplin does nicely for my uses.
I also use Joplin!
I've heard Joplin is good. Also Obsidian is apparently amazing with plug-ins. I'm leaning towards Obsidian myself. But between Google and MS, I figured Keep and Evernote would've been impossible to challenge.
+1 for Obsidian, I wrangled long with the fact it is not open source, but since it handles file with markdown formatting and saves them openly accessible, I gave it a try anyway. Really like it but will definitely never be open to pay a subscription for it. One time payment, absolutely!
Another +1 for Obsidian. Will never go back. For anyone running into Notion, it doesn’t work offline (that I last checked.) bit me in the ass one time. Obsidian is all markdown locally available.
I self host a lot of shit, but after almost a year of using Obsidian I finally paid for their sync feature for one reason: iCloud sync to iOS is painfully slow.
I was sometimes waiting 30-45 seconds to jot down a note just waiting on the app to open with iCloud sync as my backend. Now, with Obsidian sync, the app is ready-to-go in seconds.
Now if you're only going to be using on desktop, I would definitely consider a git-repository based sync, but if you're gonna use mobile I'd recommend you at least consider Obsidian Sync
And Logseq, too!
I haven't used Evernote in at least a decade, I didn't even think they were still around.
Evernote still exists?
I can strongly reccommend logseq its a foss alrernative to obsidian. Its getting betger eveey day and i can definatly say the new database version is going to be awsome.
Does it have a spell-checker?
Yes but my keyboard doeant
It does not work exactly like obsidian as it is an outliner. I use both on the same vault and logseq is slower on larger vault.
Lol, tried them about 10 years ago, wasn't impressed.
They're still around, and think this is a good move? So many other, WAY better notebook apps.
MS OneNote works well on all platforms (except Linux!) for several years now, and blows Evernote away (it's my Achilles heel).
And now apps like Joplin, Obsidian, etc, are closing fast on OneNote (and even better in some ways), and can sync with tools like Syncthing.
Obsidian + ExcaliDraw is mind-blowing. The integration is absurdly good! It can even render entire PDFs for highlighting (a bit slow but usable).
Only thing I don’t like about Obsidian is the UI. It’s just kinda clunky and obtuse. I find navigating around consistently confusing. Which sounds like a small gripe but if I can’t just open up a note taking app and get rolling I’m just less likely to take them in the first place.
Having used both OneNote & Obsidian extensively, OneNote is like a children's colouring book in comparison IMO.
Not that it's bad, it serves plenty well for most people.
Joplin is a solid alternative. It even supports latex through a plugin. You can edit your notes in an external editor which is awesome for an Emacs fanatic like me. Combine that with a great Android app + syncthing, I don't know what more one can need.
I have been using Joplin with Dropbox sync. Syncs between my Desktop, Android, and iOS devices. Switched from Google Keep a few months back. Great app.
I’ve never understood why anyone uses Evernote. Just use a folder with Markdown files. Or Obsidian. Or VS Code with plugins. Or EMacs org mode. So many good FOSS options out there (yes, I know VS Code isn’t FOSS but VSCodium is) that don’t lock you in. Hypocritical of me to say as an Apple user, but I hate when companies’ business models are to lock in consumers. Just make a better product that’s worth paying for.
It's simple. The people using Evernote didn't care about being locked in.
Obsidian is awesome. It won't meet everyone's needs, but I love the lightweight simplicity of it. But it's also extremely extensible with add-ons if you want to go down that rabbit hole.
I hit the 50 cap, then deleted about 30 unnecessary notes, and STILL couldn't create more notes.
I replaced it with Draft Notes.
I mean, it doesn't 50 active notes so I guess they decided that creation of 50 notes is what's allowed regardless of how many active you have left.
...or it's a bug, but generally I tend not to give businesses the benefit of the doubt.
I haven’t used Evernote since I discovered Obsidian. Combine it with the Git plugin, and my notes are backed up to a private repository and synced to all my devices. There isn’t a lot that Obsidian can’t do, with one plugin or another.
You can take it a step further with the live sync plugin.
You can sync documents and edits, live, to all your devices. Conceivably you can have multiple people working on the same documents if you so desire.
I store everything in a git repo but it's rather awkward when I'm making different edits and different documents or sometimes in the same documents on multiple devices and don't always commit my changes in good time.
Using the live sync plugin with a CouchDB on my local network (plus openvpn when not at home) means all my devices are automatically synced.
Evernote used “Subscription model”. It hurt itself in its confusion.
I was a paying customer and would not have been affected by this. But it seemed like a crappy move and I didn’t support it, so I ended my subscription. I’ve switched to Obsidian, which is significantly better.
adding Quillpad, as another alternative
Best thing about Evernote was its web clipping extensions... anyone use one that's as good or better..?
joplin
+1 for Joplin (https://joplinapp.org/) with Nextcloud / WebDAV for sync. I use the web clipper all the time.
The only advantage of Evernote over everything else is it's scanning of the contents of PDFs. I scan all my paper documents and stored them in Evernote for easy searching. Since I moved away from Evernote (to Joplin) that's the only thing I missed. If anyone has a suggestion for replacing this I'd be very happy.
PaperlessNgx makes scanned documents searchable. Its great!
Now this looks promising. Thanks very much. I'll give it a go.
And here I was a sucker for using Simplemote this whole time. I missed out on my opportunity to get charged
Old news, they already have implemented it around 2 weeks ago. I moved to LogSeq, it's a bit more complicated than Evernote but it's a really good alternative. Open source too.
Don't forget to delete your account on your way out.
Standard Notes for secure note taking.
Standard Notes is a encrypted service alternative to Evernote. It's a mature product with more than six year in the market.
Notesnook.
Since no one has recommended, I would recommend Notesnook. Open Source app with Encryption. They are also planning to open source the Sync (afaik) part too.
Another option is AnyType.
Another option is Notion (not open Source/encrypted).
The article is from November 29 and the change is to take effect on December 4, which is a bit late for this post.
Dumb question, evernote has a feature to embed audio recordings within the notes, and, synced across devices
How could this be replicated with something like obsidian/rome/typora/notepad++/notion/something/joplin? any suggestions?
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The notetaking app said that this change will be applicable for all new and existing free users starting December 4.
Going forward, new and existing Free users will have a maximum of fifty notes and one notebook per account.
These limits refer to the number of notes and notebooks a user can have in their account at one time: you can always delete unwanted content to remain below the threshold,” the company, owned by Milan-based Bending Spoons, said.
At that time, a spokesperson told TechCrunch that the notetaking app has “been unprofitable for years and the situation was unsustainable in the long term.”
While Ian Smalls, who was appointed Evernote CEO in 2018, managed to get the company to $100 million in recurring revenue, the app has fallen behind newer competitors like Notion.
For users who might want to look for alternatives, Notion, Microsoft OneNote and Zoho Notebook offer generous free tiers.
The original article contains 361 words, the summary contains 152 words. Saved 58%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Hey everyone. I own a Synology and run evernote on it. Can someone recommend a good note app that isn't Synology Note station that I can run on my Synology? I don't really want my notes on the internet so OneDrive is not an option. Thank you for your recommendations.
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
