Preferably an application that you can sync and save. Not sure what alternatives are safe in terms of privacy and security.
I’m a huge fan of Joplin. It runs on everything and syncs to either your or their cloud. Been using it for a few years now.
2nd for Joplin. Love it to bits. It has its quirks, but they’re ones I can live with. The sync support is pretty awesome.
Been playing with Logseq recently as well. Logseq is more for knowledge management/brain dump kind of notetaking, but it’s really cool that it’s so flexible. It helps that I really like using lists in the first place
Does Joplin have a search function within notes? And it is fully FOSS, yes?
Joplin itself is AGPL. Unfortunately, Joplin Server is under “JOPLIN SERVER PERSONAL USE LICENSE”.
While I really like Joplin, I’m thinking of making the switch to something fully open source.
I’m not sure what EXACTLY you’d be looking for from a search feature as I’m mostly a light user myself, but there’s a search option which will search the contents of all your notes. I can’t tell you how robust it is, but it does have exclusion (desiredTerm -excludeTerm) search at least, and there’s standard Find/Replace functionality once you’re in the specific note.
Cherrytree, no question. You can make hierarchical lists/notes, hyperlink to files, folders, websites and other nodes (lists). You can also insert tables and images in your entries and format text. The whole thing is saved as a single file and you can choose for it to be encrypted if you want. I sync it between devices using Syncthing. Both are FOSS, private and secure. Cherrytree’s UI doesn’t look especially modern but is very effective and you can make your own themes for it in the preferences if you want to glam it up a bit. You can pretty much use it as a wiki for your entire life. In fact, if I could only have one application on my computer it would be this!
I like Notesnook and Standard Notes. Joplin is another pretty good option, but you have to manually enable E2EE in the settings.
org-roam
QOwnNotes for me. Also such a catchy name. Seriously though, ignore the stupid name, just give it a try.
I like Org Mode, but that’s sort of… Begrudgingly. I like any FOSS notes app better than any closed source notes app. That’s not even me having strong feeling about FOSS (which I do), it’s more about… I am very picky about note apps. Org Mode (with org-roam) does the best job of getting out of my way and letting me write and resurface notes.
Believe it or not… Vimwiki (&& syncthing for synchronisation across my machines)
it’s rather no nonsense idk. I’m not even a vim wizard, I just know the bare basics
I migrated from Logseq to Trilium (on maintainance mode) because of the sync feature on server, so I access locally to notes on all my devices. The new project Trilium Next just released a beta version for testing, same UI but lot of changes on backend. It does not have a big plugin ecosystem but it’s powerful on itself.
Notepad++, local files
QuillPad on Android and I don’t have a favorite on desktop yet
ed
yes, I am completely serious (much faster to use on mobile too compared to a visual editor)
On a desktop/laptop (or really anywhere I can run CLI apps and use a proper keyboard) it’s mostly plain text files in Vim or Emacs. On my phone I recently switched from Standard Notes to Notesnook. Standard Notes is pretty powerful, uses end-to-end encryption by default, and can be self-hosted. The premium subscription is pretty expensive though. (Yes, it also requires a license when self-hosting. It’s cheaper, but still kinda expensive). Last year, there was also some controversy about the licensing. They recently got acquired by Proton.
Notesnook is fully FOSS, but they still haven’t released a self-hostable sync server. They are working on it though. It’s currently my go-to option.
- Mastodon: @notesnook@fosstodon.org
I just discovered a new app called Beaver Notes that I’m very excited to try out.
- Mastodon: @Beavernotes@mastodon.social
- GitHub: https://github.com/Beaver-Notes/
Joplin is another great option, it’s available on all platforms and even has a CLI, it also supports E2EE, but it has to be enabled manually. Can be self-hosted: https://github.com/etechonomy/joplin-server. I think I will switch to self-hosted, end-to-end encrypted Joplin in the long term, so I can have all my notes unified in one app. The CLI app is really useful for me, as I already use the Terminal to take notes when using a desktop/laptop.
I’ve tried them all. I use Quillpad for Google Keep replacement (shopping/packing lists, etc) but have been using and loving Obsidian. I know it’s closed source, but the hierarchy of simple text files is fantastic and I haven’t found a FOSS alternative I like as much.
Just to add to the noise… I’m shocked that Obsidian is not the number one app that people are talking about. Didn’t even know there were so many other great options, to be honest.
Edit: it’s because it’s not open source. The plugins all have to be open source, and it is free as in beer. I’m keeping this comment up.
It is closed source, after all.
Respect for keeping the comment online so others learn from your mistake.