8 ms·

Joplin is an open source note-taking app

195 points by cimnine 3y ago

eclectic29 3y ago
I migrated to Joplin from Evernote. I can live with a slightly less polished UI. However the main issue is the time it takes to come up (launch) on my Windows 32GB RAM, Intel i7 laptop. It’s terribly slow to come up.
wdb 3y ago
I have worked on note-taking app but sadly I am not smart enough to get table editing support under iOS/macOS with NSText
ck45 3y ago
Past thread (2021): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27520906 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27520906
delichon 3y ago
I'm an Evernote refugee struggling with Joplin and Obsidian this morning. I've got thousands of PDF notes going back decades, and the ability to search on their OCR has kept me on Evernote for years. But the latest Joplin includes OCR out of the box, and Obsidian has the Omnisearch/Text Extractor plugins to add it. Both of those use Tesseract to do OCR locally. I've got it working on Joplin fairly well. But it hardly works at all on Obsidian. That's unfortunate because Obsidian seems to be a much more user friendly and responsive app over all. Since I need the OCR search capability so badly though, I'm about to settle for Joplin. That's not a terrible fate, but the grass seems greener on the Obsidian side. I wish I could replace Tesseract with some industrial strength OCR though.
- pqs 3y ago
  Evernote works well now. It has improved.
- Zetobal 3y ago
  That's not really what these tools are made for. Look into zotero or devontjink and use the note taking app for notes.
  - delichon 3y ago
    Thanks for the leads, but I need it on Linux and Android. You appear to be right about this use case being a stretch for Joplin/Obsidian.
    - tomrod 3y ago
      Zotero for the win then.
      - sundarurfriend 3y ago
        How do you work with a Zotero collection on Android?
        s1291 3y ago
        https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/110371/available-for-beta-testing-zotero-for-android/p1 https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/110371/available-for-be...
- alchemist1e9 3y ago
  Could recoll help? https://www.lesbonscomptes.com/recoll/pages/index-recoll.html https://www.lesbonscomptes.com/recoll/pages/index-recoll.htm...
hu3 3y ago
I use Microsoft's OneDrive free account to keep Joplin synced between devices. Works like a charm. Currently using 0.7GB out of 5GB.
- funOtter 3y ago
  Same here! And you can encrypt the sync so you know Microsoft cannot get access to your personal information.
  - rrgok 3y ago
    And how would you decrypt on mobile while allowing to edit the files? Cryptomator works well as long as your on a desktop platform, but when you move to a smartphone they provide only their crippled file-manager which is not accessible form third party apps.
    - precommunicator 3y ago
      Joplin has built-in encryption, which works just fine on desktop and mobile, with shared passphrase between them
- t0bia_s 3y ago
  OneDrive sometimes mark encrypted files as suspicious and makes sync problematic.
nyreed 3y ago
My problem with Joplin is that on my M1 Macbook pro it really shows how much of an Electron app it really is, in the worst ways. Extreme memory use and UI lag for an application which displays text. That said, aside from performance it's quite satisfying to use. It's very simple and does its job well. I recently migrated to Obsidian and although the learning curve is steeper, I'm quite happy with the results.
- anonzzzies 3y ago
  I went from Notion to Joplin for note taking: I drop 1000s of images in a note and annotate them and publish them. Notion crashed all the time; so badly that support apologised and had to delete things for me. Joplin has 0 issues with it; it scrolls super fast, is a pleasure to work with. Also on a m1. I cannot say I noticed any bad behaviour compared to others, included Obsidian.
  - theshrike79 3y ago
    I went from Notion and Joplin to Obsidian mostly because Obsidian stores stuff as regular files on my filesystem and I can easily interact with them with external programs and scripts. Joplin, while being open source itself, has a "proprietary"[1] storage format I can't be arsed to figure out how to interact with. [1] Meaning non-standard in this case, Joplin is the only software using Joplin's storage method
    - moneywoes 3y ago
      is there anything with a lightweight learning curve akin to Obsidian that uses a accessible format?
      - theshrike79 3y ago
        Any text editor with markdown support should work. Just VS Code with a Markdown viewer is a decent replacement. You don't _need_ all of the fancy plugins that Obsidian has, but some of them are genuinely useful.
shortformblog 3y ago
I like Joplin’s sync server, which can be self hosted. I just wish it didn't require having the app loaded to use. I actually use it with another editor on Linux. (It works surprisingly well with VS Code for example.) But it's the best we have for Android, sadly.
- drexlspivey 3y ago
  I chose Joplin over Obsidian because they offer webdav sync and it’s trivial to set up sync with a synology NAS. Obsidian doesn’t offer it as it competes with their sync commercial offering.
- NelsonMinar 3y ago
  For a long time Joplin's support on Android was buggy and late on releases, it's why I switched away. Is it better now?
  - funOtter 3y ago
    It works fine for me. I've used it moderately and never had issues.
  - shortformblog 3y ago
    I am of the opinion that there isn’t really a good editor for Android, but Joplin is probably as good as we’re getting. (I love iA Writer, but it’s not as good as it could be on Android.) I think the sync server is Joplin’s secret weapon on this front. I tried using Syncthing for managing my docs for a while, but I think having a dedicated sync server helps on mobile. I found using alternative sync methods was too wonky on a mobile device.
    - t0bia_s 3y ago
      Syncthing on android works for Joplin only to version 2.5.
      - shortformblog 3y ago
devsda 3y ago
Joplin works well for what it does and is good enough for regular note-taking. Has most features like live view, webclipper, sync & plugins for that extra missing functionality. What you don't get is a "polished" UI with a WYSIWYG editor. The storage format is markdown, but it has its own way of organizing files[1]. If your notetaking process includes multiple editors(other than joplin apps) then joplin may not be the best choice. [1]. https://joplinapp.org/help/faq/#is-it-possible-to-use-real-file-and-folder-names-in-the-sync-target https://joplinapp.org/help/faq/#is-it-possible-to-use-real-f...
- moralestapia 3y ago
  I came to the comments to find some insight about the format it stores notes on, so thanks. That's a big advantage for me as usually the issue I had with other note taking apps in the past is how hard they lock you in, particularly after years of using them.
- yborg 3y ago
  Joplin has a WYSIWYG editor mode. https://joplinapp.org/help/apps/rich_text_editor https://joplinapp.org/help/apps/rich_text_editor Joplin also can use external editors. https://joplinapp.org/help/apps/external_text_editor https://joplinapp.org/help/apps/external_text_editor
  - devsda 3y ago
    Sure there's the rich text editor but it has limitations and you lose the functionality of some plugins. The rich text editor mode had bugs the last time I tried it. By external editor I mean editing the markdown files directly without opening joplin app first. There can be many reasons to do that like editing in a terminal or auto generate/manipulate notes using a tool. We can still do it of required but we need to be careful not to touch the Joplin metadata. PS: I use Joplin regularly. These are not complaints about Joplin, but just an fyi to help someone make an informed decision before they switch.
cypherpunks01 3y ago
My only concerns about using Joplin were security-related, when handling sensitive notes (financial data, logins, etc). The interface looked awesome. Have Joplin plugins been secured/sandboxed yet, or are they still able to exfiltrate data? That's one reason I never used it for very secure notes, same with Obsidian. Joplin also used to store notes unencrypted locally, not sure if that's still the case. Of course most people don't mind, but I was investigating the highest-security note tool I could find at the time.
- Groxx 3y ago
  It absolutely boggles my mind that anyone releases a plug-in system without sandboxing nowadays.
  - lillecarl 3y ago
    Engineering effort
    - Groxx 3y ago
      Which should be left at zero unless you can get over the "you actually do have a responsibility to take basic safety measures for your users" hurdle. Instead we routinely get zero security at all and also heavily encouraging people to install entirely unchecked stuff in a built-in and implicitly-trusted first party UI.
chaseha 3y ago
Would appreciate any folks here who have tried both Obsidian and Joplin to summarize the key differentiators for them and which one they ended up on. (on x platform, Windows/iOS use case here, but just post your needs) I tried to move to Obsidian from Evernote after they raised the subscription price but wasn't able to onboard successfully - Obsidian seemed powerful but was too customizable for me, had to get back to more pressing day job needs before I could figure out a setup that would work for me, ended up just paying the Evernote fee another year.
- tmoravec 3y ago
  I was suffering with Joplin for years and finally found the time to migrate to Obsidian a few months back. So far I'm much happier and more importantly, more productive. The biggest points are about the UX. My workflow requires switching between multiple notes rapidly (e.g., TODO list, Project 1, Project 2, Employee 1, Employee 2, Meeting Notes 1, and so on) and Joplin doesn't have native tabs. The plugin is only so so but it works only on desktop (I'm on Mac). On mobile it's a disaster. Doubly so on iPad which is just stretched phone version - working productively on iPad (which is otherwise just fine for my job) is impossible with Joplin. Plus the mobile app has awful design and awful navigation. Who on Earth would put the most used button to the top left corner? Swipe from the left doesn't work of course because the following: Neither desktop of mobile app follow the system patterns. Keyboard shortucts, if they exist, are different. Navigation is different. Everything is sort of clunky. I used Dropbox for sync and while it does work, it's very slow and there's no background sync. On a regular day I have to sync about 50 items (some of them are history I guess) which can take a minute or two, which is the time I don't have when I open my phone and want to quickly add an item to the TODO list. Couple that with no conflict resolution and a recipe for data loss is born :-) . Initial sync on a new phone took me eight fucking hours when I had to keep the phone open and the app in the foreground. What I do appreciate is the native encryption. Now I do all my work in Obsidian but keep Joplin for the secrets. So this is the main problems I had with Joplin. Rant over (but you asked) :-)
  - dstorm1 3y ago
    The mobile design does leave a lot to be desired. It does fit my needs however because usually I am just jotting down a quick idea or reference for later. I can see how switching between multiple notes quickly can be difficult. Not related to the parent comment but I have been using the math plugin and I love it. It does unit conversion and lots of other things!
dang 3y ago
Related: Joplin – an open source note taking and to-do application with synchronization - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27520906 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27520906 - June 2021 (74 comments) Joplin – an open source note taking and to-do application with sync - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22439485 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22439485 - Feb 2020 (36 comments) Joplin – a note taking and to-do application with synchronization capabilities - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21555238 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21555238 - Nov 2019 (150 comments) Joplin – A note-taking and to-do app with builds for desktop, mobile, terminal - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15815040 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15815040 - Nov 2017 (204 comments)
cupantae 3y ago
I have been using Joplin for a couple of years, first for work and then for everything else. I love that it’s formatted, but it’s also just text. I normally leave it in markdown mode and edit that directly (learn the syntax, it’s easy). To paste into email, documents etc, put it to display mode and it’ll paste html. Good. @cimnine The key feature for me is global search (ctrl/cmd+p) but it doesn’t work well enough!! 1. it doesn’t favour exact matches and 2. it doesn’t jump to the match. I use vi-mode if that’s important. Overall it’s excellent IMO. There are clients for all major platforms.
luspectra 3y ago
Joplin is great for what it is, but it does not exactly fit my need. I have two things I want in my editor, but no two editors seem to have both: - WYSIWYG editor: rendered text and editor are in same window - Vim Bindings - Bonus: Terminal integration (TUI) The second has come to be even more important than the first, so I now take my notes in (neo)vim. I wish it was possible to have WYSIWYG in the terminal, but that seems to be an impossible task (rows of text all being the same size is baked into the terminal ecosystem). Having a GUI WYSIWYG with vim bindings is probably pretty doable, but the lack of terminal ecosystem has discouraged me from looking into this (even though it is not that important, but I am a perfectionist).
vunderba 3y ago
Joplin is a decent open-source note app but I absolutely hate the way that they structure your notes. If you have thousands of notes in a folder ~/my_notes ~/my_notes/work ~/my_notes/music etc. Joplin takes them and stores the notes internally as a SQLite table with UUID named markdown files. It makes it very difficult to use bash tools, finding them, other IDEs, etc to work with your files after Joplin has ingested them. Compare this to apps like VS Code / Obsidian / Logseq (also open source) which don't mess with your markdown file organization. You can just point them to a root folder and they'll work natively with your markdown files. Furthermore, embedded media are also renamed to GUID.ext files and then are stored in ~/.config/joplin-desktop/resources which is terrible since now are notes are split from their related media.
- suprjami 3y ago
  This is the reason I don't use Joplin either. Obsidian can handle an existing file structure. I use Vim and folder sync to Nextcloud.
- rubymamis 3y ago
  Where do you expect embedded media to be stored? For example, if I have the following note: ~/my_notes/art/renaissance.txt do you expect images in that note to be stored in ~/my_notes/art or in ~/my_notes/media, or something else?
  - herrherrmann 3y ago
    In Obsidian, for example, you can choose where your media data is stored (and there are options to store them alongside the Markdown files, e.g. in a hidden folder). I guess OP’s point is that this would be a better way, or at least to store media in the same root folder as notes and not some arbitrary folder far away from the notes.
  - vunderba 3y ago
    I don't use Joplin for the aforementioned reasons earlier, but they should at least let you customize the "media folder". The embedded media is already referenced using relatively standard markdown syntax in a respective MD note, e.g.: ![image info](./pictures/image.png) Since apps such as Logseq and Obsidian work with your existing notes, they avoid this issue of massive file duplication and don't need to move the files at all. EDIT: I just realized if you're talking about adding media onto a note through the notetaking application itself, take a look at what Typora does as a good example of how to handle it. It auto-creates a relative folder called "note_name.assets" and moves them to it. Obsidian OTOH lets you specify a "media" folder that exists for each subdirectory of your existing note structure.
BooneJS 3y ago
https://www.craft.do https://www.craft.do on macOS is a great text+media notes app, but I still use Obsidian for pure-test use cases for some reason.
mp05 3y ago
I installed Joplin once but the icon in my dock was so garish that I immediately uninstalled it.
cba85 3y ago
I currently use The Archive app (Zettelkasten style) : https://zettelkasten.de/the-archive/ https://zettelkasten.de/the-archive/
account-5 3y ago
I've found nothing better than zim-wiki. The only issue is no mobile client. For brainstorming I like treesheets though.
- Self-Perfection 3y ago
  Markor supports zim-wiki format. https://f-droid.org/packages/net.gsantner.markor/ https://f-droid.org/packages/net.gsantner.markor/ Basically my setup is: Zim + Syncthing for synchronization + Markor on android
SergeAx 3y ago
I migrated from Evernote to Joplin and didn't lost most of the features. Currently Joplin syncs via free tier Dropbox, but it has 3 device limit, so I think I will migrate to Google drive when I need fourth device to sync.
poulpy123 3y ago
I'm using it for work, and it's very nice. It's reactive (I have < 150 notes) and simple. Synchronizing works very well too
t0bia_s 3y ago
Android app over 2.5 version wont sync database with Syncthing. So you need to keep ver 2.5.

195 points by cimnine 3y ago

I migrated to Joplin from Evernote. I can live with a slightly less polished UI. However the main issue is the time it takes to come up (launch) on my Windows 32GB RAM, Intel i7 laptop. It’s terribly slow to come up.

wdb 3y ago

I have worked on note-taking app but sadly I am not smart enough to get table editing support under iOS/macOS with NSText

ck45 3y ago

Past thread (2021): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27520906 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27520906

delichon 3y ago

I'm an Evernote refugee struggling with Joplin and Obsidian this morning. I've got thousands of PDF notes going back decades, and the ability to search on their OCR has kept me on Evernote for years. But the latest Joplin includes OCR out of the box, and Obsidian has the Omnisearch/Text Extractor plugins to add it. Both of those use Tesseract to do OCR locally. I've got it working on Joplin fairly well. But it hardly works at all on Obsidian. That's unfortunate because Obsidian seems to be a much more user friendly and responsive app over all. Since I need the OCR search capability so badly though, I'm about to settle for Joplin. That's not a terrible fate, but the grass seems greener on the Obsidian side. I wish I could replace Tesseract with some industrial strength OCR though.

pqs 3y ago
Evernote works well now. It has improved.
Zetobal 3y ago
That's not really what these tools are made for. Look into zotero or devontjink and use the note taking app for notes.
- delichon 3y ago
  Thanks for the leads, but I need it on Linux and Android. You appear to be right about this use case being a stretch for Joplin/Obsidian.
  - tomrod 3y ago
    Zotero for the win then.
    - sundarurfriend 3y ago
      How do you work with a Zotero collection on Android?
      - s1291 3y ago
        https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/110371/available-for-beta-testing-zotero-for-android/p1 https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/110371/available-for-be...
alchemist1e9 3y ago
Could recoll help? https://www.lesbonscomptes.com/recoll/pages/index-recoll.html https://www.lesbonscomptes.com/recoll/pages/index-recoll.htm...

hu3 3y ago

I use Microsoft's OneDrive free account to keep Joplin synced between devices. Works like a charm. Currently using 0.7GB out of 5GB.

funOtter 3y ago
Same here! And you can encrypt the sync so you know Microsoft cannot get access to your personal information.
- rrgok 3y ago
  And how would you decrypt on mobile while allowing to edit the files? Cryptomator works well as long as your on a desktop platform, but when you move to a smartphone they provide only their crippled file-manager which is not accessible form third party apps.
  - precommunicator 3y ago
    Joplin has built-in encryption, which works just fine on desktop and mobile, with shared passphrase between them
t0bia_s 3y ago
OneDrive sometimes mark encrypted files as suspicious and makes sync problematic.

nyreed 3y ago

My problem with Joplin is that on my M1 Macbook pro it really shows how much of an Electron app it really is, in the worst ways. Extreme memory use and UI lag for an application which displays text. That said, aside from performance it's quite satisfying to use. It's very simple and does its job well. I recently migrated to Obsidian and although the learning curve is steeper, I'm quite happy with the results.

anonzzzies 3y ago
I went from Notion to Joplin for note taking: I drop 1000s of images in a note and annotate them and publish them. Notion crashed all the time; so badly that support apologised and had to delete things for me. Joplin has 0 issues with it; it scrolls super fast, is a pleasure to work with. Also on a m1. I cannot say I noticed any bad behaviour compared to others, included Obsidian.
- theshrike79 3y ago
  I went from Notion and Joplin to Obsidian mostly because Obsidian stores stuff as regular files on my filesystem and I can easily interact with them with external programs and scripts. Joplin, while being open source itself, has a "proprietary"[1] storage format I can't be arsed to figure out how to interact with. [1] Meaning non-standard in this case, Joplin is the only software using Joplin's storage method
  - moneywoes 3y ago
    is there anything with a lightweight learning curve akin to Obsidian that uses a accessible format?
    - theshrike79 3y ago
      Any text editor with markdown support should work. Just VS Code with a Markdown viewer is a decent replacement. You don't _need_ all of the fancy plugins that Obsidian has, but some of them are genuinely useful.

shortformblog 3y ago

I like Joplin’s sync server, which can be self hosted. I just wish it didn't require having the app loaded to use. I actually use it with another editor on Linux. (It works surprisingly well with VS Code for example.) But it's the best we have for Android, sadly.

drexlspivey 3y ago
I chose Joplin over Obsidian because they offer webdav sync and it’s trivial to set up sync with a synology NAS. Obsidian doesn’t offer it as it competes with their sync commercial offering.
NelsonMinar 3y ago
For a long time Joplin's support on Android was buggy and late on releases, it's why I switched away. Is it better now?
- funOtter 3y ago
  It works fine for me. I've used it moderately and never had issues.
- shortformblog 3y ago
  I am of the opinion that there isn’t really a good editor for Android, but Joplin is probably as good as we’re getting. (I love iA Writer, but it’s not as good as it could be on Android.) I think the sync server is Joplin’s secret weapon on this front. I tried using Syncthing for managing my docs for a while, but I think having a dedicated sync server helps on mobile. I found using alternative sync methods was too wonky on a mobile device.
  - t0bia_s 3y ago
    Syncthing on android works for Joplin only to version 2.5.
    - shortformblog 3y ago

devsda 3y ago

Joplin works well for what it does and is good enough for regular note-taking. Has most features like live view, webclipper, sync & plugins for that extra missing functionality. What you don't get is a "polished" UI with a WYSIWYG editor. The storage format is markdown, but it has its own way of organizing files[1]. If your notetaking process includes multiple editors(other than joplin apps) then joplin may not be the best choice. [1]. https://joplinapp.org/help/faq/#is-it-possible-to-use-real-file-and-folder-names-in-the-sync-target https://joplinapp.org/help/faq/#is-it-possible-to-use-real-f...

moralestapia 3y ago
I came to the comments to find some insight about the format it stores notes on, so thanks. That's a big advantage for me as usually the issue I had with other note taking apps in the past is how hard they lock you in, particularly after years of using them.
yborg 3y ago
Joplin has a WYSIWYG editor mode. https://joplinapp.org/help/apps/rich_text_editor https://joplinapp.org/help/apps/rich_text_editor Joplin also can use external editors. https://joplinapp.org/help/apps/external_text_editor https://joplinapp.org/help/apps/external_text_editor
- devsda 3y ago
  Sure there's the rich text editor but it has limitations and you lose the functionality of some plugins. The rich text editor mode had bugs the last time I tried it. By external editor I mean editing the markdown files directly without opening joplin app first. There can be many reasons to do that like editing in a terminal or auto generate/manipulate notes using a tool. We can still do it of required but we need to be careful not to touch the Joplin metadata. PS: I use Joplin regularly. These are not complaints about Joplin, but just an fyi to help someone make an informed decision before they switch.

cypherpunks01 3y ago

My only concerns about using Joplin were security-related, when handling sensitive notes (financial data, logins, etc). The interface looked awesome. Have Joplin plugins been secured/sandboxed yet, or are they still able to exfiltrate data? That's one reason I never used it for very secure notes, same with Obsidian. Joplin also used to store notes unencrypted locally, not sure if that's still the case. Of course most people don't mind, but I was investigating the highest-security note tool I could find at the time.

Groxx 3y ago
It absolutely boggles my mind that anyone releases a plug-in system without sandboxing nowadays.
- lillecarl 3y ago
  Engineering effort
  - Groxx 3y ago
    Which should be left at zero unless you can get over the "you actually do have a responsibility to take basic safety measures for your users" hurdle. Instead we routinely get zero security at all and also heavily encouraging people to install entirely unchecked stuff in a built-in and implicitly-trusted first party UI.

chaseha 3y ago

Would appreciate any folks here who have tried both Obsidian and Joplin to summarize the key differentiators for them and which one they ended up on. (on x platform, Windows/iOS use case here, but just post your needs) I tried to move to Obsidian from Evernote after they raised the subscription price but wasn't able to onboard successfully - Obsidian seemed powerful but was too customizable for me, had to get back to more pressing day job needs before I could figure out a setup that would work for me, ended up just paying the Evernote fee another year.

tmoravec 3y ago
I was suffering with Joplin for years and finally found the time to migrate to Obsidian a few months back. So far I'm much happier and more importantly, more productive. The biggest points are about the UX. My workflow requires switching between multiple notes rapidly (e.g., TODO list, Project 1, Project 2, Employee 1, Employee 2, Meeting Notes 1, and so on) and Joplin doesn't have native tabs. The plugin is only so so but it works only on desktop (I'm on Mac). On mobile it's a disaster. Doubly so on iPad which is just stretched phone version - working productively on iPad (which is otherwise just fine for my job) is impossible with Joplin. Plus the mobile app has awful design and awful navigation. Who on Earth would put the most used button to the top left corner? Swipe from the left doesn't work of course because the following: Neither desktop of mobile app follow the system patterns. Keyboard shortucts, if they exist, are different. Navigation is different. Everything is sort of clunky. I used Dropbox for sync and while it does work, it's very slow and there's no background sync. On a regular day I have to sync about 50 items (some of them are history I guess) which can take a minute or two, which is the time I don't have when I open my phone and want to quickly add an item to the TODO list. Couple that with no conflict resolution and a recipe for data loss is born :-) . Initial sync on a new phone took me eight fucking hours when I had to keep the phone open and the app in the foreground. What I do appreciate is the native encryption. Now I do all my work in Obsidian but keep Joplin for the secrets. So this is the main problems I had with Joplin. Rant over (but you asked) :-)
- dstorm1 3y ago
  The mobile design does leave a lot to be desired. It does fit my needs however because usually I am just jotting down a quick idea or reference for later. I can see how switching between multiple notes quickly can be difficult. Not related to the parent comment but I have been using the math plugin and I love it. It does unit conversion and lots of other things!

dang 3y ago

Related: Joplin – an open source note taking and to-do application with synchronization - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27520906 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27520906 - June 2021 (74 comments) Joplin – an open source note taking and to-do application with sync - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22439485 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22439485 - Feb 2020 (36 comments) Joplin – a note taking and to-do application with synchronization capabilities - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21555238 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21555238 - Nov 2019 (150 comments) Joplin – A note-taking and to-do app with builds for desktop, mobile, terminal - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15815040 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15815040 - Nov 2017 (204 comments)

cupantae 3y ago

I have been using Joplin for a couple of years, first for work and then for everything else. I love that it’s formatted, but it’s also just text. I normally leave it in markdown mode and edit that directly (learn the syntax, it’s easy). To paste into email, documents etc, put it to display mode and it’ll paste html. Good. @cimnine The key feature for me is global search (ctrl/cmd+p) but it doesn’t work well enough!! 1. it doesn’t favour exact matches and 2. it doesn’t jump to the match. I use vi-mode if that’s important. Overall it’s excellent IMO. There are clients for all major platforms.

luspectra 3y ago

Joplin is great for what it is, but it does not exactly fit my need. I have two things I want in my editor, but no two editors seem to have both: - WYSIWYG editor: rendered text and editor are in same window - Vim Bindings - Bonus: Terminal integration (TUI) The second has come to be even more important than the first, so I now take my notes in (neo)vim. I wish it was possible to have WYSIWYG in the terminal, but that seems to be an impossible task (rows of text all being the same size is baked into the terminal ecosystem). Having a GUI WYSIWYG with vim bindings is probably pretty doable, but the lack of terminal ecosystem has discouraged me from looking into this (even though it is not that important, but I am a perfectionist).

vunderba 3y ago

Joplin is a decent open-source note app but I absolutely hate the way that they structure your notes. If you have thousands of notes in a folder ~/my_notes ~/my_notes/work ~/my_notes/music etc. Joplin takes them and stores the notes internally as a SQLite table with UUID named markdown files. It makes it very difficult to use bash tools, finding them, other IDEs, etc to work with your files after Joplin has ingested them. Compare this to apps like VS Code / Obsidian / Logseq (also open source) which don't mess with your markdown file organization. You can just point them to a root folder and they'll work natively with your markdown files. Furthermore, embedded media are also renamed to GUID.ext files and then are stored in ~/.config/joplin-desktop/resources which is terrible since now are notes are split from their related media.

suprjami 3y ago
This is the reason I don't use Joplin either. Obsidian can handle an existing file structure. I use Vim and folder sync to Nextcloud.
rubymamis 3y ago
Where do you expect embedded media to be stored? For example, if I have the following note: ~/my_notes/art/renaissance.txt do you expect images in that note to be stored in ~/my_notes/art or in ~/my_notes/media, or something else?
- herrherrmann 3y ago
  In Obsidian, for example, you can choose where your media data is stored (and there are options to store them alongside the Markdown files, e.g. in a hidden folder). I guess OP’s point is that this would be a better way, or at least to store media in the same root folder as notes and not some arbitrary folder far away from the notes.
- vunderba 3y ago
  I don't use Joplin for the aforementioned reasons earlier, but they should at least let you customize the "media folder". The embedded media is already referenced using relatively standard markdown syntax in a respective MD note, e.g.: ![image info](./pictures/image.png) Since apps such as Logseq and Obsidian work with your existing notes, they avoid this issue of massive file duplication and don't need to move the files at all. EDIT: I just realized if you're talking about adding media onto a note through the notetaking application itself, take a look at what Typora does as a good example of how to handle it. It auto-creates a relative folder called "note_name.assets" and moves them to it. Obsidian OTOH lets you specify a "media" folder that exists for each subdirectory of your existing note structure.

BooneJS 3y ago

https://www.craft.do https://www.craft.do on macOS is a great text+media notes app, but I still use Obsidian for pure-test use cases for some reason.

mp05 3y ago

I installed Joplin once but the icon in my dock was so garish that I immediately uninstalled it.

cba85 3y ago

I currently use The Archive app (Zettelkasten style) : https://zettelkasten.de/the-archive/ https://zettelkasten.de/the-archive/

account-5 3y ago

I've found nothing better than zim-wiki. The only issue is no mobile client. For brainstorming I like treesheets though.

Self-Perfection 3y ago
Markor supports zim-wiki format. https://f-droid.org/packages/net.gsantner.markor/ https://f-droid.org/packages/net.gsantner.markor/ Basically my setup is: Zim + Syncthing for synchronization + Markor on android

SergeAx 3y ago

I migrated from Evernote to Joplin and didn't lost most of the features. Currently Joplin syncs via free tier Dropbox, but it has 3 device limit, so I think I will migrate to Google drive when I need fourth device to sync.

poulpy123 3y ago

I'm using it for work, and it's very nice. It's reactive (I have < 150 notes) and simple. Synchronizing works very well too

t0bia_s 3y ago

Android app over 2.5 version wont sync database with Syncthing. So you need to keep ver 2.5.