Check out Obsidian! The canvas feature is very similar to onenote snd obsidian in general is the best notwtaking app/ personal knowledge management system in existence
this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2023
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Obsidian is what I use mostly, it syncs great with syncthing across all my devices. It doesn't have drawing support, so whenever I need to doodle something I end up in samsung notes again.
Obsidians great! I do wish it was open-source though :(
I switched to Obsidian not too long ago.
For my needs, Joplin was a good open source alternative.
Between the two I went with Obsidian because, while the apps are closed-source, the data is accessible. All your notes are just stored in plaintext (with markdown) as simple files in a directory structure.
Joplin, in contrast, uses a SQLite database which adds a layer of complexity.
This was one of the main selling features for me (before I tried it and experienced all the other killer features). I've experienced a bad case of vendor-lock before where it was hell to export my data. So having it all available in plain text at all times is really reassuring.
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Very much this. Obsidian has a learning curve. It needs more than a day to get a feel for.
@Stronk +1 for Obsidian! I love it. It's definitely different than OneNote. Notion may actually be a better fit for you, but I encourage everyone to check out Obsidian just to see if it's for you! Excellent software.
Obsidian is hella based
As your description is rather short and does not really restrict the "recommendation space", I'll start the round of recommendations with Joplin
Joplin also has a great web-clipper through a companion addon in Firefox (and I assume also Chromium)
Joplin is great in many ways, and I do use it to some degree, but there's a few things that irks me.
- Notes and attachments being stored in a database and referenced by a cryptic UID instead of plain files with human readable names makes integration with other apps impossible. And it's bad for data portability
- On Android I've never been able to get it to background sync. I need to keep Joplin in the foreground. The second I switch to another app it stops syncing
- On sync conflicts it'll just use the newest note as master and overwrite older changes. Luckily if you realise it happened you can use the history feature to get back lost changes. Typical scenario for me is to add much more stuff to a shopping list while on desktop. 30minutes later open the app on Android while shopping to tick off an item. Realize all the recently added items from desktop are gone to the ether (stored in history on the desktop and other synced devices)
Hopefully these sync issues are some rare bug for me. I've tried all the usual "battery saving" tricks in android, but still Joplin will not background sync. Other apps like DavX5 sync fine. Are anybody else here having luck with Joplin on mobile?
As far as I know it's a known limitation. Joplin just does not have background sync. It's ok for my use case but the initial sync can take a long time depending on your database size. Other than that, I'm happy with Joplin.
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I used Joplin on Windows and iPhone - syncing (encrypted) using a OneDrive account. So far working well.
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I selfhost my Joplin server and use the clients on my Linux desktop, my windows laptop, iphone and Android. It is definitely one of my favorite selfhosted apps. To prevent any issues with sync, the first thing I do when I open the app is to click the Sync button and do the same when I close the app at the end of the day. This way I ensure that I am always working with the latest version. It has not failed me so far, considering I am a very heavy user and have quite a few notes running at any given day.
And I'm another who self hosts Joplin. My wife and I use it on our desktops and mobile devices. We specifically switched to it from One Note and it's been perfect for our use!
I used it extensively as I was writing (I'm an author) to make notes about things I needed to go back and correct, or an idea to incorporate, etc.
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Interesting I didn't know you could even host a server for it. I use Joplin with local files and nextcloud to sync them I'll have to check that out
you can sync them with dav on nextcloud, then joplin takes care of pushing and pulling but the files are on nextcloud
Standard Notes is the downright best notes software, highly recommend it as a OneNote alt!
is that FOSS?
Yep, also encrypted and cross platform too!
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I would suggest Logseq. It's excellent and a step up from One Note IMHO.
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I use Joplin and sync the notes between devices (including Android) with Syncthing. There's lots of other options for syncing, but I already had Syncthing set up and liked it
I use the same setup: Joplin and SyncThing. Works well on my macbook and windows boxen.
Joplin is amazing. I think I have it syncing through OneDrive (I don't use OneDrive or any Microsoft products so I'm not sure why I did that), but it has so many options to sync using things you may already use
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Meanwhile here's me still using Google Keep...
Hopefully we get some warning signs before it ends up in the Google Graveyard.
Hopefully we get some warning signs before it ends up in the Google Graveyard.
The probability of that happening just barely hovers above zero.
Over a decade later, I'm still bitter about how they unceremoniously dumped Google Reader's corpse into the ground with effectively no notice.
Google play music was the last straw for me. I will never depend on them for a service ever again. They just aren't reliable.
Oh same, I use Google keep for personal organisation and one note for actual note taking on my tablet. Google keep has an unofficial API that you can use to script it. I wish there was an open source alternative to it though tbf. I honestly don't understand where Google derives profit from it is it's just short incongruous scraps of text
I switched to OneNote a few years ago and was going crazy trying to find a bunch of notes I took .. turns out they were all in Keep happily noting away.
Keep was great but I find the OneNote structure and flexibility a bit more useful.
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I can say I've never heard of any of these recommended.
Standard Notes: https://standardnotes.com
Obsidian: https://obsidian.md/
Xournal++: https://xournalpp.github.io/
They all look great! Checking these out later!
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Xournal++
I wasn't aware of that one, thanks! Bummer though, the mobile port doesn't seem to have been updated for a while :/
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Joplin is great but Obsidian is definitely worth checking out. You can find both as flatpaks.
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@IuseArchbtw I switched to Zettlr a few years ago and never looked back https://zettlr.com/ there are tons of markdown apps in other platforms that can give you the cross-platform feel but for desktop this is it for me
Markor on Android, nvim on Linux and sync with syncthing. Using markdown.
Because nobody mentioned it already I want to bring Notesnook in.
It is very privacy friendly, OpenSource and cross platform. Just if you want to sync there is no self hosted solution yet.
I've been using Notesnook for nearly a year and I'm really happy with it as well. Very feature-rich and easy to use despite a focus on security. I had a scare recently with an important note seemingly disappearing, and I was saved thanks to a really nicely implemented note history functionality that I didn't even know existed.
I will say that some of the design decisions can be a bit confusing, so it's worth testing it out before buying. Even a year in I find myself a bit thrown off by how exactly the relationships between notebooks, topics, tags, etc are expected to work.
I dunno if this is weird or what but personally I can't stand markdown editors. It's 2023 and Microsoft Word is a fairly polished thing that I expect replicated in some way in my note taking app.
Currently I'm using Notion and it's pretty nice. Free for students too which is great.
I was using Wiki.js which was nice but a bit clunky and I ran into a few showstopper bugs that I couldn't bother fixing.
Different strokes for different folks, but I wish markdown was in everything. I love the simplicity of it and how easy it is to bold, italicize, make a header, etc. while typing. I'll take markdown over docs or word any day of the week.
I'm with you, I'm at the point where I go to use markdown in emails and loathe having to click around to format things nicely.
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@Maxcoffee that's understandable. My boss also hates Markdown. It's not for everyone. I like how lightweight it is, how many things support it, the inline formatting, portability, etc.
Like I said though, it's definitely not for everyone.
My biggest pet peeves is partial support for markdown.
Logseq is my go to. It can be as simple or complex as you want, and it's open source under AGPL 3.0 which is really important to me.
I use qownnotes in combination with nextcloud. Supports mark down, git like history and syncing with the nextcloud notes app, which you can also use on your phone.
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