With their recent update it seems they are on the last step to making their free version completely useless – are there any good alternatives out there? Preferably something that has a similar android app. I know I could use ssh+vi in a text file, but I’d prefer something a bit more streamlined

  •  Shurf116   ( @Shurf116@lemmy.ml ) 
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    1 year ago

    Obsidian. Very simple, all functionality is free, offline, all notes are accessible on your PC, you don’t even need Obsidian to open them because they are in Markdown. Has tons of community plugins for every need, even a Notion-like tables plugin. There is an android app which looks fine but I don’t use it much so I can’t say anything about it. But since all your notes are offline you have to think of ways to sync them. There is a paid Obsidian sync which you dont have to use or you can sync with any other method (manually, github, syncthing, etc…)

    Edit: Oops, just realized the post is in FOSS community and Obsidian doesn’t seem to be open source. Sorry! I’m not going to delete the comment though, maybe it’ll help someone

  •  renard_roux   ( @renard_roux@beehaw.org ) 
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    1 year ago

    First off, Notion is vastly superior to Evernote in every way (IMO). They have super streamlined apps for both Android and iOS, and the learning curve is negligible. Fully accessible in any browser, too. Once mastered, Notion is ridiculously powerful, and their free account ridiculously generous.

    That being said, I recently discovered Obsidian, and although I have big love for Notion, I don’t think I’ll be using it anymore.

    Obsidian also has apps, both for mobile and (native) desktop (Mac, Win, Linux), is open source (edit: my bad, not open source), and has a thriving plugin community on GitHub.

    The learning curve is steeper, and Obsidian is one of those things that’s so flexible that it’s borderline overwhelming, but if you can wrap your head around how you want to use it, make it suit your needs, it’s the absolute bee’s knees.

    Personally, I use Obsidian on my Mac desktop, and sync my Vaults (basically just a specific folder on your HDD containing your notes (individual markdown.md files) and folders) with Google Drive. I then sync the changes to my Android phone using Autosync for Google Drive, where I use the native Obsidian app, and Google Drive syncs to my Chromebook where I run the Obsidian Linux client.

    I can’t stress enough how much I love Obsidian, it’s truly been one of my top 3 new software revelations in the last 5 years (Raycast and Midjourney being the other two). Highly recommended ❤️

    Edit: Sorry, just now noticed this was posted in FOSS, so my suggestions might not be valid. Just thought since you’re coming from Evernote, and there are fantastic, free alternatives, you might want to look into those 🙂 Both my recommendations have paid options (Obsidian offers paid sync, but is completely compatible with free alternatives), but both work amazingly without ever opening your wallet.

        •  Hundun   ( @Hundun@beehaw.org ) 
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          21 year ago

          Yes, It takes it’s time indexing the graph - and you have to re-index periodically if you want you queries and graph to be in shape. I have a pretty mature KB, and this process takes no more than a few seconds, so it’s fine.

          Honestly, I love everything about it, except for the app itself. It ties me to the default editor, which is an Electron-based sluggish resource hog. I’d rather have some software scaffolding to work in an editor of my preference, but that is just me. I suspect most people in most use cases won’t find it as problematic.

    •  t0fr   ( @t0fr@lemmy.ca ) 
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      21 year ago

      This is what I do as well! Logseq+Syncthing Works super well. I was already using Syncthing to sync all my files anyways so tacking on Logseq was super easy.

      Definitely recommend taking notes in the Journal and using tags to categorize them

  • I have used Joplin for a good while. I self hosted a little docker server for sync and off I went. There are paid sync plans available though. Nowadays I’m lazy and use the notes of my Nextcloud instance most of the time.

      • There are several apps. There is just plain “Notes”, then there is a trello-kanban-style-thing called “Deck” and an app doing more of a fridge-magnet-notes style called “Carnet”. All of those have corresponding apps and Deck and Notes use the same CalDAV-Notes, so are interoperable.

          •  jcarax   ( @jcarax@beehaw.org ) 
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            21 year ago

            I don’t think you can do that on the Android app, though, can you? I don’t mind markdown as much on my laptop, but on the phone it’s a pain in the ass when I’m just trying to jot something down, or add to a list.

            •  Jim P.   ( @jimp@beehaw.org ) 
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              21 year ago

              I thought you could but apparently not, unless I’m not seeing it. I was thinking of the desktop app on Linux/Windows/macOS.

              It threw me off since it’s not just a plain text editor but renders some of the formatting even when editing markdown.

      • You could do that as well of course. Notes is more convenient when all you’re doing is little lists and such, Joplin is better for larger notes like you’d do in OneNote.

        OneNote might be an option as well, if you have a MS365 account and feel comfortable using it and Microsoft’s Servers.

  •  Jim P.   ( @jimp@beehaw.org ) 
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    91 year ago

    After Evernote announced the price hike a month or so ago I started researching alternatives. I looked into a bunch of different apps/services but decided I did not want to get locked into another proprietary system subject to enshittification. So my main criteria were:

    • Cross platform with support for Android, Windows, Linux, and macOS
    • Fully Open Source
    • Portable/open format files (e.g. Markdown)
    • Self-hosted option so files are always on devices I own

    Both Joplin and Logseq fit the criteria and were good in my testing when combined with Syncthing to copy files around securely. There are a ton of other options out there but they didn’t fit one or more of my wants.

    Joplin is a VERY easy transition from Evernote. It can import notes exported from Evernote, has a similar interface, and doesn’t take much getting used to.

    Logseq is interesting but it’s going to take time to get used to its workflow since it’s so different. I watched a couple hours worth of videos on its use and it that style may just not be for me.

    I went with Syncthing because that means the notes never leave my devices, so there is no need to depend on a server or worry about the security/integrity of the note content. The downside is that syncing outside the house isn’t so simple, though it can be nudged to work over a VPN. Not for everyone.

    After spending a week or so being happy with Joplin+Syncthing I canceled my Evernote subscription and went back to the free tier, but honestly I haven’t even opened it since doing that. I haven’t needed anything in it that I couldn’t do in Joplin.

    • Your experience is what i am looking to accomplish. I’d like to transfer everything Evernote to a self-hosted FOSS application I can serve on my Synology NAS. I would access my notes primarily on my phone (Android) and sometimes Windows. AFIAK, Joplin would sync to my Synology NAS where it’s hosted… so I’m a little perturbed by the additional used of Syncthing.

      Would someone explain the need/desire for Joplin+Syncthing?

      •  Jim P.   ( @jimp@beehaw.org ) 
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        11 year ago

        I wanted to use Syncthing so I didn’t need a server involved and didn’t want to work off mapped drives/network shares. The client devices all handle the syncing themselves so the files are local on every device and kept in sync within a reasonable time period and if they can’t connect for a bit, that’s fine, they can work on the local files and sync up next time I’m back on the home network.

        If your NAS has a similar function it can do that natively. Joplin can sync using files on the device filesystem which is how Syncthing works but it also supports syncing through a variety of other servers/services, such as Nextcloud. It’s very flexible in that way.

        So essentially you can do it however you choose to do it since they are just plain text files being copied around.

        • if they can’t connect for a bit, that’s fine, they can work on the local files and sync up next time I’m back on the home network.

          I suppose this is what I’m most concerned about. I currently use a similar situation for my password manager database. We have Windows and Android clients that connect to a shared database file and I feel like I’m constantly having to manually synchronize the file because it remains open so long on each client. I’d like to avoid this situation.

          Joplin can sync using files on the device filesystem

          This weekend, I’m going to attempt to get it running on my NAS and do this.

          I may also try the other syncing via cloud at the same time just to test.

          •  Jim P.   ( @jimp@beehaw.org ) 
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            11 year ago

            Each note in Joplin is a separate Markdown file so there is only a real chance of conflict if two clients edit the same note at the same time. That is much more sync-friendly than an encrypted password database file.

            I have yet to hit a conflict but it’s just me editing notes and I don’t usually use multiple things in the same note at once. I did have a problem getting syncthing to work well on my phone (a pixel with newer Android) where it worked OK on my tablet and other devices. I had to hardcode the address of my laptop in syncthing settings on my phone and then it seems to be happy that way.

  •  sub_o   ( @sub_@beehaw.org ) 
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    51 year ago

    There are several that I’ve been using / trying out:

    • Notion
      • used to be good, but it’s becoming more and more bloated, and nowadays those AI command options seem to be cluttering the quick commands.
      • It is freemium, and syncs with their servers.
      • It has a really good table creation system, and the keyboard navigation flows really well.
      • I stopped using it since it’s becoming slower and bloated, and migrated my language notes to Obsidian.
    • Obsidian
      • is very capable (except that it doesn’t a good WYSIWYG table creation / adjustment system),
      • it has tons of community plugins, very fast, lightweight, and customizable.
      • Completely free, but it does take some tinkering, and some parts do look kinda awful.
      • If you’ve been taking long notes with markdown, then Obsidian will probably suit you.
      • I have all my language notes written in Obsidian and synced to Github with a plugin.
    • Anytype
      • is the latest one I’m trying out. Still in alpha, version 0.32
      • It is clunky at times, because the keyboard navigation is not well implemented, you still need to rely on mouse to select some sections.
      • But it has a really interesting type / relation definition system, where you define an object type, e.g. Movie, and you can define templates, relation to other objects (e.g. relation to Directors, etc).
      • I’m currently using it to plan my games / streaming backlog, it has a good table and data view system.

    I believe all 3 of them have android apps.

  • I’m also looking for an alternative to Evernote since they jacked up their prices. My primary use is as a document store for OCR and indexing of scanned paperwork.

    For general note taking I’m starting to use Logseq, but I don’t think that’s the right solution for long term storage, I have over 10 years of scanned documents I want to port across

    Paperless-NGX seems to be the best option I found so far, but not installed it yet

  • I’ve been using Standard Notes. Its on both Android and iOS, as well as Windows, Mac, and Linux, and even in browser! The basic tier is unlimited notes, but only for text, so no photos or files. I’ve been using this for a year for my personal writing project and poetry (Will use a word document when I do final copy, but now I just like having it in a notes app). The clients are open source and are available on f-droid. All notes are end-to-end encrypted and the local copies are also encrypted at rest (which some other apps don’t do). You can set it to automatically send an encrypted backup to your email every day (which is what I did).

      • I would say wonderful in terms of capabilities and concept, just OK in terms of UI but highly effective. I guess more then OK in the sense pretty much everything is there and just works. Wish they had an android app. The things I like about it are:

        • You can have pretty large notes collections and still use and navigate. At least for me though it seems to be limited to 3000 or so notes in a single notebook for speed reasons. That is way higher than I think I could sanely navigate in a normal app like Joplin though because it is a wiki and can be hierarchical too.

        • I like that it stores as simple files in the file system. Nice format for fairly large notes too. So I can just manipulate stuff there if needed and process stuff with standard Linux commands or with Python. Really helpful when importing stuff for example, or reformatting something.