Notes taking app

Joplin works well for me.

obsidian.md

I really like Joplin

Seconding obsidian.

And you can self host the live sync plugin to keep all devices in sync with each other.

huge obsidian.md fan here. it doesn't have a web editor, but since your notes really are just markdown files it's easy to mix and match with other markdown editors. for quick notes i like to drop into markor on my phone rather than obsidian, since they're compatible and obsidian takes longer to load due to my love of plugins

i use syncthing to get my vault onto all my devices on the fly, plus a git repo for longer-term archival. i believe syncthing doesn't play so well on ios due to system limitations, however, so using the official "obsidian sync" service might be a better bet in your case?

I use Joplin. It supports syncing with OneDrive, Dropbox and NextCloud. Also supports encryption which is great if you are syncing to onedrive or dropbox.

Another vote for Trilium.

A couple of years ago Roam Research was trending, I read some articles and reviews about it and I liked the concepts it introduced. I looked for a free, open source self-hosted cross-platform alternative to Roam and found Trilium.

Its native on Windows, Mac, and Linux, while it doesn't have any Native Mobile apps, the webapp works on great on mobile and can be installed to your phone launcher as a PWA.

It does everything I want, and I use it a lot. A bunch of my colleagues have been recently moving from Evernote or Notable, over to Obsidian, and I understand Obsidian is the new hot thing, but I think I'll stick with Trilium.

My advice would be to try out a bunch. Note taking is surprisingly nuanced and personal preferences play a major role. Try each one for a week or two, and see which best matches your workflow and your requirements.

Obsidian is popular. Markdown-based and lots of plugins. Can get super powerful.

You can try Appflowy. It's a Notion clone written in Flutter. Open source and batteries-included for a bunch of note-taking applications.

Nextcloud notes seem to be a good evernote alternative. Just notes, nothing bigger.

Permanently Deleted

Nextcloud Notes has become my go-to (Oh look, SJ is advocating for Nextcloud again! How original!)

Logseq + Syncthing?

No web editor though—well, they have a tutorial web app that I think you can force into editing your markdown files, but that's not what it's meant for.

Use Joplin and you can stop searching. FOSS and multiplatform with selfhosted options, great sync and a lot of plugins to adjust it to your taste.

In a different post I mentioned I'd left Dropbox, and that I was replacing Evernote with Obsidian. I had lots of good suggestions for markdown editors, and one that I'd never heard of, but I've been testing today is Silverbullet. It's main appeal to me is that I can use it effectively on iOS since it has a mobile friendly web interface.

My setup is I'm using SyncThing over tailscale to keep my laptop and server in sync, I run a local instance of SilverBullet on my laptop and the wepapp on my iPhone over tailscale to a SilverBullet instance on the homelab server.

I use Trilium, it just scratched the need I had which obsidian and logseq couldn't somehow.

I migrated away from Evernote a few years ago, where I kept my "paperless life" (PDFs of receipts, bills, etc) and general notes (work, study, etc). Opting to self-host most of the things I can, I moved the notes to Dokuwiki and the rest to what is now Paperless-ngx.

This year I realised that Obsidian suits my needs better than a wiki, so migrated the notes to that. If it's just for your stuff, I'd recommend the same. (Though if you collaborate with anyone, I've heard Notion is a better option specifically for that.) Obsidian has a lot of extensibility, which will steepen the learning curve, but it's worth it.

I sync Obsidian's Vault using my Synology NAS's "Drive" client, and Obsidian works perfectly with Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. The only shortcoming is iOS (because iOS), though I believe you can work around it using Obsidian Sync or at least one other tool I've seen mentioned. It might also be possible via the Obsidian Git extension, but I've not tried it with iOS and requires (from a self-hosting perspective) that you have a local Git server (for example).

zettlr: free, open source (GPL3), no database.

If you already have Nextcloud their Notes app is easy to use and has a mobile app

Joplin for notes, Floccus for Bookmarks.

I've used Outline for 2 years. It's honestly really nice. Pretty simple to selfhost and you can set-up internal auth with something like Authelia.

However I recently moved to Obsidian.md because of the large community and add-ons available. I love it. For device synchronisation I use Syncthing and I can't complain. It has no WebApp but it's available on every platform

Wow. A lot of comments! Thanks all. I will check them and see if there is something that matches my use cases!

I really like Obsidian

I'm finding logseq very interesting.

FOSS and filesystem based. But you have to figure out sync yourself. I'm setting it up with syncthing, but I'll have to replace it with git because I need it to work across ios and android systems.

I bounced around a bunch of different apps after leaving Evernote myself some 6-7 years ago. Evernote was cool, but started getting worse. I can only imagine how bad it is now. I also learned that migrating away from Evernote's walled garden is a bit difficult.

I don't have any recommendations for ones with a web editor. I specifically wanted a local app for my notes, which Evernote seemed less interested in and more interested in pushing their web app. After Evernote I've been using a folder of plain-old Markdown files, synced to my home server, and using various editors for those Markdown files. Things I've tried include VSCode, Typora, and QOwnNotes.

Today I use Obsidian and haven't hopped around for the last 2 years. I love Obsidian and have basically no complaints about it. Again no web editing, but if you just want local files (that can sync across devices) then Obsidian is excellent.

I currently use primarily Logseq with a little Obsidian because it’s just a really pleasant text editor and Zettlr for long form writing and research. The nice think about keeping it all Makrdown is that I can use any of them depending on what features/UI I need.

Logseq does have the web editor but it’s more of a demo (it’s literally called demo.logseq.com) but it gives you the full vanilla feature set as long as you connect a local directory. I use Logseq Sync just because I was paying to support the team anyway, and it’s worked very well so far. Just ran into an issue where my laptop with most of my notes broke and so I made a portable version of the app to put on a USB and work on a library computer and it ran and connected to my Logseq Sync remote graph surprisingly seamlessly.

I haven't found a good replacement. I use a combination of syncthing (files), paperless-ngx (pdf), markdown notes (text, lists), memos (todos), radicale (caldav todos), wallabag (web note/archive), images folders and my mobile phone apps (photos/gallery, zettel notes, paperless-ngx app, syncthing).

I enjoyed Evernote back in the day, but yeah..

Trilium user here. Only thing is some issue with the keyboard when used from android.

I went with Nextcloud Notes, because I don't want anything saving files locally that I then have to worry about syncing. I can just point a browser at it from wherever I am, or use an app. Also, it's nice that Nextcloud Notes saves them as markdown, so I can easily migrate the data elsewhere if I ever want to. And those markdown files are treated like normal Nextcloud files, so if you do want to sync that stuff, your notes sync along with everything else.

I use markdown files + Nextcloud for synchronization. What I like about it is that I can use any markdown editor. Currently I use Nextcloup app on mobile and Pulsar or Nextcloud Web UI on desktop.

I ditched Evernote and moved to Standard Notes. It’s everywhere for me, iOS, windows, Linux and MacOS and it has a web client which is consistent with all versions of the app. My only gripe is easy image embedding. But I’m living without it.

There’s a new app called Anytype and it’s very Notion like and works on many devices (also on iOS). IIRC it has been released recently and looks promising. Personally I don’t use it because I dislike the idea of having to categorize your notes before creating them and that’s why I use Logseq nowadays.

One thing to keep in mind is that when switching to a different platform you have to use it at least for a few months so you don’t get into the loop of searching for better tools even when they don’t differ that much.

May I ask what is wrong with Evernote? It's always worked well for me.

I don't think this satisfies your use cases perfectly but an interesting solution for sure. I prefer note taking in vscode using the patricklee.vsnotes extension. Here's a write up on it at c/vscode. You can commit your note changes to a git repo on github or other elsewhere, giving you access from many different places.

Something I'm really looking forward to is the ability to self-host Notesnook. I'm currently really happy with the hosted service already and am looking forward to self-hosting it as well.

I used Evernote, Simplenote and various other ones and settled for Clickup for now, unless it gets enshittificated, too.

It mainly markets as a productivity app with todo lists, but also has a great document and note management system builtin.

Personally, I'm just using Simplenote. Just the other day there was this post.

What kinda notes are you looking to take? If you want something real simple but works across all devices, is super fast and with great search, try Simplenote. If you want something with more power, I’ll echo what others here have suggested and say Obsidian. Don’t do notion.

I use selfhosted nextcloud instance with notes app installed. On Android I use native Nextcloud Notes.

I know we're in selfhosted, but if you're just looking for an Evernote replacement, OneNote is the OG and really gets the job done.

Google keep is nice.