Features I Need :
- Totally offline
- Quick note taking, I can just tap “New” and immediately write my note
- Can save without title
- Auto save the note after pressing ‘back’
- Tags or notebook/folder for categorization
- Can export to other format like txt or pdf.
Features I want (but don’t need) :
- PIN or biometric for opening the app
- Support markdown
- Automatically set creation date as title
Features I don’t need nor want :
- Online sync/backup
- Attaching media (images/sound/etc.)
- Any other online services (AI/assistant/integration with calendar/spellcheck/etc.)
Joplin hits basically everyone of those needs and wants.
Seconded on Joplin. Does everything I need, looks nice, and I can sync it if I want to
Obsidian is close.
It’s a little higher barrier to entry w.r.t. saving without a title, but it has a “Daily Note” feature that gets you very close to your quick need.
Benefit is that it’s also really powerful if you want to get fancy.
@0uterzenith I have spent the last couple of days banging on this in anticipation of moving from Evernote. Both Obsidian and Joplin look like they would work for you. I’ve decided on Joplin for a number of reasons that are important to me.
- It syncs natively through Dropbox.
- It has clients for Windows, Linux, and iOS so all my devices can access it through Dropbox. Obsidian requires a subscription to support iOS.
- It imports the Evernote .ENEX folder export files natively and pretty cleanly.
I found a web browser extension called “MarkdownLoad” that lets you capture all or part of a web page and save it to a markdown file (.MD) that you can then import into either. Solves the one issue I was really worried about in moving from Evernote.
Logseq fits the bill. By default it opens today’s date journal page and I just type everything into that and tag it (you can tag at any bullet level within the note). You can also create hierarchical tags like #topic/subtopic1 #topic/subtopic2, so the note will show up for topic regardless of the subtopic.
