Don’t understand how they made it this long.
I switched to Joplin a few years ago from Evernote and haven’t looked back. Take control of your own notes - Joplin is open source and has clients for every platform, and imports notebooks from Evernote.
Or Obsidian? Take actual control over them including rendering if you want to customize that.
Maybe it’s a different use case 🤔
Obsidian is closed source, so once the company dies, no one can modify the app. Joplin on the other hand is open source.
What I really like about Obsidian is that it stores your notes as plain text/markdown files on your computer. So you always have access to them, even without Obsidian itself. Markdown is also a fairly common format, so it shouldn’t be too hard to move them somewhere else later.
But your concerns are still valid and I generally also prefer free open source software.
The app may be closed-source, but the data is all markdown, which should be easy to move to other apps.
Haven’t tried Obsidian, but have heard good things about it. I have about 12,000 notes and continue to be impressed with Joplin’s ability to handle that with no issues.
Different use cases, indeed. All I need is plaintext, images, and in-line pdf rendering. No audio, no video, no LaTeX, not even italics or bold.
Now, to be completely fair, while Joplin is great for simple notes, it’s data entry modes are weird AF. I assume, in a programmers mind, the operation is normal for an IDE as it can’t/won’t render links/objects in line with editing. You either get a markup-only window that’s editable, a rendered window that is read only, or lose half your screen to a split-view version. These options are selected via two, separate, unlabeled, non-status-indicating toggle buttons which cycle through 2 and 3 versions if the view.
Aside from that, it seems nice.
I forgot Evernote was still a thing. Used it for a short while back in 2012 when there were not many decent note taking apps.
Ever since I discovered LogSeq and Obsidian, I stopped checking out other note-taking software
God I love Obsidian. Especially the community around it.
Obsidian honestly spoiled me with the fact that my vault is literally just a folder of markdown files.
I’ve been using Zim, because I wanted something that was completely brain-dead simple and also completely not in any sort of “cloud.” It’s entirely local to my hard drive. It stores its files as a folder of markdown files too.
How non-cloudy is Obsidian? I might take a look at that.
LogSeq
I never heard of it until now. I’m a veteran of trying out and dumping so many note taking solutions. I’m certain to try this one, too! Maybe I’ll finally find The One.
Just started using Logseq and it has been a game changer. All other note apps I‘be used become black holes…notes go in and are never seen again. I can actually find things now with logseq. It’s helping with brain fog and getting my shit together. Can’t recommend it enough
I can search and read about LogSeq, but I can’t find anything about Obsidian. Can you please help me out? Thanks.
In addition to the other recommendations, I like Nicole van der Hoeven for Obsidian info.
I highly recommend checking out the Obsidian Discord server and Eleanor Konik’s Obsidian Roundup. The community around Obsidian is insane and they’re so dedicated.
Obsidian.md, you need to import some community plugins to make it better (e.g. Advanced Tables, Multi Column, etc). But it’s quite fast and powerful, it doesn’t look as pretty as, say Notion, though. I love using it, you can search on youtube for some samples / tutorials, it’s quite easy to use though.
I love Obsidian but haven’t heard of LogSeq, do you use both but for different things?
They are very similar. The main differences are:
- LogSeq uses bullet points. Obsidian is just pure markdown
- LogSeq is open source. Obsidian is closed source
- LogSeq has a predefined structure to it (folders). Obsidian allows you to have whatever folders you want
Personally, I use LogSeq for my day to day work. Primarily because I prefer the bullet point approach when taking notes. But some people would prefer writing long continuous text with Obsidian.
So to each their own. If you’re interested, try both (they’re both using markdown, so you can transfer between the two). I went back and forth a few times before settling with LogSeq
After leaving Evernote way back when I was in the wilderness for a while. Finally landed on notesnook, haven’t gone back since.
Years ago I was a paid Evernote user. The app kept displaying ads on startup trying to get me to pay even more for the “higher tier”. Right then and there I knew the company was dead.
Not only that, but they kept adding features and telling me about it. I was paying for their existing features, and yet half the time I would go to add a note and by the time I clicked through their “we did something you probably don’t care about” popups, I’d forget what I wanted to note.
There is a recent thread discussing Evernote alternatives at https://beehaw.org/post/986939
Personally I exported my notes from Evernote, imported them to Joplin, and setup Syncthing to handle synchronization of note content between my devices. Not exactly a trivial setup but not difficult either. Also fully open source and much more secure.
