
Any good open-source self-hosted evernote alternatives? - Immortalin
Hi, is there any good open source self-hosted evernote alternatives with sync and android support?
======
Ixiaus
Amazed no one has mentioned Emacs' _org-mode_ yet. Nothing I've ever tried
comes close to the flexibility and usefulness of org-mode in Emacs.

Combined w/ MobileOrg sync and the MobileOrg app, it serves all of my note-
taking needs quite well.

It's much more than dumb text, too, like Evernote. Structured documents with
headers, markdown-like formatting, links, fast-capture templates for stray
thoughts, an Agenda system (if you want it, you don't need to use it, I do and
have it sync w/ my Google Calendar), exportable to HTML and a few other
formats (some people even maintain their websites using org-mode).

Keywords for marking entries and a good search system (combined with Helm it's
pretty amazing).

Property drawers for entries.

It's a swiss army knife of productivity applications and I use it for note
taking, documents, journaling (with automatic GPG encryption of the entry
body), my agenda, quick-capture of ideas, tasks, etc... I use it for grocery
lists even.

~~~
hammerandtongs
Org-mode really is vastly more functional than other solutions, with the added
benefit that you can learn and use as much or as little as you want and not be
bothered by what isn't useful.

The other thing I try to call out about org-mode is that there is nothing else
that is likely to be around and useful in 20 years.

~~~
Ixiaus
Right and the ability to customize every nuance of it w/ a tiny bit of Emacs
Lisp (or not, that's not required) has been great.

For example I didn't quite like how org-drill, a spaced repetition extension
for org-mode, handled flash-card grouping and drill selection at run-time so I
completely customized it with my own group selection interface.

------
Surio
I like to store my data locally, so that influences the choice of my note
taking software.

I use cintanotes portable myself...
[http://portableapps.com/apps/office/cintanotes-
portable](http://portableapps.com/apps/office/cintanotes-portable) It is not
"opensource", but it has been most useful for keeping notes, tagging, and
categorising

I also use [http://portableapps.com/apps/office/keepnote-
portable](http://portableapps.com/apps/office/keepnote-portable)
([http://keepnote.org/](http://keepnote.org/)) which is FOSS and also
[http://portableapps.com/apps/office/rednotebook_portable](http://portableapps.com/apps/office/rednotebook_portable)
([http://rednotebook.sourceforge.net/](http://rednotebook.sourceforge.net/))
which is also FOSS.

Choose which ever you feel comfortable using.

P.S: I am also a very big fan of the portableapps format and the platform. Big
shout out to John T Haller for all his hard work on this!

P.P.S: I also use the org mode at times
[http://orgmode.org/](http://orgmode.org/) :)

~~~
ilurk
You mentioned keepnote. How does it compare to Zim [0]?

[0] [http://zim-wiki.org/](http://zim-wiki.org/)

~~~
Surio
I came across it after I started using keepnote. Since I was already invested
in the above three, I didn't bother too much with it. So, sorry that I am not
too much of a help in this matter.

------
gavruk
Paperwork
([https://github.com/twostairs/paperwork](https://github.com/twostairs/paperwork)):
OpenSource note-taking & archiving alternative to Evernote, Microsoft OneNote
& Google Keep

~~~
ilurk
Why choose something like this over a fully featured wiki like dokuwiki?

Or even Zim [0] which doesn't required any webserver or DB.

[0] [http://zim-wiki.org/](http://zim-wiki.org/)

------
bnash
Tiddlywiki is an interesting option.
[http://tiddlywiki.com/](http://tiddlywiki.com/) I use it hosted on
tiddlyspace.com, but one can do it all with a single self-hosted file that
uses javascript within a browser to create an extensible wiki. Its really nice
for creating lots of categories and putting notes and links in them, and then
you only need to have the ones open that you want and can create internal
links between them.

------
CyberShadow
I use ownCloud and plain old text editor.

ownCloud has an Android client (it's not free on Google Play but you can build
it from source code yourself), and Android text editors are easy to find.

~~~
npaquin
Don't. Use. OwnCloud. We tried rolling it out at a small (80) employee company
and it ended up being a nightmare.

~~~
mixedmath
What went wrong? And what did you end up using instead, and how did it handle
the previous what went wrong better?

~~~
jojoo
here are my experiences w/ owncloud.

settings: deployment behind a nginx, ldap login for the users.

rolling oc out was a nightmare. we tried several major releases, every time
hoping things will be different.

both requirements caused a lot of trouble, we run into a lot of documented but
unfixed bugs. they were often closed with the comment: ldap subsystem will be
rewritten.

i thing we tested three times, each time a new major version. each time there
was a new ldap system, but it was still broken.

------
reilly3000
I've looked hard and tried lots of packages as well as rolling my own.
Frankly, Evernote has been at it for 7 years and spent $225M on the problem,
and they have done a pretty damn great job at it.

I've asked myself WHY do I want to host my own data. My innermost thoughts are
hard to imagine being broadcast to the NSA, Chinese government, and any
ambitious cracker... but what I write about I will eventually publish anyhow.
And the projects I am working on will eventually be free software anyhow. AND
even with my own infrastructure I know that the NSA/Chinese/Crackers could
find a way in.

I gave up on giving up on the cloud. From one perspective, I think that
security through obscurity (with 7 Billion folks, why does my stuff matter
THAT much?) is a thing. Another thing is that if my work were discovered, what
would happen? Controversy? Notoriety? As a marketer I crave those things.

I have some very patentable, valuable work sitting in Evernote, Google Drive,
iCloud, OneDrive, various local and hosted
Owncloud/NeverNote/Laverna/LibreOffice files. My plan is to get as much as I
can of it into Evernote and move on with my work rather than spending more
time on this question.

Ultimately I had to ask myself this: If I am going to ask even one person to
trust my service with their data, why can't others ask the same of me?

FYI, Here is what my Evernotes are about: I think that the future of computing
should be based on Canonical Identity via Blockchain, 'personal fact clouds'
for every identity that store state in infinispan grids (most will use hybrid
clouds, but could be fully self hosted on an RPi in a fanny pack),
datamic+datalog for interfacing with the data, and infinite user and machine
interfaces to that data. I think that CoreOS/Ubuntu Core could be the
foundation for personal grid computing, every app can be a container with on
demand scaling and failover, and that data transport can be equally at home on
a sneakernet, the internet of today, or the mesh network of tomorrow. I
believe that data is soveign, sharing of that data should always be FINITE,
all user interfaces should be stateless, and hardware should allow for users
to compose their own interfaces. In this future, VR and IOT are instantly
integrated, everybody owns their own data, and short of physical access data
isn't shared ever ever ever unless with finite permission.

I'm using Evernote for now because it is fast and lets me work on my work. And
now that y'all have my ideas to steal, do. Please. Let's build a better world
together, eh?

Being open rarely closes doors.

~~~
galfarragem
Instead of a new tool, most people just need a new system. GTD is not anymore
in fashion but it is the most efficient system I ever used. If you ever decide
to try GTD have a look on this ultra simple implementation:

[https://github.com/we-build-dreams/hamster-gtd](https://github.com/we-build-
dreams/hamster-gtd)

------
lfam
I use [http://syncthing.net/](http://syncthing.net/) to sync my notes (and
whatever other files I want) across my devices, including Android. It's like a
FOSS Bittorrent Sync clone, although it doesn't actually use the Bittorrent
protocol.

It works very well!

~~~
unknownian
Syncthing is great, but the devs say they can't develop a mechanism for sync
between operating systems on the same computer, which is something I really
need.

~~~
luxpir
Then the devs aren't being creative enough!

You could do as I do: Syncthing on laptop <> Raspberry Pi <> phone.

Now all changes made on either the phone (OS #1, in your case) or laptop (OS
#2) will be synced to the Pi (or VPS) ready to be picked up by the other
device when switched on/synced. Placing a device between the two others
ensures that all files are up to date.

Without it you can run into situations where you've updated a file on the
laptop that is also open on the phone, accidentally saving the phone changes
over the laptop changes, then saving the laptop changes back over the phone
changes. Syncthing has versioning, but this setup negates the need for most
rollbacks.

I use it to keep notes in simple text files with Vim and Notepad++. No need
for markdown or images here, so I just use basic formatting, timestamps and
hashtags to help with searching and browsing.

Including an encrypted filesystem, alongside Syncthing's encrypted syncing,
can keep data that bit more secure.

All open source, all encrypted, all self-hosted. Give yourself 30 minutes to
set it up, if that.

Notes:

The Pi is the Pi2, but until a recent upgrade it worked fine on the Pi1. The
phone is an n900, still doing a great job 5 years on... but in need of a
replacement, preferably another phone that can install arbitrary Linux
software and is not walled into an 'apps' ecosystem.

The OP was interested in Android support. I don't think there's an app for
Syncthing, but you could SSH to your VPS, with notes synced to your laptop?
You're just missing that middle device in that case.

~~~
unknownian
>I don't think there's an app for Syncthing

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nutomic.sy...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nutomic.syncthingandroid)

Yeah, I knew about the middle device thing, but it seemed like a hassle when
the Android app is a bit alpha-ish.

------
lorddoig
I've been prototyping in this space for a while now - trying to scratch my own
itch, as it were - and seeing as this is climbing the front page I thought I'd
take the opportunity to ask HN: what exactly is it you want from this kind of
application? I dislike Evernote because of it's lack of structure, dumb text
with a few bells and whistles added doesn't work for me.

Would love to hear any and all suggestions: personal wiki, deeply structured
personal knowledge graph, UI concerns...anything! I'm not saying anything will
come of it for sure, and doing it open-source wasn't my plan, but I'd be very
grateful for any input.

~~~
fotcorn
I'd like a combination of Evernote and Workflowy. Workflowy is an editable
tree of information, but every branch/leave is only one line of text.

Screenshot: [http://stillblondeafteralltheseyears.com/wp-
content/uploads/...](http://stillblondeafteralltheseyears.com/wp-
content/uploads/2011/08/Workflowy.png)

Every branch of the tree should be a Evernote-style multi line note with text
formatting functionality. The tree would be a file system like structure, but
the Workflowy UI feels much less clunky than Google Drive/Dropbox or similar
services. Workflowy supports marking nodes as completed, so a service like
this could even work as task management system.

~~~
pdx
If I can't have embedded pictures it's a non-starter for me. That knocks out
everybody, really.

Just synced text, even if it happens to be markdown text so it's a bit
prettier, is not valuable to me.

Evernote's ability to quickly drag in some pictures and throw some text in to
explain them is what I want. A real notebook allows me to sketch. A digital
notebook must also allow me to incorporate concepts that require pictures
because they can't be easily written as text.

To improve Evernote, I would like the "notebooks" to actually be tags, so the
same document could appear to reside in multiple places.

I would like it to have h1,h2,h3 header tags, so I could build documentation
that had structure, rather than just manually making some text big and bold to
pretend to be a header.

I would like a "table" creator or tag, so I could add table data easily.

I will never give up my embedded pictures though.

------
m48
This may not be completely acceptable, but I _swear_ by Mempad
([http://www.horstmuc.de/wmem.htm](http://www.horstmuc.de/wmem.htm)). It's not
open source, but that isn't a huge deal breaker for me, since it can
import/export human readable text files very easily, and its file format is
really simple. If I ever needed to convert my thousands upon thousands of
notes to a different format, I could probably write a program to do it an
hour, and most of my work would be writing the new format. Most of the open-
source programs I looked at didn't make getting to my data that easy. (Plus,
since I use speech recognition for everything, I can't get picky about source
availability. Anything that uses non-native widgets is almost entirely
unusable for me, so I can't use anything that uses GTK or Qt. That rules out
like 80% of open-source.)

It only supports plaintext, which might be a deal breaker, but I've gotten
used to it. I rarely find myself needing formatting, and it has some functions
to get around that, like the ability to drag arbitrary URLs and files into the
text box and have them turn into clickable links. If I ever need to have
images in my stuff, I usually just have links like that in my text.

That might make working with the notes a bit awkward on Android, though.
Honestly, I wouldn't know. I rarely edit my notes on the go. If I need to look
at my notes when I'm not using my computer, I usually export a small section
of my file and physically print it out.

The program's so small I just keep it and all the files it generates in my
Dropbox. With that setup, I pretty much get all the benefits of Evernote I'd
need without worrying about losing notes or proprietary file formats or
whatever. It's kind of weird, but I would really recommend giving it a shot.

(Among other things, I wrote this entire post in it. :p )

------
awch
You'll likely find this Reddit post useful.

[http://www.reddit.com/r/opensource/comments/2a1a0e/why_is_th...](http://www.reddit.com/r/opensource/comments/2a1a0e/why_is_there_no_opensource_replacement_for/)

I'm currently trying out Laverna ([https://laverna.cc/](https://laverna.cc/))

------
3riverdev
One option that wasn't originally intended for this use, but works _really
well_ , is Artificer
([http://artificer.jboss.org](http://artificer.jboss.org)). It's an open
source project that started out as a metadata and software artifact
repository. However, it's expanded to include any type of logical information.
It supports hierarchical classifiers, custom/ad-hoc properties, relationships
between nodes, etc. I'm in the middle of working it into a demo that
implements the "Getting Things Done" structure.

It's self-hosted on Wildfly or JBoss EAP, but we're almost finished supporting
Docker (ie, you'd be able to run it on OpenShift).

Disclaimer: I'm the technical lead for the project.

------
needcaffeine
I'm a huge fan of SimpleNote and nvAlt.

------
cssmoo
I started with onenote but it shot my notebook. I never got on with evernote.
I tried a number of open source ones but settled on google keep for quick
notes and google docs for longer ones. Mainly because they have good sharing
and concurrency support and I already use apps because I'm lazy and a cheap
ass.

I have a rather shonky python script that exports the docs nightly in case
google drive dies. That's good enough for me.

I know this isn't an open source solution but I couldn't find anything that
worked consistently well in that area.

~~~
niels_olson
> shonky

Imma gonna take that there word.

------
hepcatjk
Are the any with the amazing webclipper. I tried onenote but it takes odd
images and does not clip out the junk like Evernote. Yes there are standalone
clippers but I like having the functionality of evernotes...and the only the
reason why I stick with it. The second feature is the
screenshot/editor...again greenshot, pickpick are out there but the fact these
two features are 'built in' makes Evernote far superior. I would love an open
source alternative that integrated both features....

------
vayarajesh
If you have a requirement for self-hosted evernote alternative then I believe
either you have very large number of notes and each note exceeds large size or
just for plain privacy reasons and your notes are very secretive (because
evenote is a simple note taking/syncing app)

You should look into [https://owncloud.org/](https://owncloud.org/) it is like
open source version of dropbox which will sync more than just notes for you
across multiple platforms

~~~
fapjacks
Please do not use OwnCloud if the files you are storing are important. There
is a discussion elsewhere on the page with an explanation. TL;DR It eats your
files.

~~~
sdoering
As I am using it, I am a little Bit scared right now. Could you point me to
said discussion? Thanks a lot in advance.

[Edit] OK, I look es around and Asket the mighty Google. Looks like the
problem happens when updating. Good to know. Thanks for the hint.

~~~
fapjacks
Hey, sorry, I just saw your request. There's another OwnCloud discussion here
on this page (just search). But we had our problem over the span of about
seven months and not at all when updating. We had everything from entire
directories go missing, down to individual single-page documents. It took us a
couple of months to figure out what was going on, and the tension in our
office was extraordinarily high as you can imagine (people becoming paranoid
about the true story of what happened to their documents). Finally when we
discovered that OwnCloud does this, the only solution offered was to back up
the files with another application (so why even use OwnCloud in the first
place??).

------
Mr_OK
Maybe wallabag ([https://www.wallabag.org](https://www.wallabag.org)) though
it doesn't provide all the features, evernote has.

------
infomofo
I use bittorrent sync for a lot of stuff, including a directory of RTF notes I
take. While I'm on my mac I use Notational Velocity to edit them which is my
favorite notes app ever. I haven't found a good way to edit the rtf docs on my
android phone, though, which is kind of crucial. If anyone has a good solution
involving bittorrent sync that is compatible with notational velocity on the
mac, I'd love to hear it.

------
frik
Tagspaces:
[https://github.com/tagspaces/tagspaces](https://github.com/tagspaces/tagspaces)

------
stre1120
You may want to check out the following link for a great collection of note
taking apps - [http://linuxandfriends.com/note-taking-free-microsoft-
onenot...](http://linuxandfriends.com/note-taking-free-microsoft-onenote-
alternatives-for-linux/)

------
gbraad
Laverna... Is also hosted at [http://laverna.cc](http://laverna.cc)

------
unknownian
A problem is that if you want to sync regular text files to apps on your phone
we have formed somewhat of a Dropbox monoculture where DB is generally the
main or sometimes the only syncing option available in mobile apps. We should
really start to move away from these tools.

------
mprat
I use [http://zim-wiki.org](http://zim-wiki.org) and make my own sync / mobile
options, since as of a few months ago there was no Android version. But
someone /is/ working on a mobile app.

------
aaronz8
[http://writeapp.net/write+nvalt.html](http://writeapp.net/write+nvalt.html)

I just started using this, so I can't say how effective it is yet. But it
captures notes in NValt and syncs via Dropbox.

------
wilsonfiifi
Synology NAS server has DS Note: [https://www.synology.com/en-
us/dsm/mobile](https://www.synology.com/en-us/dsm/mobile) if you don't mind
investing in one.

~~~
tl
Afaik, the Synology apps are not open source.

------
rainmaking
I use a git repository with text files and Terminal IDE to git on android.

~~~
jimktrains2
Have you used evernote? My use cases involve saving pictures and documents to
it (and having them be searchable), as well as being able to share specific
things with specific people.

Additionally, having everything available on my phone is extremely useful.

A simple git repo doesn't suffice for that.

~~~
rainmaking
I use text for documents and grep/find to search them. I do have them on my
phone, Terminal IDE is a full git/grep/yada suite for android.

Sharing with other geeks is easy, share a repository with them. Sharing with
non geeks is a different story, of course, that is not covered by this
approach.

~~~
jimktrains2
> I use text for documents and grep/find to search them.

That's wonderful, now what about a picture of a business card or flier I took
quickly? What about PDFs I've been sent or have found online? Not everything
is generated in a text editor, and as much as I love text and default to it as
much as possible, it's not always possible.

This is maybe my 3rd biggest usecase.

> Sharing with non geeks is a different story, of course, that is not covered
> by this approach.

Which may be my second largest use case for evernote.

I would not call a method that cannot perform more than 2/3rds of the main
functions I use daily a replacement, let a lone an adequate one.

------
ausjke
I set up drupal and use its book module for all the notes-taking needs, its
layout can be adjusted on the fly, and I can safely backup all my content,
plus its search function is nice and handy too.

------
looperhacks
Magpie
([https://github.com/charlesthomas/magpie](https://github.com/charlesthomas/magpie))
tries to be a web-based Evernote-replacement using git.

------
davidbanham
I wrote this to scratch my note-taking itch. It's very simple. Online-only.

[https://github.com/davidbanham/noted](https://github.com/davidbanham/noted)

------
philjackson
Not self-hosted, but perhaps [http://yipgo.com](http://yipgo.com) gives you
something of what you're after.

------
jerry_ming
[https://www.padory.com/](https://www.padory.com/)

------
dlu
What cloud storage provider do you prefer or are you rolling your own
infrastructure?

------
khara
Emacs

------
based2
[http://www.maketecheasier.com/5-amazing-evernote-
alternative...](http://www.maketecheasier.com/5-amazing-evernote-
alternatives/)

[https://framalab.org/](https://framalab.org/)

------
jjmiv
i have played around with Marks:

[https://github.com/kiasaki/marks](https://github.com/kiasaki/marks)

it works pretty good!!

\- John M.

