
Joplin – A note-taking and to-do app with builds for desktop, mobile, terminal - PleaseHelpMe
https://github.com/laurent22/joplin/
======
Philipp__
Currently I am very happy with my note taking setup, it consists of 3 modules:

1\. Black Moleskine notebook where I write down ideas, and explain myself some
complicated code for example. I use it more as a "mind-organiser" if I may say
so...

2\. Emacs' org-mode, where I write down my dev. progress on weekly level, lay
down monthly plans and goals and write down some of the random stuff that I
like to order into lists. And I use it more since I found out really good iOS
app for org mode called "beorg". It is really awesome, I sync it with Dropbox
and it works really, really well.

3\. Apple Notes as my scribble kind of thing since synchronization works
instantaneously between my iPhone and Macs. I use it mostly as my iPhone on-
the-go noting system, and later on if I find something important I pass it to
the org file or write it down into the black notebook.

~~~
mthink
I love org-mode, though I struggle with emacs itself. Can you give me an
example of how you layout your weekly org mode so that it interacts with beorg
well?

I've used the format for a year where each day was a heading:

* <2016-12-12 Tue> __Task1 with notes if needed __Task2

and it does not work great with beorg.

~~~
tekacs
You might also find org-journal [fn:1] interesting, if you commonly take date-
stamped notes.

[fn:1] [https://github.com/bastibe/org-
journal](https://github.com/bastibe/org-journal)

------
jubes
Just installed
([https://github.com/laurent22/joplin/releases/download/v0.10....](https://github.com/laurent22/joplin/releases/download/v0.10.28/Joplin-
Setup-0.10.28.exe)) on Windows 7. Went straight into Options to see what's
what...noted that geo-location of notes is on by default and wasn't able to
switch this off. I know generally where I am when I take notes...I don't need
this on by default. Uninstalled.

~~~
laurent123456
There's a weird bug at the moment in the Option screen - if you click on a
checkbox, the change is registered but the checkbox will still appear as
ticked (That can be verified by exiting the Option screen and going back to
it). So if you disable geo-location and for example auto-update that should
already work.

The Option screen display issue will be fixed in the next release. The backend
of these apps is quite reliable (I've never lost a synced note for instance),
but there are quite a few ugly bugs like this one in the front end. That's in
part because I wasn't planning to release this officially just yet (it got
picked up somehow by omgubuntu and then here).

~~~
jubes
Thanks for response. I assumed it was a bug and i'm sure there are quite a few
start outs which find themselves on here via the power of copy pasta. That
said it was the idea of having geolocation on by default which irked me. Is
there a reason for this?

~~~
MikusR
Is there a reason it shouldn't be? When i take notes i would like to capture
as much metadata as possible. So when i reference them later i get full
picture.

~~~
jubes
Yes. I like transparency and I would like to live in a world where the
products I consume don't assume and give me the choice of what data is sent on
the back of my actions. In this case because the option was binary it was
assumed I wanted geo-location data being sent. Let's consider the scenario
where the data store containing these notes and their associated metadata was
breached and owned. You then have the potential for learning additional facts
about people which wasn't their intended choice. If you chose to allow for
certain data to be sent then ultimately the onus is on the you. Because you
want as much metadata attached to notes doesn't mean everyone does and
therefore we should be given the option.

~~~
kohanz
But you _are_ given the option. I bet the app also stores timestamps along
with the posts - should that be off by default as well because some are
uncomfortable with divulging _when_ they created their note?

~~~
muxator
Does a set of timestamps have the same informative value of the geolocation
history of a user?

Would you affirm this in a formal risk assessment?

~~~
kohanz
> Does a set of timestamps have the same informative value of the geolocation
> history of a user?

It depends on the user, which is why they are given an option.

> Would you affirm this in a formal risk assessment?

Are we still talking about a free, open-source note-taking app or is this a
medical device now?

------
slackstation
I wish this app's creator had a Patreon so I could donate to it's development.
Money is far more portable than development time especially since there is a
sunk cost in starting up.

Please set one up and msg me and I'll gladly contribute. I'm a daily, heavy
Evernote user and I would love some competition to this great app and the
ability to have an open-source option.

------
blunte
This looks great. I hope you might prioritize adding a web clipper. For me,
the Evernote Web Clipper plugin/extension is the killer app. The rest of
Evernote isn't great, but their web clipper is incredibly useful to me.

~~~
otterpro
My Evernote file is over 20GB, thanks to Web Clipper. I've saved everything
from recipe to interesting articles, dating back almost 10 years ago. For me,
it is cool to be able to save web pages without worrying that the page / link
will disappear in the future.

The only other alternative is DevonThink, which is pricey, but well worth its
cost.

~~~
baldfat
pinboard.in does it for $25 a year.

> For a small annual fee, Pinboard can download and store a copy of every page
> you bookmark, for your own private use.

Enabling archiving will also enable full-text search for your bookmarks. How
does it work?

Each time you save a bookmark, or put something on your toread list, Pinboard
will crawl the URL and store a permanent copy of the page to your account.

[https://pinboard.in/upgrade/](https://pinboard.in/upgrade/)

------
jungletime
I've been using Typora to make my todo lists recently. It's a markdown editor
too. Super simple to type, and you can really got some professional looking
layout, with headings and titles quickly too. Recently they built in a file
browser. Open one file in a directory, and it will show you all the files in
side panel. Which in my case are just todo lists for day of the week. But it
could be any type of notes. Highly recommend it. For Example typing ###Title
would give a large title typing - [ ] will give you a checkbox, and so on

~~~
therealdrag0
That looks nice. Does it have keyboard shortcut with fuzzy searching to open
other files in side panel?

------
jamesu
Still waiting for a nice rich text note taking tool that can compete with the
likes of DevonThink and EverNote. I don't get the underlying fascination with
using markdown.

~~~
norswap
Simplicity, freedom to really migrate your data.

Sure, you theoretically can migrate your notes from, say OneNote to Evernote
(and vice-versa), but doing so is a great experience in frankensteining. I'm
not even very confident there isn't outright data loss in some places, and
with a high volume of notes, it's not feasible to check manually. Even with no
loss, lots of stuff look ugly and/or do not work anymore, even if there is an
equivalent on the target platform.

~~~
beaconstudios
writing your notes in markdown is a bit ass-backwards though - it's great as a
storage medium but having to manually reformat a markdown document because
you're not live-editing the output is a needless pain. I'd much rather write
using your usual rich text interface and have that export markdown for me.

~~~
wikibob
There are some editors that live preview your markdown. It’s pretty nice.

Take a look at Bear on Mac & iOS, and DayOne (my favorite but lacking full
markdown support). Also Dropbox paper is interesting and live previews
markdown and has nice table support

------
tomlong
This is very close to ideal for me. I've been moving away from Google Keep
(and google in general recently, using Fastmail, microg fork of LineageOS on
Fairphone 2, orgzly, vim org-mode Nextcloud etc etc) and the one thing that I
missed was easily been able to dump photos and images into notes.

I've had a play with this briefly and I will be using it full time. As soon as
it offers nextcloud sync it really ticks all of my boxes. The terminal client
is a really nice touch.

~~~
omaranto
How do you handle syncing in orgzly? My current approach is "remember to hit
the sync button", but apparently I suck at that. :) At least it's easy to fix
sync conflicts in Emacs using ediff.

~~~
tomlong
I think newer builds have an auto-sync feature. I got mine recently from
f-droid.

------
Grumbledour
Since I can't test it right now: Does this use some kind of database to store
the notes? The readme talks about syncing, including to the file system.

Why are the notes not simply stored as files in the first place? Would this
not be much easier than constant exporting/importing to various providers?

~~~
laurent123456
Hi, I'm the author of this app. The notes on each client are stored in an
SQLite database for performance reason. If they were stored directly as text
files it would be slow to query them, it would be very hard to make it work on
mobile (and even slower), and you wouldn't be able to easily create relations
between notes and tags, notes and notebooks, resource links, etc.

It's when exporting them or syncing them that all the app entities (notes, but
also notebook metadata, tags, etc.) are converted to plain text files. One
advantage of this is that the notes are not locked into an obscure format - it
shouldn't take more than 1h to create a script that read and convert these
text files to any other format.

~~~
brute
_> If they were stored directly as text files it would be slow to query them,
it would be very hard to make it work on mobile (and even slower), and you
wouldn't be able to easily create relations between notes and tags, notes and
notebooks, resource links, etc._

Zim uses plain text files and folders. You can have images, tags, link to
other notes, links to the filesystem...

Maybe I am not using it with enough files for it to be a problem, but I cant
say that it is slow.

~~~
gh02t
I think Zim uses a two level approach, storing text files but also keeping an
index database for doing full text search.

------
dawnbreez
Why is this better than Orgmode? Orgmode is human readable, opens in any text
editor, handles everything from bullet points to tables, and Github even has a
Markdown-like renderer for Orgmode files.

~~~
danielvf
First, it’s markdown based. That’s probably not an advantage for you, but it’s
a syntax people are used too.

Secondly, syncing is built in. Sure you could use git on your org mode file,
but that’s requires effort.

Thirdly, this handles attachments and images.

Fourth, the user does not have to learn EMacs.

Fifth, it runs on phones.

So it does have advantages for some people. If your already an orgmode master,
it may mean less for you.

~~~
vesak
1) Granted.

2) You can put your org file in Dropbox, all the mobile clients support that
too.

3) Org-mode probably does this too.

4) Granted :)

5) orgzly for Android, beorg for ios.

------
denibertovic
Interesting app. I'm currently using todo.txt [1] and am quite happy with it.
It's not really a note taking app (although I could use it that way) but
rather a todo app and it uses a pure text file and syncs with dropbox nicely.
I use an Android app as well [2].

There's a bunch of plugins for it but I haven't used any of them yet.

[1]: [http://todotxt.org/](http://todotxt.org/) [2]:
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=nl.mpcjanssen....](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=nl.mpcjanssen.todotxtholo&hl=en)

------
EGreg
Question for the people here ... are there any good SOCIAL apps like this?

I mean, for example, being able to assign tasks to others (like in Redmine /
JIRA) and be notified of progress/completion.

Or collaboration on notes and permissions etc. Straight from your phone
instead of some google doc.

And maybe turning those notes into tasks later.

What would you use?

------
justinh
I recently went farther down the note-taking rabbit hole than I care to admit.
I wanted the app to be cross platform (macOS/win10/Arch (Gnome)). What I found
was that by separating my two use cases -- web clipping and Markdown/Gist-like
notes -- I was able to find a sweet spot (for now).

the abbreviated version of my setup is this:

AmazonBasics dotted notebook as my primary note taking device. I use a system
similar to a bullet journal.

Microsoft OneNote for web clipping. The web client is good enough if I need to
read notes on linux. I use Boostnote for programming notes / Markdown. Then,
at the end of the day, I type my notes from my physical notebook in to OneNote
for searchability.

I know that my setup is not earth shattering. But that's kind of my point. I
spent a lot of time searching high and low for a fully digital solution. I
assumed that I would find several excellent cross-platform note taking
applications to choose from. I was wrong. They were either not very good at
taking notes, or the few that are good, are not cross platform. Honorable
mention to Simplenote and Quiver. Quiver is solid if you're only on a Mac.

------
SZJX
I honestly just think that org-mode should receive more widespread adoption
and attention, especially within the developer community. It does everything.
All those new products are sort of reinventing the wheels, and in a 100 times
less feature-rich manner.

The only gripe I have with org-mode is its awkward mobile support. But Orgzly
does a decent job on Android and I rarely type on mobile, which is hugely
ineffective anyways.

------
terraforming
May I suggest QOwnNotes as an alternative to this? It's also cross-platform
(not sure about mobile) and it's not another shitty electron app.

~~~
r3bl
To counter this a bit, I would rather run an Electron app than be greeted with
this as the default interface:
[http://www.qownnotes.org/var/bekerle/storage/images/_aliases...](http://www.qownnotes.org/var/bekerle/storage/images/_aliases/frontpage_slider_full2/qownnotes/frontpage-
slider/qownnotes-main-screen-linux/374-25-eng-GB/QOwnNotes-Main-Screen-
Linux.png)

I'll take an app that uses a bit more resources over something that looks like
an IDE instead of a note-taking app any day.

Currently using Inkdrop[0], which is not open source (but subscription based)
and has a rather basic Android client, but it's cross-platform (macOS,
Windows, Android, iOS, Ubuntu and other Linux-based distributions), has a
pretty intuitive interface (as in, doesn't look like an IDE), backs up its
database to my Nextcloud instance, and supports dragging and dropping images.

[0] [https://www.inkdrop.info/](https://www.inkdrop.info/)

~~~
pbek
The default interface of QOwnNotes has pretty much everything turned off in
it's "minimal" workspace (that is used by default).

~~~
pbek
I made a screenshot for you ;)

[http://www.qownnotes.org/var/bekerle/storage/images/qownnote...](http://www.qownnotes.org/var/bekerle/storage/images/qownnotes/frontpage-
slider/qownnotes-main-screen-minimal-linux/4706-1-eng-GB/QOwnNotes-Main-
Screen-Minimal-Linux.png)

------
gameofthrowaway
Side question: why did you name the application Joplin? (My hometown is
Joplin, MO and I'm curious if you're also from or living there.) My other two
guesses for its etymology are Janis Joplin and Scott Joplin.

~~~
adrianmonk
Not the author here, but my guess is that it's named after the composer since
the software deals with notes.

Also, though Scott Joplin's ragtime musical style has a lot in common with
some very informal music, his own approach was more educated, sophisticated,
and precise. Every note was in its place for a reason, and he was known to
prefer his pieces to be performed exactly as written. So you could say that
compared to the people who came before him, his notes were more organized.

~~~
laurent123456
Good guess, that's exactly it :) I love this composer and was listening to him
a lot while developing this app. Additionally I think this is a name that's
easy to remember and type, so it felt like a good choice.

~~~
roryisok
I agree, its a great name =)

------
dingdingdang
OK, once: "Coming features All: End to end encryption" is implemented then I'm
up for giving this a try. The plain text format and markdown support is good
features.

~~~
nathancahill
Check out Standard Notes: standardnotes.org

------
ddevault
I take notes like this:

    
    
        vim ~/documents/notes

~~~
icedchai
I just send an email to myself. If it's something ongoing, I'll leave a draft
open for a few days.

------
0x445442
Every time I see a post like this on HAN I think of this guy...
[https://www.flickr.com/photos/hawkexpress/sets/7215759420049...](https://www.flickr.com/photos/hawkexpress/sets/72157594200490122/)

~~~
spraak
Wow, that's amazing. I've been following the GTD related space since I first
got on IRC (about 15 years ago) and find more analog solutions (Hipster PDA
etc.) so fascinating, but this one really wins.

------
Jedd
I've played with a bunch of note tools, but once you need collaborative and
painless synchronisation across platforms, your options really shrink. (I
ended up with Google Keep, but it's not ideal.)

As soon as we get Keybase FS on Android, this kind of tool becomes extremely
interesting.

~~~
splike
I'm using Dynalist, which is definitely an improvement over Google Keep, but
I'm starting to find it quite restricting that everything has to be in bullet
point lists. What I really want is something thats between Dynalist with its
Zooming mechanism, and Typora with its super nice markdown editor.

~~~
Jedd
I haven't heard of any of those! Forcing dot points for everything would be
tiring. Clearly list-focused rather than note-focused, and that's okay. For
tasks I use trello, and occasionally the separation between notes and tasks is
a bit blurry. Ultimately long-term storage of knowledge is stored in my
personal wiki, so the whole suite is not entirely seamless yet.

Typora looks like a lovely interface, but appears to be non-free, no support
on mobile, not collaborative.

~~~
splike
I just wanted to point out Typora as a nice interface for a markdown editor,
it's not really a note taking app.

~~~
idlewan
How is a markdown editor not a note taking app? Sometimes leaving search and
sync to the system/other programs (grep, dropbox, syncthing) is a valid
approach.

------
trevor-e
This looks very nice, well done. I'm surprised that nobody mentioned Workflowy
in here, it's what I mainly use and found it fits my frame of mind the best.
It's just infinitely recursive lists that let you zoom in on a particular
subset. Next up on my list is learning Emacs + org mode to see how I like
that.

~~~
spraak
You may like Dynalist.io which is inspired by Workflowy. I never used the
latter but I really like the former.

~~~
trevor-e
Wow, this looks amazing, thanks for the suggestion.

------
noio
This is great! I'm happy that more apps are converging on what I've started
doing already anyway (keep plain markdown files on my disk). I got burned a
few times too many trying to export/migrate my notes from some service's
proprietary format.

------
mcrider
I like the idea of an app with integrated notes and todos, and love that its
open source, but this is really lacking in the todo department. No drag-and-
drop reordering and no deadlines/grouping by date makes it pretty useless for
anything approaching a decent workflow.

I've tried pretty much everything and still haven't found anything with the
features/ease-of-use/good design of Wunderlist (which is still lacking in
features, and has a fast approaching EOL). Considering todo apps are the
modern version of hello world I would think we'd have a lot of good options
(or does that reasoning actually mean there are a lot of half-baked options?)

~~~
boundlessdreamz
I used [https://ticktick.com/](https://ticktick.com/) for quite some time and
then moved to Memorigi - [https://tinbits.io/](https://tinbits.io/) (Android
only). I have tried wunderlist, todoist and some others but nothing clicked
except these two. Recurring tasks are what I use todo apps most for and these
two supported it best

------
djhworld
Does it support inline images?

I'm using Quiver for Mac, but really a cross platform solution would be more
appropriate.

I tend to take notes/drawings on paper then take pictures of the useful stuff
and put it into Quiver so I can see it in context

------
Radim
Any tips or recommendations for a "note-taking and to-do" mobile app that
would allow dictation, speech to text?

My use-case is recording quick notes and TODOs, which often come at the
weirdest of moments (no computer, no paper).

I feel there's a market for something super simple: a speech recognition fast
enough and good enough that I can later read _and understand_ what I said.

Everything I've tried so far was either too cumbersome (I need it to start
recording fast, just like taking a snap picture) or its transcriptions too
crappy (no idea what was said, even conceptually).

~~~
jherdman
> "no computer, no paper"

Sounds like you really just ought to make a habit of keeping pen and paper
near you, or your mobile phone. Either of these fit your use case nicely at
(probably) no extra cost.

~~~
icebraining
_or your mobile phone_

Well, Radim is looking for a mobile app, so I'm assuming there's one around.

------
ape4
Interesting to see AppImage actually in use.
[https://appimage.org/](https://appimage.org/)

------
jeffmcmahan
Good God - it's a note taking app that installs sqlite, sharp, and more than
300 other things... well into the millions of lines of code.

------
aagha
Good job. A bit too clunky on Windows for me (e.g., setting an alarm for a
task), but I like the concept and the multi-environmental access aspect.

I've recently started using TickTick
([https://ticktick.com](https://ticktick.com)) and been pretty happy with it,
thought not accessible from a terminal.

------
alexnewman
Not supported on my chromebook. Please allow me to install the chromebook app
on android.

------
madebysquares
This is something I have been wanting for a while a note taking app with a
terminal app and syncing... unfortunately installing all these tools from an
unknown source makes me a bit leery.

------
spoxaka
While we are at it. Has anyone tried Dropbox Paper for note taking?

~~~
bovermyer
I have. It works fine, just like a myriad of other note-taking methods.

I don't know that I'll ever settle on just one note-taking method. I'm too
everywhere to have a single system.

------
itissid
the only thing I want to ask is weather these apps will last about 30 years+.
When the support for a note taking app dies it causes a lot of head aches.
Remember google notebook?

------
cylentwolf
Just downloaded it and was checking it out. What is the difference between a
todo and a note? Am I missing something? I am just using the UI not the
terminal at this time.

~~~
aagha
I'd think a todo is a task that needs to be completed, whereas a note is just
a set of information that needs to be stored.

------
disease
Bit of a left-field question here: how hard would it be to integrate with
Google Home where you could dictate your notes, listen to them or mark todos
as completed?

------
nucleartacos
If you're working in a terminal, all you need to take notes is vi or emacs. No
need to complicate things.

~~~
aagha
For you.

As one example: Those notes are unlikely simple to access when you're on your
phone away from your terminal.

------
mwexler
The one thing missing: web. Esp. in places with restricted installs, having a
web front end would be nice.

------
mallow
Windows issue: The installer assumes you want it on your c drive. grumble
grumble.

~~~
ahypeverse
....most, if not every single windows application makes this assumption.

~~~
sbarre
That's not my experience at all. _Most_ installers let you choose your
installation folder.

------
mxuribe
Neat app...but where is the sqlite database located on a windows installation?

------
mvidal01
Is it possible to export a note? Are notes sharable?

------
inthewoods
I've used www.simplenote.com in the past.

------
HugoDaniel
I want to try notion.so, some friends use it at work with great success. But
would prefer something like it but with a business model other than freemium
SaaS.

------
elnurmen
Please change the name))) "Jopa" means ass in Russian... And, well...Joplin
sounds like a resident of "Ass"-town

~~~
bovermyer
Janis Joplin was an icon of American music culture. I wouldn't be surprised if
this program was named after her.

Not to be insensitive to other cultures, but "this name sounds vaguely like
this vulgar thing in another language" is not a strong reason to rename a
project of this kind.

~~~
otterpro
Yeah, I was thinking Janis Joplin, too. Another musician, Scott Joplin, also
comes to mind.

------
supergoober
thank you. this is something i've wanted to make for a long time.

will look forward to helping contribute.

------
borne0
What about recurring to-dos?

------
tebura
why does android app have to access user location at time of installation.

------
vast_majority
Nice work

------
Dowwie
Good job, @laurent22!

------
mihaela
Electron, no thnx.

~~~
bovermyer
Just use the terminal client then.

------
reacharavindh
I'm currently using Apple Notes on my Mac and iPhone. It works just great!

    
    
        It synchronises perfectly
        I can drag and drop images to it, no problem.
        Cmd + C, Cmd + V, Cmd + B, Cmd + I all work as expected.
        I can even add to-do lists and cross out "Done"
        I think it even supports tables, But I don't use them.
        Export as PDF, html, airdrop, email whatever, works easily
        

What doesn't work:

    
    
        If I ever get out of Apple ecosystem, it won't work.
        Apple has my data, and I need to trust them.
    

Give me something with the same ease of use, and make it self-hostable without
pain. I'd be happy to pay. I don't need Markdown or anything else. Text + Drag
& Drop images support are a must for me.

~~~
sbarre
Useful tip (that I didn't know until recently) is you can also access your
notes via any modern browser at
[https://www.icloud.com/](https://www.icloud.com/)

I recently moved to a Windows machine as my day-to-day home machine and
thought I'd have to abandon Apple Notes (which I use on my phone and my work
Macbook) but the web interface is basically identical to the apps.

~~~
merpnderp
That's great to know. I found how awesome Notes had become in Sierra, and now
have hundreds of notes - this is an app I use every single day multiple times
a day. But I don't like the new offering of MBP's and wanted to move off the
mac ecosystem, so started work on something just as easy to use and as secure
as Notes, coupled with sharing notes. It's just a mobile first web app hooked
up to firebase with nothing making it to the server that hasn't been encrypted
on the client first. Shared notes will require users to share a password,
unless I find a better solution.

But if iCloud Notes is just as good, maybe I'm wasting my time. I trust
Apple's security, and Notes really is _exactly_ what I want as a dev (their
limited markup is nearly as useful as markdown, and I love that it is limited
to a few choices).

------
t1o5
I refuse to install any more Electron apps on my desktop.

~~~
criddell
Since the number of Electron apps probably isn't going to decline anytime
soon, I think I can save you some work. I could write you a little application
that scans HN a few times every day and if it finds a discussion about an
Electron-based project it will post a comment letting everybody know that you
won't be installing it because it uses Electron.

If you are interested, let me know. I can knock it out in a day or so and it
will work on any platform you use because it's based on Electron.

~~~
tomludus
Really made me laugh!

