It is doing 99% of what I ever wanted to do with my knowledge base. Though, if I am in a hurry and I want to quickly write something down (like a quick todo or something), then I am still using google keep, because editing markdown in the Joplin mobile app and waiting for it to sync, it is ok but not as quick as google keep. (I will not be surprised if there is a solution to this and I am doing something wrong)
Sure. There are plenty of alternatives, and being open source has its negative and positive things.
Self host is a good alternative if you want to play some and want to own your data 100% and I have tried to self-host Nextcloud on a Raspberry Pi once, but I gave up after some troubleshooting when I found that Hetzner offers ready-made Nextcloud boxes with https and all. I then synchronize my encrypted notes through Nextcloud pretty easily. I have never tried the Joplin cloud solution that was created after I chose Nextcloud (as an alternative also to Dropbox).
Using Joplin Web Clipper from Firefox I could also snip pages (or parts of pages) into Joplin.
But the most amazing thing is that
- it works on mobile devices as well.
- No lock in: it syncs flawlessly (AFAIK) over WebDAV so I can sync all my data using a really inexpensive Hetzner instance.
Personally I happily used it for a long time but always felt something was missing and never felt completely at home with it.
So now I use Logseq which is a little rough around the edges but which I, for now at least feel very at home with.
Automation features works seamlessly and makes sense to me.
No lock in (was true for Joplin as well).
Encryption: data isn't encrypted at rest. The author seems to be quite dismissive of the idea: https://github.com/laurent22/joplin/issues/289
But then it's advertised as "end-to-end encryption" but that only refers to data being encrypted while it sits on a sync point. Perhaps within the definition of end-to-end, but might give people the idea that the data is encrypted from the time they enter it.
Sync: I set it to up sync so S3 so I could have mobile and desktop notes in sync.
If I create or edit a quick note, it doesn't get synced automatically! I've set the S3 sync to 5 minutes (the minimum), but you have to press sync after edit.
Last time I looked they were working on a server sync (instead of S3), so hopefully this gets fixed.
But you can't open joplin, create a note, and then immediately exit and expect the note to show up on other devices. It will still exist on the device it was created on, so it's not lost, it just hasn't synced yet. It will automatically sync the next time you start joplin though.
In my case, I use the vim key bindings, and am so accustomed to hitting "<esc>:w" (which does perform a sync) when I'm finished writing the note, I never noticed.
Skimming the thread, the author does have a good point: this is something that should be handled on the OS level, ideally in a transparent way on top of the filesystem. It makes no sense for every app to be handling securing documents on their own. Perhaps we'll get there one of these days.
What I think should be built into the OS is the ability to secure[0] specific files, or groups of files, on top of FDE. Think, "right click -> Password Protect" to set up, and then when an application tries to access the file, you're prompted for a password. Or, you mount the secured folder as a drive, TrueCrypt-style. I.e. document-level protection controlled by user.
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[0] - I originally wrote "encrypt", but perhaps OS preventing access is enough in this context if FDE is also enabled.
I'd recommend looking into Logseq[0], it's free and open source and stores all notes on disk as Markdown. I version my notes with Git, but Syncthing will also work.
[0] https://github.com/joplin/plugin-templates
[1] https://discourse.joplinapp.org/t/automatic-backlinks-with-m...
[2] https://github.com/ylc395/joplin-plugin-note-link-system
I liked marktext over joplin for similar reasons. But I am probably a little overzealous in my search for distraction free note taking. I assume joplin provides more feature sets, I just happened to want less features for what I do on a day to day.
[0]https://github.com/marktext/marktext [1]https://github.com/KDE/ghostwriter
Here's how I do it: https://notes.alinpanaitiu.com/How%20I%20write%20this%20blog...
If you want to sync an SQLite DB of articles instead, you can also do that with Litestream: https://litestream.io
The plugin ecosystem seems more viable too, not that I'm using that many.
Switched over to obsidian couple months ago and am in love, such a great piece of software.
I love the excalidraw integration, game changer
I used to sync Joplin to just my Dropbox, and it worked well for free on all my devices.
Once (and only once) I had a conflict, which from then on I was nervous to get again And I never really liked how top level folders are notes as well, somehow I found that strange.
Obsidian saves markdown files, I use git so I can solve merge conflicts myself, and see the version history, albeit at the price of having to save and sync manually (Ctrl+Shift+C for commit, Ctrl+Shift+P to push, cause I'd rather do that than have it autopush at intervals). I like the UI more too, only I haven't set up Obsidian on my phone yet, but it's possible theoretically.
Tldr: Setup is more hassle, but I migrated my notes (manually) and like the UI, layout, search and git integration better. Joplin was definitely easier to get running for free, and I can easily recommend it to anyone. It's just where I am now, exploring and liking something new, seeing if it sticks.