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Comment by vzaliva | Hacker News Reader

Personal journey: I used to be a heavy user of Evernote, but encountered a bug that the developers were not keen on fixing promptly. It was then that I realized the importance of personal notes surviving beyond companies, apps, and formats. Quickly after, I switched to a collection of plain text files using org-mode markdown and have been happy ever since.

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That's why I use https://github.com/laurent22/joplin

It's markdown, open-source, free. With desktop and mobile support.

Syncs notes to any cloud of your choice for free. (I use One Drive)

Optionaly you can pay them to sync your data on their cloud. So they even have a compelling business model!

Personally, I just use markdown text files+vimwiki on my laptop, along with Markor for Android, and Syncthing to get my notes where I need 'em, but in the end the principle is the same: Own Your Damn Data!

You just gave me an 'aha' moment here. I've been using the cli version of joplin basically as a text-file manager, but with a decent-ish mobile app. I've been struggling with keeping it updated etc and have been considering going back to just text files.

I wasn't aware of markor and really like it, it seems to handle editing text files really well.

Already use syncthing, so why bother with joplin at all?

But that's not a reliable sync mechanism without a server or a better format like CRDT:(

Joplin will be unusable until they give up on obfuscating the md files.

Sorry I don't understand. It allows to export to many formats, including markdown:

https://i.imgur.com/dK6trmN.png

Hmm... another Electron-based app (already have VSCode, Postman, Beekepper Studio).

But oh well, let's give it a try :D

A tad similar story with my experience.

“Plain text is a powerful universal tool that is almost zero cost, work across platforms, are light enough to work remotely over poor connections, doesn’t go out of date, and is quick to learn.”

https://brajeshwar.com/2022/plain-text/

Did you export the Evernote into plain text?

I need to be able to sync my notes though, I use more than one device. I'd like for them to not be lost if a phone or laptop is stolen.

Ideally, it'd just sync to webdav and I could use Nextcloud. But I've only ever found a few that did sync with it, and there were always all sorts of weird limitations or bugs in those.

I have a private github repo for this. I don't have a commit discipline for any of this, just using github for storing some MBs of plain text.

Having a log maybe useful some day, though.

I've been doing the same for the past few years, but have yet to figure out a good way to sync things between my devices. Not that it bothers me too much, but sometimes I'd like to have that convenience.

I use dropbox to sync.

I've contemplated this, but in general I'm not a big fan of hosting personal files on the cloud if it can be avoided. Maybe if I use rclone and encrypt it...?

What about Syncthing ? It’s Dropbox like (you sync folders over different computers) but it’s totally P2P (so no cloud).

I use cryptomator and store my notes on Github (encrypted)

If you are okay with rclone (and do have vps/server/whatever somewhere) then Syncthing is the thing to do that.

https://docs.syncthing.net/

Git? Syncthing?

I do use Git for source control-purposes, but this is the first time I hear of Syncthing. Would that allow for completely automated and frictionless syncing?

it'll be very good. it won't resolve conflicts for you, though - just like Dropbox or Google Drive also wouldn't. It's last-write-wins, so you either need to keep your devices connected and syncing at all times, or you need to be careful when you edit the same files on different devices.

I use Syncthing for all kinds of things and it's excellent, but it's not really a silver for bullet for mutable data like text files.

I'll look into it, thanks for the suggestion! The risk de-synchronization poses can probably be mitigated with automated local backups.

BTW, just a second vote for Syncthing, here. It's basically my "move data around" Swiss Army knife.

Need to get my Keepass database on my phone? Syncthing.

Need to back up my reMarkable to my NAS? Syncthing.

Need to replicate game saves between my PC and my Steamdeck because the game doesn't support Steam Cloud Sync (I'm looking at you, Subnautica)? Syncthing.

I run Paperless as a document management system and use Genius Scan on my phone. I use Syncthing to automatically move scans from my phone to the Paperless inbox folder.

And none of that data resides on a third party cloud. Just encrypted, peer-to-peer sync. It really is fantastic.

If I can ask, what is Paperless? Google is strangely unhelpful.

It's a self-hosted document management system:

https://docs.paperless-ngx.com/

Think: replacing paper file folders with a digital system. Supports OCR, a variety of metadata, tagging and categories, etc.

My primary use case is taxes, but for any important legal or financial documents, I throw 'em in Paperless.

I can’t recommend Paperless enough. I set up email forwarding to the Paperless domain and it automatically downloads the attached documents. The only problem I have now - I am using a somewhat older version and there’s no direct migration path to the recent one.

I went to Syncthing.net and they didn't mention iOS or Android.

Does it run on those?

I have a small vps as one of my syncthing nodes, and every device syncs with that central server in addition to syncing with eachother. This removes the need to keep everything online at the same time as the vps is always online, receiving and propagating changes from any device.

Yeah me too. I love syncthing but prefer using it with an always on 'server' like dropbox rather than just pure p2p.

What I really like about it is that you don't have to sync everything everywhere. I have work folders I sync with just my work machines, and personal ones that go to my personal VPS.

I use Dropbox and symlink my notes to ~/org

Try https://github.com/laurent22/joplin + cloud drive of your choice (I use One Drive).

See my reply to your parent commenter.

Thanks for the suggestion! By the looks of it, it seems to be a complete solution similar to Evernote, whereas I just need to figure out the 'syncing' part of things (I use Emacs for the rest).

I'm syncing between my devices with Resilio sync

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