QOwnNotes
qownnotes.org
qownnotes.org
My new app Plume[2] is built on top of Notes but features a completely revamped and advanced block editor with a new design.
I use the Nextcloud Notes app on my Android phone and it works perfectly together with this on the desktop.
I wish it had support for simple file uploads, sometimes I want to attach spreadsheets or PDFs to my notes.
It's intended as a team knowledge base for documentation, but I find it works well even as a single user for notetaking.
It's open-source, and self-hostable, and integrates with draw.io and mermaid graphs. And everything saves as markdown, so it has good portability.
But when it comes to note-taking apps, wouldn't a WYSIWYG approach, where markdown is kept out of sight, be more user-friendly?
Take Obsidian, for example. It has this clunky live preview feature where the line you're working on keeps morphing into markdown. Super awkward.
Also, software developers are naturally biased against Microsoft Office. For no good reason.
I don't know any individual's reason for being biased for or against anything, but I think that, if the claim is that there is no good reason to be biased against Microsoft Office, then that's false. My personal gripe is that Office's approach is just fundamentally antithetical to the idea that I know what I want to do with my document better than Office itself does; it's always trying to guess and, for a recent infuriating example, getting a bulleted list to indent the way that I want it can be an epic battle.
My favorite feature is when you ever so slightly click to the edge of a cell in the middle of a 10,000,000 line csv file, it warps you to the bottom of the page and selects the last cell so you can't find you way back. Best design decision ever!
Another favorite feature was auto-detect formatting. If it could read it as anything other than plain text it would default to dates, times, whatever it found... only recently (2023) was this "AMAZING" feature given a switch to turn it off...
Thankfully I don't have to interact with word. Thar be dragons.
I do use Microsoft's OneNote and Word, just not for everyday notes.
All notes are shared in a directory structure with mark down files - including recipes. Files are synced between devices using SyncThing. In Android devices, these are accessed using Markor, and in desktops, using QOwnNotes. I get to use Emacs Markdown mode too, as I please.
QOwnNotes creates a notes.sqlite file in the uppermost directory, which can be added to .stignore.
> Video can't be played because the file is corrupt.
It was easy to move my markdown notes into it.
Plus NotePlan has replaced most of my calendar and task management apps.
I use it on Mac, iPhone and iPad. Looking forward to the web based version that is progressing nicely.
Syncing across platforms is a bit harder than I would like. Dropbox and GitHub syncing work, but it is best using iCloud. I use ChronoSync running on an always on Mac to sync to locations for Linux and Windows access.
You can install QOwnNotes on many operating systems or build it. If not stated otherwise you can run QOwnNotes afterward by executing QOwnNotes.
Has no link to said installers. My patience is tested. No thanks.