There are tons of Notes app available in the playstore and f-droid. I have use my fair share of them these are my best 5 recommendations. All of these are free to use and have to pay extra if you want specific features.
- All in one - Wenote - This is the most powerful note app I have used. This has memo, voice record, calendar, sync, color coding, various fonts, categories etc. Some of these features are behind a paywall. But It is a one time payment. It looks minimal and is light weight.
- All in one but foss - Joplin - This is an open-source project. Available on almost all platforms. If you want a powerful cross-platform note taking application then this is the best bet. This is Completely free but has an option of premium sync option. You can use free sync service to nextcloud and webdav.
- Security - Standard Notes - This is a note taking application that focuses on security. This is an open-source private notes app meaning your notes are end-to-end encrypted, so only you can read your notes. It has a minimal and clean UI. It has dedicated apps for most platforms and syncs your notes securely across all your devices, including your Android devices, Windows, iOS, Linux, and Web.
- Modern - Bundled Notes - This is the most modern looking Notes app on my list. It is aesthetically pleasing and intuitive. A powerful notes, lists, reminders and to-do app. Easily organise notes, lists, photos, files, and more. A google keep alternative.
- For casual use - Notally - A lightweight note taking application. A simple and elegant open source notes app. Notally is a minimalistic note taking app with a beautiful material design and powerful features. Dark mode, Completely free, Adjustable text size, Auto save and backup, No permissions required.
Great list! I’ve tested almost all of these.
Some questions I think need addressing: How are notes/notebooks stored/synchronized with these apps? Are the files encrypted? Do they have Android/Windows/Linux/iOS versions? Do they have self-hostable versions?
OneNote is really hard to beat. It is in fact my “killer app” that is keeping me from moving to Linux for my personal computer. So I tend to use it as a comparison for note apps. It’s major downside is your data isn’t encrypted, and I really don’t trust Microsoft. If you keep your notebooks local and don’t use Onedrive, you can sync between PCs, but not Android or iOS.
After several years of testing, Joplin is the best candidate/competitor to OneNote in the open-source, self-host category for me, since it does pretty much everything OneNote does, including having an iOS client, and (IIRC) a web-enabled interface.
Looking at your list, Wenote seems to be Google Keep-like, but all data is local (that’s good! Your data isn’t on someone else’s server). Any idea how to keep that data backed up/synchronized somewhere?
Standard Notes is probably the best of the web-hosted note apps. It has a lot of features/capability, your notes are E2E encrypted, it’s an open-source app (meaning the code is auditable), and IIRC, they have multiple clients. My only concern is sync is dependent on their infrastructure, so what happens if they shut down (as often happens)? I don’t remember them offering a self-host option, though they may have it today.
Bundled is another Keep-like app. With these types of apps, organization is really challenging (and using tagging/search doesn’t really fix that). It has a lot of interesting features that some people may find useful (like a Kanban board, neat!). I don’t believe your data is encrypted (it’s been a bit since I tested it), so I’d tend to shy away. Data security is important.
Notally is also a keep-type app. All data is device-only (👍), no sync available that I know of, so your data is at risk if you lose/break your phone.
Obsidian is another open-source notebook app that is fully encrypted and self-hostable. It supports markdown (great for people who are familiar with it, and easy to learn). There are clients for Windows, Linux, Android, and iOS. You can use their servers if you want, or self-host. It and Joplin are being actively developed.
I love Obsidian but it’s not open source but it is free for personal use.
Pretty sure Obsidian is open source.
I wish it was but I think that is the Repo for plug-ins etc. https://obsidian.md/license
Ah - that makes sense
Joplin has free nextcloud, onedrive, dropbox, webdav etc. It also has premium dedicated sync option that has extra cloud storage options.
In Wenote you have free google drive sync or you have to buy cloud addon for wenote to enable cloud sync.
OneNote is really hard to beat. It is in fact my “killer app” that is keeping me from moving to Linux for my personal computer.
My dude. This is so relatable.
I switched to Obsidian a while back after they introduced the Canvas plugin. As much as I love Obsidian, it’s not an entire replacement for OneNote. 🥹
The Inking support, the syncing.
On Obsidian, I’ve set up a custom solution… I created a Mega account (20GB for free). Then I set it up to sync my Obsidian Vault folder. Then, I got an app called “Auto Sync for Mega” for my Android smartphone. That I linked with the Obsidian Vaults folder on my phone. This is a rudimentary, but simple and cost-effective way of sync.
I read somewhere that you can use GitHub to sync stuff… 🤷🏻♂️
I have used both used GitHub for sync and Syncthing. Both work pretty flawless, but I prefer Syncthing (or rather Syncthing-fork).
As far as I remember, synching to mobile is not easy with the GitHub solution (I only used it to sync between two desktops), but Syncthing works great on both mobile and desktop.
Yep, I keep gobs of gigs in sync with Syncthing, on multiple pc’s and phones. Great stuff.
Haha,love how my stalker even downvotes comments like this.
Hey stalker, how ya doing? Love how I’m living rent-freein your head. Guess reddit isn’t as much fun for you these days so you had to come to Lemmy to get your fix!
I have 10+ years and gigs of notebooks. Uggh, gonna be a bear to switch.
Try Syncthing-Fork. All encrypted, no web servers holding your data.
I have 10+ years and gigs of notebooks.
My heart skipped a beat. 10+?! All the best 🫡.
Try Syncthing-Fork.
Is it local? I don’t have the capability to set up local servers atm… I’ll try it sometime soon tho… thanks!
It runs as an app/service on devices. So if you have any computer at home, Windows/Linux/iOS, it can run Syncthing. It’s easy to install and setup, installs like any other app.
I run it on all my family phones and laptops, and setup sync jobs that make sense for each user, e.g. Everyone gets a shared folder from their phone DCIM folder to a folder on their primary computer. Since it can sync 2-way,this makes managing photos much easier for them.
Edit: I admit to having been lazy with managing my notebooks. So I kind of see moving to a new notebook system as my opportunity to clean up/deduplicate, reorganize, etc.
Edit2: For Windows, SyncTrayzor makes things much easier to manage. https://github.com/canton7/SyncTrayzor/releases/download/v1.1.29/SyncTrayzorSetup-x64.exe
But you’d have to be on the same network for the sync to work, I presume.
Any opinion on Notion? I’ve been trying to find a Linux replacement for OneNote over the last year. I’ll definitely give Joplin a look.
I like Notion well enough, but it’s not FOSS and they’ve been a little bit over-obsessed with (in some cases even pushy about) AI and enterprise project management recently. The Android app is also a little tricky and fiddly if you want to do much more formatting than just basic BIU+links. But it’s very extensible, clean design, crosslinks well, syncs quickly, and overall works really effectively.
I tried Notion, forget why I didn’t jump in. Maybe because it’s not FOSS, but probably more of an issue around sync or how it stored files.
Joplin really seems to address my issues with sync (I can use Syncthing to sync files myself), and how files are stored. They even have a OneNote importer, though I suspect it’s still going to be challenging for me.
Obsidian or Nextcloud Notes.
I love Obsidian on the desktop but I find the mobile version really hard to use. It just never responds the way I want it to and I can’t be bothered to set up all my plugins again.
I use the mobile app and it works just the same as it does for me on desktop. Though I only use one plugin for syncing my files to cloud and that’s about it.
Can we can that one synced without having to pay something?
I remember that the only workaround available was something like folder setup on mobile which in turn had to be synced with another app in order to ensure WebDAV sync for instance.
Needless to say that this is really inefficient.
I already had a OneDrive account so using this plugin was easy. You can also use Syncthing for syncing the markdown files across your devices.
Thanks, I will have a look at this. I assume you didn’t ran into any sync issues since you started using this, right?
Quick heads up: I tried to setup the plugin for a Nextcloud WebDAV service I use and couldn’t succeed to a misconfig on the server side or a bug in the plugin. That’s too much of a hassle to switch, if someone has a better option please chime in.
Notesnook is a really great note taking app. It’s opensource, and cross platform available.
Second notesnook. I really like the web interface too
I used Standard Notes selfosted for a while, but, like many others, I’ve given up due to frequent issues. I’ve been trying Notesnook since and it more than does the job for me. A selfosted version should also be coming soon.
Joplin is my daily driver. Although the interface isn’t nearly as polished as the others, it’s feature-packed and the fact that you can E2E encrypt means you are essentially free to use any cloud provider to sync. Safe to store sensitive personal info as well. Been running solid for 2+ years.
Joplin is nice.
I find that the default Samsung Notes app is actually pretty good.
Totally agree. It’s such a pity that there is no easy way to sync them with any iOS app, that I’ve explored. On the other hand, I really wish that Notability would be offered on the Play store.
Edit: for anybody that cares, what the guy above and I (or maybe just me) are talking about are “hand written notes” with a stylus.
I heard good things.
Thanks for the ones above, will definitely try some out
I use Joplin and really like it. I sync it between my devices using nextcloud on my home server, but it seems like there are quite a few other options for syncing.
Indeed there are dropbox, onedrive etc. I also use nextcloud to sync.
I use syncthing to sync it :)
Logseq is FOSS and easily one of the best notetaking apps out there. It’s got whiteboards, interlinking at the block level, a big ecosystem of extensions and multiple panes so you can derive context as you write.
It’s my choice for the majority of writing I do in my day to day and hasn’t let me down once. My only wish list feature is multiplayer but that’s coming soon.
Logseq is FOSS
Not their sync sadly.
You can use Git, Syncthing or any other FOSS sync tool of your choice.
Yeah. For me it worked well with syncthing. I can’t recommend it to less tech-savvy people though.
I just use an empty WhatsApp group 🙃
Left whatsapp 3 years ago.
D-Notes is what works best for me. It’s more or less the default google keep app on steroids.
markdown is a little too much overhead for note keeping on a phone IMO
Joplin is the only rec that focuses on markdown. You can also use it without knowing anything about markdown.
That’s okay, my phone keep pre-installed with a notes app
An addition to the list in case you are still looking. Logseq with syncthing. Fully off the cloud.
This is the first time I have heard about this app. It looks promising. I will try it out and let you know.
I’m happy to introduce it to you. Nice community on discord and the forums too ☺️
I used OneNote all thru grad school and while I had complaints with the app, the ability to have notes on my surface that updated on my phone and desktop, accessible anywhere, without tons of notebooks and paper, and the PowerPoints included in the one note pages with my diagrams and notes alongside… It was great! I don’t need a notes app anymore but man what a useful concept. I hope they get better with time
Hey, thanks for the write up. This comment doesn’t add to the conversation but I felt like this post deserved more than just an upvote.
Thank you. If you have any doubts please feel free to ask.
I use noteshelf on my tablet for quick n’ dirty notes, and then I write them down on obsidian so they’re tidy.
Where does one note stack up against the options suggested here?
