i want to move away from using discord as a place to store and organise all kinds of links, text and images. its just come to me how easily i could lose access to it, not just by being offline.
ideally, said program has to:
-work offline
-have android and pc support, especially linux.
-have ability to export data into easily viewable formats
if something satisfies most but not all requirements, please still write about it, it can still be useful.
I think joplin fits the requirements. You can run your own server (or use theirs) to sync between devices.
I also think simplenote meets the requirements.
joplin sounds awesome, will def take a look
I am selfhosting a server and it works flawlessly!
I’ve been selfhosting a server as well for well over a year now. A $5/month vps and $2/year domain power that and Baikal for all my calendars!
If you’re comfortable with self hosting, I recommend SilverBullet: it’s a Markdown-based knowledge management solution that runs as a PWA in any modern browser. It automatically syncs to a hosted SilverBullet server during use when you have an internet connection, and otherwise can run completely offline (provided that you use a browser that supports offline PWAs)
this is an amazing obsidian alternative that I haven’t seen recommended yet! I always here about logseq but I don’t like it due to it’s bullet format. And this is just great. I wish they had an electron install option tho, but still pretty great.
Very surprised it won’t work in Safari.
I tested it on iOS Safari with my own hosted instance and it seems to be fine. Is macOS Safari different? Maybe that’d be a good bug to report.
It gave me some issue about indexdb not available. Maybe it was a flag I turned off thinking I was making my phone more secure. Probably something I did.
I’m honestly pretty hopeless when it comes to self hosting
Fair enough, it’s definitely not for everyone. It’s a great learning experience though!
In that case, Joplin and something like Syncthing + Git (so that you remain in control of your data) would fit your need, since in essence you’d just be securely and privately passing around all your notes/files over a decentralized network.
I’ve never seen this before but it looks excellent! I’ll have to spin an instance up to tinker with this weekend!
I use syncthing + Joplin for this. I haven’t looked into exporting data but I’d be surprised if it couldn’t. Otherwise it checks your boxes. Joplin also supports encryption, which wasn’t on your list but is a great feature.
Joplin supports a handful of sync methods but using a file based sync with syncthing is nice because it’s less effort and maintenance to run than self hosting nextcloud, for example. And since it’s purpose is to sync as opposed to remote access, you still have access to a copy your data even if you can’t reach any of your syncthing nodes for whatever reason. Though to be fair you can do that with nextcloud as well.
Joplin is also an alternative with desktop and mobile clients.
Maybe obsidian? It’s not open source, unfortunately, but
- works offline
- has android and linux clients
- the files are markdown, so you don’t even need to export these
- the clients render the files so it can look better than plain txt files
Also wish it was open source, but I do trust it. I tend to run Wireshark initially on all new closed source apps I install and obsidian feels truly trustworthy from my perspective. And the power behind it, while keeping the files super simple, is amazing… Combine it with syncthing and it’s a win!
And for cloud I use RCX
not being open source is a bit of a bummer but i’ll have a look
I, too, was initially bummed about Obsidian not being open source, but the offline mode and the stylish markdown rendering eventually sold me.
Plus, I set up SyncThing to sync my notes between my phone, server, and laptop. Now I have all my notes backed up and accessible on all my devices, without anything leaking to a 3rd party.
There is an open source chinese competitor, which seems quite good, but I always forget the name.
I use Nextcloud. It’s like google drive or one drive.
expired
You could simply store it on a NAS.
I just drop things in Bitwarden notes. Joplin is open and supports a lot of different storage backends + encryption.
Since someone brought up Obsidian
You want Joplin. It’s a markdown-based note-taking app, so it uses the same formatting as Discord. It’s locally installed so it works offline. It has a mobile version for iOS and android, but also has windows and linux apps. You can have multiple notebooks and multiple pages per notebook, so organization is easy as pie.
Did I mention that it uses markdown, so it exports into multiple common formats; that I’m aware of: JEX (their own) which is just a TAR of the text files and some other metadata, RAW which is the untarred version, HTML, and PDF. It also embeds images, audio, video and PDFs.
It’s also FOSS, and written in javascript using Electron, so it’s more-or-less easy to rewrite any part of it to suit your needs. It is also easy to work with plugins if need be, either from the community or writing your own.
It syncs across clients using some common cloud data stores: Dropbox, onedrive, NextCloud, WebDAV, s3, and their own self-hosted Joplin Server to name the ones I know. Make sure to encrypt. The local files (resources) that are linked in the notes sync across devices too. Web resources stay as links.
It also has a bajillion other features, but I’ll spare you.
No, I’m not getting paid for this comment (Joplin Team, hmu), I just really like this app.
Links: Wallabag, if you don’t want to self host it’s very cheap to have them do it.
Text: Obsidian, but I’m also playing with Notesnook
Images: Immich
The text apps I listed are the only ones that could be considered “offline” though.
I have an issue with Obsisian bc it’s freemium. From what I could tell, there’s not a substantial difference from Joplin, which is FOSS.
How is it freemium? You either pay them to “host” your files or you don’t. There is no other cost involved. IIRC, Joplin Cloud is a similar set up if you’re not equipped to selfhost or just don’t want to. It’s not FOSS, sure. But it’s a hierarchy of flat markdown files that can be read by any text editor on any OS. Making extracting your data very simple. Joplin stores your notes in a database file that requires an export or conversion function to get it back out, should they go out of business, etc. The database and the absolutely horrible Android app is what had me give up on Joplin entirely. If it’s working for you thats great. I’m certainly not trying to convince anyone. My use case requires easy, universal access to my notes. And .md files in folders is the lowest friction way I can think of. I’m currently paying for Sync, but once my year is up I’m going to try Syncthing again or the CouchDB sync plugin to save money. $8/mo is too much.
How is it freemium?
It doesn’t cost money unless you want certain features, and it uses a proprietary license.
You either pay them to “host” your files or you don’t… It’s not FOSS, sure.
And that’s a dealbreaker for me (the non-FOSS license, not the “pay the devs” part)
I guess my point is that in your example, Joplin is the same. The feature hidden behind a paywall is for them to host the sync function for you. Both Joplin and Obsidian offer that. Yet you can roll your own method using Syncthing, Nextcloud, etc for either of them. If it’s FOSS or not that’s a deal breaker, I get it. I gave Obsidian a pass in that regard since the file format is so wide open and universal.
You may want to keep an eye out on these two as well. Both are missing some features now, but have them on their roadmap:
- not open source yet, but planned
- no E2EE, but planned
- can’t self host the mobile app side of things, but the desktop versions work without an account and use markdown file format like Obsidian (and others)
- Open source
- E2EE
- Can’t self host yet, but on the roadmap. The dev confirmed to me that there would be no fee tacked on for self hosters once released, something that either Standard Notes or Simple Note does (can’t remember which).
Syncthing
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I’ve been using NotesNook.
I love Notesnook. You can’t save images (or any type of file) without their premium subscription. It’s well worth it tho.
