Hey y’all. I’ve been testing a bunch of Note taking solutions and nothing seems to check off what I want and need.
I want a simple interface (both for list view and note editor/view), preferably similar to Google Keep, but a regular list is fine as well.
Key features:
A. being able to drag and drop re-order checkbox lists.
e.g.
- [ ] item 1
- [ ] item 2
- [x] item 4
- [x] item 3
I’d like to be able to just drag and drop the above to sort things correctly.
B. E2EE at rest.
C. CTRL+F inside the note view/edit!!
Honestly, the only functionality I truly want is A. But most of the solutions I found are either proprietary or can’t do it.
Self hosted options I’ve tried:
- Joplin (can’t do A; UX is not great)
- Standard notes (A + C is gated by their self hosted premium subscription; I don’t mind paying for my apps, but the prices are ridiculous)
- Silverbullet.md (can’t do A)
- Quillpad (very similar to Google Keep and can do A, but has terrible file syncing, not E2EE)
Notesnook looks almost as insane as Standard Notes to self host (mimicing AWS stack locally is nuts). Has anyone tried Notesnook yet? I don’t want to spend another afternoon setting something heavy up only to find that the feature I want is gated by a heavy $.
Any suggestions or recommendations would be greatly appreciated!
EDIT: Woops! I am looking to use the notes app on both Android and Web/Desktop Linux. Preferably an open source solution.
Anytype is awesome!
Not for everyone, but I use a self-hosted single user email server for this. All the formatting your client permits, clients for every platform, attachments, organization into folders, synced automatically everywhere, etc. No spam filtering, MARC, DKIM, and the like because you only ever email yourself and you don’t permit external senders. I love it.
Obsidian and good ol’ paper and pen. (or epaper). The paper I use is on bullet jpurnal style.
How about AnyType? It matches your requirements.
code editors might have the features you want, and its easy to repurpose a code editor into a notes app.
sync a folder between your devices (syncthing is great for this) and put markdown text files in it. I like to call this folder “Memo” since its like writing letters to myself.
edit the markdown using VS Code (desktop) or Carbon (android). I haven’t tested whether Carbon can do this, but I know in VS Code, you can reorder a list with keyboard shortcuts.
click anywhere on a line of text, then hold Alt and press Up arrow, and the text will swap places with the line above it.
edit: Syncthing and Carbon are open source. VS Code has some proprietary code added by Microsoft, but none of it is relevant to your use case, so you may prefer the fork called Codium.
Hi quaff!
The app I use for this purpose is called Notally, on android. It supports reordering the checkboxes, but it doesn’t do find in page or sync to web (although it can do backup /restore – I sync the folder with nextcloud and I can access the text files)
That said if you try it, you might love how simple it is and use it for something!
Joplin and Obsidian.
I use Workflowy. Partner and I replaced G Keep with it. It can do A and maybe C.
Triliumnext can do everything you want. Its pretty damn powerful
Whoa. This actually works pretty close. Although, I am not seeing the ability to drag and drop re-order list items. Which is the big feature I want and need.
I am seeing in their github issues that CKEditor doesn’t support it. Thanks for the suggestion though!
If there is a kanban extension or something of the sort you might get the drag and drop list you want.
There is another Google Keep like app called NotallyX. Can even import in your Google keep backups. You can set up password protected auto backups with the app.
As for syncing syncthing as others have mentioned would be the best solution that would let you be able to use whatever you choose to go with.
I use Logseq with ToDoList plugin to handle task list. Logseq is similar to obsidian but open-source. And to syncronize notes among devices, I use syncthing. No need to selfhost.
+1 on all of this.
Logseq basically saved my mind when I took on a new job where I needed to take a lot of notes quickly, easily and keep track of all the ToDos.
Syncthing keeps my laptop and phone in sync (with my NAS) so I can start notes on my laptop and then finish on my phone.
You can definitely reorder checkboxes, but on Android it’s still not quite a smooth experience, but it’s ok.
Others have mentioned Syncthing as a sync solution. I’d like to add a couple points:
Syncthing can work fine even for solutions that are intended to use their own sync, provided it’s a single-user setup. You’re not likely to make simultaneous changes on 2 devices, so collisions are unlikely.
Also for using Syncthing, I recommend Syncthing-Fork for Android - it moves sync conditions into the folder/job rather than global. Very useful when you have jobs you want always syncing, and jobs you want to only sync on wifi and power.
If using iOS there’s an ST client called Möbius Sync ($5), developed by a company the financially supports Syncthing.
For Windows, get SyncTrayzor - it makes running and managing ST easier.
I use Tasks.org with caldav (Radicale) on android and thunderbird on pc, would that work?
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.tasks
I see tasks.org supports etesync, which encrypts data. I have never used it though
I also recommand Task.org app to sync tasks with CalDAV and I use raw Markdown files with WebDAV, both using the DAVx5 app for synchronization. For editing Markdown, I prefer minimalist apps that suit my needs. Right now, I find SimpleMarkdown (with disabled telemetry) to be the best choice.
SimpleMarkdown doesn’t allow for re-ordering checkbox list items.
I see 🙂
I used emacs org-mode before. Can do a lot of stuff on PC, but mobile experience was lacking. And learning curve is crazy
I am currently testing out logseq + syncthing. I don’t reorder things much anymore though
Good luck!
I self-host Notesnook and found it easy to set up. Been using it as my main note-taking app for years now and I’m really happy with it.
Are you able to drag & drop to reorder checkbox list items in notes? 🙏
Yes, if you use the “task list” block. You can also have checkbox bullet points but I don’t use them, not really sure what the use-case for those are when you can just use the task list.
I spent several years looking for the perfect selfhosted solution to this, but ultimately I realized an offline solution was just going to be better. So I started using Obsidian which is as simple or complex as you want with no paywall.
Some of the self hosted solutions I’ve tried were:
I settled on obsidian really quickly as well. And now sync thing + tailscale + obsidian means I am done experimenting and things just work.
Unless you’re using syncthing on Android which is a nightmare
Works fine for me.
What issues are you having?
Some hiccups for me but nothing egregious.
You can also get obsidian to sync using the guide here: https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/s/GegPIcBjFg. It’s really good.
You might want to list the platform you want to use it on. I’m assuming that you’re wanting to access this on a smartphone of some sort?
Ah good point. I edited my post! Android and Web (nice to have is desktop Linux support). Thank you!