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Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
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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.
Syncthing
Beeper actually had a ‘self message’ section just for notes like this. Idk if it works offline, but it supports linux and android (and most other major os’)
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.
It doesn’t cost money unless you want certain features, and it uses a proprietary license.
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:
Acreom
Notesnook
If you don’t need to access them again, there’s always /dev/null.
expired
You could simply store it on a NAS.
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.
I just drop things in Bitwarden notes. Joplin is open and supports a lot of different storage backends + encryption.
For your links (I believe it works with files too), check out Heimdall. It’s not offline, but it’s FOSS and selfhosted.
I use Nextcloud. It’s like google drive or one drive.
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.
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Very surprised it won’t work in Safari.
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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’ve never seen this before but it looks excellent! I’ll have to spin an instance up to tinker with this weekend!
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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.
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.
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!
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