this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2026
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Hey everyone, I'm trying to replace most of the private owned app I use by FOSS ones, and today i'm pointing at notion.

I just use it as a way to organize my notes and use it both on my laptop and phone, and i'm looking for something that can have that fonctionnality.

I've already looked into a bunch of foss note taking apps but I didn't see any that could do it. (maybe i didn't look hard enough tho)

I'm willing to use syncthing or smth similar if needed.

do you have any recommendations? anyway, have a nice day and thanks to everyone making the internet/softwares more libre and accessible!

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[–] Ephemeral@feddit.org 3 points 3 hours ago

What also works is using SyncThing. That way you can sync any app that uses files that you want. I use Obsidian for note taking which creates .MD files in a designated folder, I sync that folder with my phone.

[–] PragmaticOne@lemmy.world 10 points 19 hours ago

Joplin. It’s cross platform and just works. No hassle.

[–] sixty@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 day ago

I use Notesnook, but as an alternative to Notion and more complex features, it's way too simple.

[–] communism@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I use Notesnook and I'm happy with it. They have a flagship instance with free accounts if you don't want to self-host.

If you want something more lightweight and are up for using syncthing, just a bunch of markdown files synced with syncthing also works. You can encrypt them with your pgp key if you want encryption, but that doesn't encrypt metadata like file names, directory structure, or when files were last edited.

[–] moonpiedumplings@programming.dev 1 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago)

Syncthing has encryption as well. You can have a device be "untrusted" so you put in an encryption password, and data sent to and stored on that device will be encrypted.

Although this does encrypt file (and directory) names, the caveats about folder structure and modification time still apply.

[–] Moodel@feddit.uk 11 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Joplin. I use it on my phone, multiple laptops and Linux desktops.

[–] sakphul@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 4 hours ago

I also second this. Working like a charm for me over 4 different devices and 3 different Operating systems.

[–] yo_scottie_oh@lemmy.ml 2 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Do you ever regret that Joplin does not store notes in plain text? (meaning you couldn't edit your notes in a plain text editor if you wanted to)

[–] Moodel@feddit.uk 1 points 6 hours ago

Nope not a bit. But you mean through exporting stuff I assume(?).

If for any reason I need to move something to a text file (very rare) then I just cut/copy and paste without the MD.

[–] mikedd@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

I second this.

[–] Soapbox@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Putting in another recommendation for Notesnook.

[–] foxwolf@pawb.social 1 points 1 day ago

The android app is busted for me. I've uninstalled and reinstalled and it will not let me login or load anything at all.

[–] baronvonj@piefed.social 23 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Joplin can sync between phone and laptop with a number of network storage options

https://joplinapp.org/help/apps/sync/

or you can self-host Joplin server.

https://github.com/laurent22/joplin/blob/dev/packages/server/README.md

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[–] Zerush@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

The inbuild notes in the Vivaldi browser (Markdown) are synced between Desktop and Mobile, no third party app needed.

[–] ComradeMiao@lemmy.world 14 points 2 days ago

obsidian is not FOSS BTW

[–] ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net 2 points 1 day ago

Anything with cloud support, really. I'm using iotas and some Android nextcloud notes app. Most apps will just write notes to .md files you can sync with nextcloud/owncloud using the desktop client.

[–] mulcahey@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

Standard Notes

[–] unknowablenight@piefed.social 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I've never used it, but I've heard good things about Notesnook.

[–] riiku@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 1 day ago

Been using Notesnook for almost 3 years now and it's just awesome. Highly recommend!

[–] jaypatelani@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 day ago (3 children)
[–] Vendetta9076@sh.itjust.works 1 points 17 hours ago

Setting up nextcloud for notes is, to take a quote from the late Robin Williams, like doing chemo cause you're tired of shaving your head.

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[–] gary_host_laptop@lemmy.ml 8 points 2 days ago
[–] Substance_P@lemmy.world 7 points 2 days ago

Is there something wrong with Standard Notes that I should be aware of? It hasn't been mentioned here. It has the AES-256 encryption standard, there is a free tier, it's open source and it undergoes regular security audits.

[–] zarlin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Obsidian + Syncthing has been working prefectly for several years now for me, across Windows, Android and Linux.

[–] Ephera@lemmy.ml 3 points 23 hours ago

Obsidian is not open-source...

[–] clif@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

https://silverbullet.md/

It's like obsidian (I hear) but FOSS. I love it and it's by far the self hosted service I use most.

It stores your notes in a plain directory hierarchy of markdown files so you can just point acron shell script at it to git add/commit/push at your desired internal and you've got history tracking/backups too

Edit: also provides a PWA so you can "install" it on your phone instead of always using a full browser.

Edit x2: includes a Lua interpreter so you can get scripty with it. I use that functionality more than I expected and I suck at Lua

[–] SlurpingPus@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

includes a Lua interpreter so you can get scripty with it

Any examples of what you're doing with scripts? I use some custom programming in Org-mode in Emacs, but curious about what other people are doing in different apps.

[–] clif@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

The two biggest things I use it for are programmatically generating "lists of lists" (lists of pages, more accurately) and as a semi-hacky way to get text colors. Semi-related, the "Treeview" plugin gives you a folder hierarchy panel off to the left (by default) which is really, really nice.

I should probably clarify that I didn't write these, I stole them from the Silverbullet community forums... also I should reiterate that I suck at Lua so take my explanations with a grain of "this person may not know what they're talking about" ; )

Lists of Lists : I have a bad memory so I create a LOT of lists. I even have a base page named "Lists" that I then nest different types of lists under (TODOs for home, for work, for school, for projects, for selfhosting, etc). Since the table is programmatically generated, it's always up to date on each load. This first snippet relies on using frontmatter on the respective pages along with the tags property.

${query[[
from index.tag "todolist"
order by lastModified desc
select {
  List="[[" .. _.name .. "]]",
  Modified=_.lastModified
  }
]]}

This retrieves all pages from the space index with a tag of todolist (from the frontmatter), orders them by lastModified, descending, and renders a table that contains the name and lastModified date. This is excellent for providing a list of pages (based on tag, todolist in this case) related to a topic and ordering them by the last time they were changed. I use this in the base page for pretty much all of my "folders". Screenshot :

Text Color Hack : Since the Silverbullet markdown interpreter doesn't (currently) support plain HTML, and the way we usually color specific areas of text within Markdown is <span style="color: #fff">white text</span>, they had to get inventive. Somebody came up with a way to provide Lua functions that will accept text as a parameter and then render it with the specified HTML color/style.

In my CONFIG page (that is applied to the entire space) I included a space-lua code block like :

function Red(text)
  return widget.html(dom.span {
    style="color:#e60000; font-weight: bold;",
    text
  })
end
// Also about 5 more for different colors I use, snipped for simplicity.

Then, anywhere in my Silverbullet space I can use a Lua code snippet like The following word is ${Red("red")} and it will invoke the space-lua function named Red() on the text red, apply the styling, and render it with CSS color #e60000. Hacky? Yeah... but it works for now. Screenshot :

... I've been meaning to build a generic Colorize(text, hexColor) function (which would likely take all of 30 seconds : ) but haven't yet. Maybe tonight.

EDIT: That did, in fact, take 30 seconds. Function :

// This assumes "color" parameter is a valid/properly formatted CSS color, meaning a known word ("red"), hex ("#ff0000"), or presumably RGB/etc but so far I've only tested color names and hex (I typically use hex)
function Colorize(text, color)
return widget.html(dom.span {
    style=string.format("color:%s; font-weight: bold;", color),
    text
  })
end

Usage : ${Colorize("any text", "#00ff00")}

[–] SlurpingPus@lemmy.world 1 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

Interesting, thanks. This Silverbullet thing turned out to be more complex than I originally imagined, I thought it's a hierarchical notes app as usual.

I have a bad memory so I create a LOT of lists

I'm the same way, but that led me to Org-mode with local files (synced to the phone) and loads of nested outlines, like thousands of items.

But since it's programmed in Emacs Lisp, I've made me some custom commands like logging taken medicine with the current time and date, adding an episode to the log of series watched, etc. I also plan on hacking together a brother extension that would send the page title and address to one of specific places in the outlines, but I keep putting that off.

[–] clif@lemmy.world 1 points 21 minutes ago

Yeah, at the core it's just a hierarchy of directories/markdown files with a WYSIWYG/autorender web editor but then they kept adding more and more fancy stuff : )

[–] frischkaesbagett@feddit.org 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Lol

I just researched PWAs with this article.

PWAs aren’t a silver bullet, but when applied in the right contexts, they continue to offer undeniable benefits

Now you are telling me silverbullet(.md)

provides a PWA

[–] clif@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

Hehe. So PWAs aren't a silver bullet but Silverbullet can be a PWA.

Is that one of those "all squares are rectangles but not all rectangles are squares" type things?

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