I’m currently running a Synology Notestation with around 8 clients and while it mostly works, sometimes images don’t load correctly(or doesn’t at all) and has failed on me one too many times.
I’m looking for another notes app similar to DS notes.
1- Rich Text Editor
2- Self hosted
3- Has multiple users enabled
4- Native Android app
Nice to have:
1- offline mode
2- FOSS
3- Has an active community
I host files for my entire family and they rely on notes for all their important documents. So it has to be simple to use.
I have tried benotes, but not having a Native Android app makes it hard for normies to use it. I also tried Joplin, but it’s single user only.
Ahh yes, the well known dilemma of “data portability”, also know as “If you can’t leave with your stuff, you might as well stay with us”. That’s something I’d definitively recommend you look out for in the future, here, I’ll make the first step for you [for Joplin]:
Joplin stores all your notes on your device and allows you to export them in several nonproprietary formats, including markdown and HTML, which are human readable and directly importable by generally all open-source note apps. Joplin being open-source helps too, as it means that anyone can directly add new ways of exporting notes into different formats should you ever want to switch. Joplin is not perfect since it still changes your files during usage, but one could argue that it’s well within reason since it adds several features on top that the raw markdown format doesn’t have.
As for your problem at hand, imma be honest chief, it’s not going to be perfect. You have two options, but both of those options will require that you manually adjust some notes, that’s just a consequence of today’s world in which different note apps are built completely different and there not being a universally agreed on format that can easily contain all the contents of a single note in one file. Synology using their weird format doesn’t make it easier either so you’re going to have to put in the work to break out of that file format first. This is true regardless if you ultimately decide to switch to Obsidian, SilverBullet, MoeMemos, Nextcloud Notes, you name it. With Joplin at least, you’ll be able to automate the import of 98,9% of all your notes, but even that still means that you’ll have to manually adjust some notes. Here are your options:
Automate the process:
There are several scripts that automatically take the Sinology .NSX export you just created, then they translate all it’s content into .md files that you can then easily import in one-click into Joplin. Here are the ones I’ve found:
A customized version of the above script “to export notes/images in markdown + Front Matter (Directory) that can be [more] easily imported into Joplin.”
This script might be worth it if the above scripts don’t work. Some people had issues with this script, but managed to mostly fix them. See here.
Copy-paste each note:
This sounds tedious at first, but once you get in the flow, it isn’t that bad. It isn’t doable if you have 10’000+ notes, but in my case, I got it in a few hours. Remember that even if it takes you one hour a day for a week to move them all, since you’re switching to a nonproprietary format you only have to do this once and then you’re set for life. This person on the Synology forum had your same problem and ended up choosing this option.
Lastly, my personal experience: I moved from Google Keep to Joplin and I know nothing about scripts or code, so I copy-pasted most of my notes manually into Joplin, downloaded the attachments and added them manually, then reformatted the notes manually. It was a pain in the ass. But nowhere near as painful as importing 1000, 20’000, hell possibly 100’000 notes that will probably accumulate in the years to come. Importing them in a different note app would be straight up inhuman or at the very least impossible without a script, so I’d personally recommend you and your family make the switch to a more flexible file format right now, while you still can.
I finally got it working with some issues. But working.
I think I was lagging on moving because it was super annoying proprietary file format. I finally decided to bite the bullet because I was looking for a specific image that I uploaded a day ago and it’s not loading.
The main thing issue I had with the 3 options you provided had an issue in Windows.
2- https://github.com/xinbindai/Note-Station-to-Joplin This one is the one that actually worked but only in Linux. In Windows it completely bugs out. I had to install Mint on a VM and install python3 to be able to run this. Unfortunately, it too had problems. It was not able to process any files larger than 250 MB and completely ignored files like .tar.gz and even .pdf. I’m just going through my notes and manually doing it.
Overall I have the majority of my files and I’m hoping I don’t have to move from Joplin for awhile. But I’m glad to know that its easier to move if I need to.
Thanks for the help internet friend. I appreciate you!
Damn, you’ve definitely put in the work. Thank you for providing such a detailed feedback, meaning that thanks to you this is now the most up to date resource on how to move from Note Station to Joplin for future peeps that have your same problem!
I think you can rest assured that you’ve made the best choice in moving to a more flexible format now, regardless of any future “Joplin vs. Obsidian vs. whatever” discussions that might come up. Because if you’re annoyed with Note Station now, I can absolutely guarantee that moving decades worth of .nsx notes for all your family, potentially manually, would have been hell on earth in the future.
One last experiment, now that you can: Let’s say you wanna move from Joplin to Obsidian tomorrow. These are the #1 and #2 results when searching for “Import Joplin to Obsidian”. Just take a look. It’s almost comically easy compared to now, so I’d say bright times are ahead :)
Thanks for the feedback. I finally got all my files over. I got past the 250mg limit by going into the user admin on the server and changing the default to 1tb(the max). The devs says that it’s a limitation of postgre but it seems to be working.
A simple way to find all my missing files was to search in Joplin for"NOT FOUND" and all the notes with missing files show up. Just went one by one reuploading the files.
One of the highlights of Notestation is that it’s designed for normies. It uses Rich text editor.
My first client(my wife) on Joplin is already complaining because the android client is markdowns only. She is semi ok with it because the desktop client is a fake Rich text editor wrapper.
Obsidian is 100% markdowns. Not going to fly with the rest of the family.
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Ahh yes, the well known dilemma of “data portability”, also know as “If you can’t leave with your stuff, you might as well stay with us”. That’s something I’d definitively recommend you look out for in the future, here, I’ll make the first step for you [for Joplin]:
As for your problem at hand, imma be honest chief, it’s not going to be perfect. You have two options, but both of those options will require that you manually adjust some notes, that’s just a consequence of today’s world in which different note apps are built completely different and there not being a universally agreed on format that can easily contain all the contents of a single note in one file. Synology using their weird format doesn’t make it easier either so you’re going to have to put in the work to break out of that file format first. This is true regardless if you ultimately decide to switch to Obsidian, SilverBullet, MoeMemos, Nextcloud Notes, you name it. With Joplin at least, you’ll be able to automate the import of 98,9% of all your notes, but even that still means that you’ll have to manually adjust some notes. Here are your options:
Automate the process:
Copy-paste each note:
Lastly, my personal experience: I moved from Google Keep to Joplin and I know nothing about scripts or code, so I copy-pasted most of my notes manually into Joplin, downloaded the attachments and added them manually, then reformatted the notes manually. It was a pain in the ass. But nowhere near as painful as importing 1000, 20’000, hell possibly 100’000 notes that will probably accumulate in the years to come. Importing them in a different note app would be straight up inhuman or at the very least impossible without a script, so I’d personally recommend you and your family make the switch to a more flexible file format right now, while you still can.
Good luck!
Thank you!!!
I finally got it working with some issues. But working.
I think I was lagging on moving because it was super annoying proprietary file format. I finally decided to bite the bullet because I was looking for a specific image that I uploaded a day ago and it’s not loading.
The main thing issue I had with the 3 options you provided had an issue in Windows.
1 https://github.com/Maboroshy/Note-Station-to-markdown/ This had major issue in Windows and Linux. For some reason, it didn’t process any of the files correctly. I don’t recommend using this.
2- https://github.com/xinbindai/Note-Station-to-Joplin This one is the one that actually worked but only in Linux. In Windows it completely bugs out. I had to install Mint on a VM and install python3 to be able to run this. Unfortunately, it too had problems. It was not able to process any files larger than 250 MB and completely ignored files like .tar.gz and even .pdf. I’m just going through my notes and manually doing it.
3- https://github.com/andreas-vester/notestation-to-joplin This git is completely abandoned. This requires a github api(joplin-api) and the file has been deleted.
Overall I have the majority of my files and I’m hoping I don’t have to move from Joplin for awhile. But I’m glad to know that its easier to move if I need to.
Thanks for the help internet friend. I appreciate you!
Damn, you’ve definitely put in the work. Thank you for providing such a detailed feedback, meaning that thanks to you this is now the most up to date resource on how to move from Note Station to Joplin for future peeps that have your same problem!
I think you can rest assured that you’ve made the best choice in moving to a more flexible format now, regardless of any future “Joplin vs. Obsidian vs. whatever” discussions that might come up. Because if you’re annoyed with Note Station now, I can absolutely guarantee that moving decades worth of .nsx notes for all your family, potentially manually, would have been hell on earth in the future.
One last experiment, now that you can: Let’s say you wanna move from Joplin to Obsidian tomorrow. These are the #1 and #2 results when searching for “Import Joplin to Obsidian”. Just take a look. It’s almost comically easy compared to now, so I’d say bright times are ahead :)
Thanks for the feedback. I finally got all my files over. I got past the 250mg limit by going into the user admin on the server and changing the default to 1tb(the max). The devs says that it’s a limitation of postgre but it seems to be working.
A simple way to find all my missing files was to search in Joplin for"NOT FOUND" and all the notes with missing files show up. Just went one by one reuploading the files.
One of the highlights of Notestation is that it’s designed for normies. It uses Rich text editor.
My first client(my wife) on Joplin is already complaining because the android client is markdowns only. She is semi ok with it because the desktop client is a fake Rich text editor wrapper.
Obsidian is 100% markdowns. Not going to fly with the rest of the family.
Thanks again for the help!!