I don’t think this satisfies your use cases perfectly but an interesting solution for sure. I prefer note taking in vscode using the patricklee.vsnotes extension. Here’s a write up on it at c/vscode. You can commit your note changes to a git repo on github or other elsewhere, giving you access from many different places.
I have manual commands creating notes and symlinked notes dirs and a global gitignore for something similar but I namespace per repo which is much more convenient for me.
No web editor though—well, they have a tutorial web app that I think you can force into editing your markdown files, but that’s not what it’s meant for.
I use markdown files + Nextcloud for synchronization. What I like about it is that I can use any markdown editor. Currently I use Nextcloup app on mobile and Pulsar or Nextcloud Web UI on desktop.
I’ve moved from OneNote and Evernote about two years ago to Obsidian. I tried out (and still do look at) all the note-keeping apps and Obsidian beats hands down. For me, the major determiner was that it saves to plain text files that I can just transfer into any future app easily. The other aspect is that plug-ins enable you to tailor how Obsidian functions to your own working processes.
I’ve found keeping Obsidian in sync over iCloud pretty good as long as you keep the number of plug-ins on phone and iPad limited.
Obsidian is great except for the times when you can’t sync your notes to a local file system (like on a work computer). Does anyone know of a self-hosted web app that’s effective for reading/editing the markdown files?
Does this work similar to Syncthing where it syncs the markdown files to the local file system? If so, that’s definitely helpful, but I’m trying to avoid saving/storing my personal notes on my work laptop. I’d rather access them through a web interface and avoid local storage (in certain use cases). Another example is where people can’t install custom software on work computers, so it’s helpful to have a non-Obsidian way to edit the files for those times.
It just stores them to the folder you choose as a vault for your notes. I have seen people put their vaults on a USB stick which they encrypt for security.
No web version of Obsidian as far as I know. Have you tried SimpleNote?
Not being able to install local apps is a valid issue.
But if you are really concerned about a work laptop, I wouldn’t trust something just because it’s web based. Depending on the company, they can access that data if they really wanted to just alomst as easily as a file on disk.
I host a copy of Obsidian on my server, and I can access it through a reverse proxy. There isn’t any authentication though, so you have to use something like Authelia.
I ditched Evernote and moved to Standard Notes. It’s everywhere for me, iOS, windows, Linux and MacOS and it has a web client which is consistent with all versions of the app. My only gripe is easy image embedding. But I’m living without it.
huge obsidian.md fan here. it doesn’t have a web editor, but since your notes really are just markdown files it’s easy to mix and match with other markdown editors. for quick notes i like to drop into markor on my phone rather than obsidian, since they’re compatible and obsidian takes longer to load due to my love of plugins
i use syncthing to get my vault onto all my devices on the fly, plus a git repo for longer-term archival. i believe syncthing doesn’t play so well on ios due to system limitations, however, so using the official “obsidian sync” service might be a better bet in your case?
I haven’t found a good replacement.
I use a combination of syncthing (files), paperless-ngx (pdf), markdown notes (text, lists), memos (todos), radicale (caldav todos), wallabag (web note/archive), images folders and my mobile phone apps (photos/gallery, zettel notes, paperless-ngx app, syncthing).
A couple of years ago Roam Research was trending, I read some articles and reviews about it and I liked the concepts it introduced. I looked for a free, open source self-hosted cross-platform alternative to Roam and found Trilium.
Its native on Windows, Mac, and Linux, while it doesn’t have any Native Mobile apps, the webapp works on great on mobile and can be installed to your phone launcher as a PWA.
It does everything I want, and I use it a lot. A bunch of my colleagues have been recently moving from Evernote or Notable, over to Obsidian, and I understand Obsidian is the new hot thing, but I think I’ll stick with Trilium.
My advice would be to try out a bunch. Note taking is surprisingly nuanced and personal preferences play a major role. Try each one for a week or two, and see which best matches your workflow and your requirements.
I also useTrilium but I have to say that the mobile experience is pretty poor. You loose the ability to add labels and most of the desktop features are stripped away. If all you need is to simple read and write, then the mobile web app may suffice. There is also a bug where many android keyboards cause typed characters to duplicate (a ckeditor bug)
I’m still sticking with Trilium because the desktop app is super. I’m definitely looking forward to a mobile app at some point (its bound to be developed by someone!)
I agree with that, mostly. However I find I don’t really ever need to add or edit content on mobile. I only use the web app on mobile to lookup something when my laptop isn’t at hand. There is the official Trilium Sender app for Android that allows you to forward text, pictures, links, etc from your device to your Trilium server, then you organise the content when you get back to your laptop. I find that fills any gaps in functionality. I hate brain dumping or editing long or complex paragraphs of text on my mobile anyway.
I currently use primarily Logseq with a little Obsidian because it’s just a really pleasant text editor and Zettlr for long form writing and research. The nice think about keeping it all Makrdown is that I can use any of them depending on what features/UI I need.
Logseq does have the web editor but it’s more of a demo (it’s literally called demo.logseq.com) but it gives you the full vanilla feature set as long as you connect a local directory. I use Logseq Sync just because I was paying to support the team anyway, and it’s worked very well so far. Just ran into an issue where my laptop with most of my notes broke and so I made a portable version of the app to put on a USB and work on a library computer and it ran and connected to my Logseq Sync remote graph surprisingly seamlessly.
What kinda notes are you looking to take? If you want something real simple but works across all devices, is super fast and with great search, try Simplenote. If you want something with more power, I’ll echo what others here have suggested and say Obsidian. Don’t do notion.
Basically this https://www.notion.so/product/ai. AI hype train, won’t be long til this is default (if it isn’t already) and they steal all your notes/writing to feed LLMs and monetize your work without you knowing.
Weirdly, I’m more or less okay with this. Hope someone gets my ballin’ Teriyaki sauce recipe
Kidding aside usually this type of thing bothers me, for example I’m actively trying to find alternatives to Google services. But I feel like I’m not giving up that much information here.
I just want a notes app that is intuitive and pleasant to use, and I really like notion’s UI
You do you then! I tried notion but switched to obsidian because I found Notions web UI awfully slow given I just wanted to muck around with plaintext and markdown files. It wasn’t a bad product though. They’re popular for some good reasons too.
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I don’t think this satisfies your use cases perfectly but an interesting solution for sure. I prefer note taking in vscode using the patricklee.vsnotes extension. Here’s a write up on it at c/vscode. You can commit your note changes to a git repo on github or other elsewhere, giving you access from many different places.
I have manual commands creating notes and symlinked notes dirs and a global gitignore for something similar but I namespace per repo which is much more convenient for me.
Well that’s interesting! But I don’t write see how that would work. Mind explaining a bit more? Perhaps s little demo with notes from two workspaces?
Logseq + Syncthing?
No web editor though—well, they have a tutorial web app that I think you can force into editing your markdown files, but that’s not what it’s meant for.
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I use markdown files + Nextcloud for synchronization. What I like about it is that I can use any markdown editor. Currently I use Nextcloup app on mobile and Pulsar or Nextcloud Web UI on desktop.
Joplin for notes, Floccus for Bookmarks.
Thanks for Floccus suggestions. It says it syncs over Nextcloud Bookmarks, does that mean you wouldn’t need a dedicated app except for Nextcloud?
obsidian.md
2nd vote for Obsidian.
I’ve moved from OneNote and Evernote about two years ago to Obsidian. I tried out (and still do look at) all the note-keeping apps and Obsidian beats hands down. For me, the major determiner was that it saves to plain text files that I can just transfer into any future app easily. The other aspect is that plug-ins enable you to tailor how Obsidian functions to your own working processes.
I’ve found keeping Obsidian in sync over iCloud pretty good as long as you keep the number of plug-ins on phone and iPad limited.
Obsidian is great except for the times when you can’t sync your notes to a local file system (like on a work computer). Does anyone know of a self-hosted web app that’s effective for reading/editing the markdown files?
Have you tried Remote Save plugin?
I use it to sync from a webdav on my NAS at home to work computer if I ever need it. It also syncs from services like OneDrive, Dropbox, S3 etc.
There are other versions of similar syncing.
Does this work similar to Syncthing where it syncs the markdown files to the local file system? If so, that’s definitely helpful, but I’m trying to avoid saving/storing my personal notes on my work laptop. I’d rather access them through a web interface and avoid local storage (in certain use cases). Another example is where people can’t install custom software on work computers, so it’s helpful to have a non-Obsidian way to edit the files for those times.
It just stores them to the folder you choose as a vault for your notes. I have seen people put their vaults on a USB stick which they encrypt for security.
No web version of Obsidian as far as I know. Have you tried SimpleNote?
Not being able to install local apps is a valid issue. But if you are really concerned about a work laptop, I wouldn’t trust something just because it’s web based. Depending on the company, they can access that data if they really wanted to just alomst as easily as a file on disk.
I host a copy of Obsidian on my server, and I can access it through a reverse proxy. There isn’t any authentication though, so you have to use something like Authelia.
Do you mean that you use a VNC connection to access your server UI? Or is there a way to host Obsidian as a true web app?
It’s VNC, but it’s included in the docker image I use, so nothing extra other than adding authentication in front of it.
I ditched Evernote and moved to Standard Notes. It’s everywhere for me, iOS, windows, Linux and MacOS and it has a web client which is consistent with all versions of the app. My only gripe is easy image embedding. But I’m living without it.
huge obsidian.md fan here. it doesn’t have a web editor, but since your notes really are just markdown files it’s easy to mix and match with other markdown editors. for quick notes i like to drop into markor on my phone rather than obsidian, since they’re compatible and obsidian takes longer to load due to my love of plugins
i use syncthing to get my vault onto all my devices on the fly, plus a git repo for longer-term archival. i believe syncthing doesn’t play so well on ios due to system limitations, however, so using the official “obsidian sync” service might be a better bet in your case?
I use Trilium, it just scratched the need I had which obsidian and logseq couldn’t somehow.
Yes, same for me!
I haven’t found a good replacement. I use a combination of syncthing (files), paperless-ngx (pdf), markdown notes (text, lists), memos (todos), radicale (caldav todos), wallabag (web note/archive), images folders and my mobile phone apps (photos/gallery, zettel notes, paperless-ngx app, syncthing).
I enjoyed Evernote back in the day, but yeah…
Personally, I’m just using Simplenote. Just the other day there was this post.
Another vote for Trilium.
A couple of years ago Roam Research was trending, I read some articles and reviews about it and I liked the concepts it introduced. I looked for a free, open source self-hosted cross-platform alternative to Roam and found Trilium.
Its native on Windows, Mac, and Linux, while it doesn’t have any Native Mobile apps, the webapp works on great on mobile and can be installed to your phone launcher as a PWA.
It does everything I want, and I use it a lot. A bunch of my colleagues have been recently moving from Evernote or Notable, over to Obsidian, and I understand Obsidian is the new hot thing, but I think I’ll stick with Trilium.
My advice would be to try out a bunch. Note taking is surprisingly nuanced and personal preferences play a major role. Try each one for a week or two, and see which best matches your workflow and your requirements.
+1 for Trilium, been using it for about a year now and I like it over the other solutions I’ve tried: Joplin, Obsidian, and logseq.
Don’t forget about Trlium’s white board feature! I didn’t know it existed until recently - create a new “canvas” style note to get it started
I also useTrilium but I have to say that the mobile experience is pretty poor. You loose the ability to add labels and most of the desktop features are stripped away. If all you need is to simple read and write, then the mobile web app may suffice. There is also a bug where many android keyboards cause typed characters to duplicate (a ckeditor bug)
I’m still sticking with Trilium because the desktop app is super. I’m definitely looking forward to a mobile app at some point (its bound to be developed by someone!)
I agree with that, mostly. However I find I don’t really ever need to add or edit content on mobile. I only use the web app on mobile to lookup something when my laptop isn’t at hand. There is the official Trilium Sender app for Android that allows you to forward text, pictures, links, etc from your device to your Trilium server, then you organise the content when you get back to your laptop. I find that fills any gaps in functionality. I hate brain dumping or editing long or complex paragraphs of text on my mobile anyway.
Great point about this being such a personal preference thing. I was thinking that as I was reading through all these passionate replies.
I currently use primarily Logseq with a little Obsidian because it’s just a really pleasant text editor and Zettlr for long form writing and research. The nice think about keeping it all Makrdown is that I can use any of them depending on what features/UI I need.
Logseq does have the web editor but it’s more of a demo (it’s literally called demo.logseq.com) but it gives you the full vanilla feature set as long as you connect a local directory. I use Logseq Sync just because I was paying to support the team anyway, and it’s worked very well so far. Just ran into an issue where my laptop with most of my notes broke and so I made a portable version of the app to put on a USB and work on a library computer and it ran and connected to my Logseq Sync remote graph surprisingly seamlessly.
What kinda notes are you looking to take? If you want something real simple but works across all devices, is super fast and with great search, try Simplenote. If you want something with more power, I’ll echo what others here have suggested and say Obsidian. Don’t do notion.
What’s wrong with notion?
Basically this https://www.notion.so/product/ai. AI hype train, won’t be long til this is default (if it isn’t already) and they steal all your notes/writing to feed LLMs and monetize your work without you knowing.
Weirdly, I’m more or less okay with this. Hope someone gets my ballin’ Teriyaki sauce recipe
Kidding aside usually this type of thing bothers me, for example I’m actively trying to find alternatives to Google services. But I feel like I’m not giving up that much information here.
I just want a notes app that is intuitive and pleasant to use, and I really like notion’s UI
You do you then! I tried notion but switched to obsidian because I found Notions web UI awfully slow given I just wanted to muck around with plaintext and markdown files. It wasn’t a bad product though. They’re popular for some good reasons too.
My biggest reason for moving off Notion (and to Obsidian) was lack of offline availability. This has left me in a bind multiple times.
Actually you are right, this is really annoying. Its also quite a “heavy” app, takes quite a while to start up, and I have to re-login constantly.
I used Evernote, Simplenote and various other ones and settled for Clickup for now, unless it gets enshittificated, too.
It mainly markets as a productivity app with todo lists, but also has a great document and note management system builtin.