Looking for an app for note-taking with the following features:
- No ads ever
- No nudges to upgrade, subscribe, unlock premium features, or any bullshit like that.
- No recurring fee (ok paying up-front for the app)
- Clean, simple interface
That’s it. I don’t need multimedia, multi-device syncing, cloud storage. I just need a place to write down ideas and grocery lists.
Recommendations?
Obsidian
- text files stored in markdown on your device
- no premium service to unlock features. You can buy sync and publishing if you want to, but there are no nags to purchase them.
- you can roll your own sync solution you wanted to. Its just text files. Same goes with publishing.
- community plugins if you want to extend it
- desktop clients and ios clients
- free forever
Love obsidian. For something as simple as what OP is asking for though I just use Google Keep
There is Google Keep.
But if you want to degoogle, well I’m reading the thread. I’ve heard of Joplin (spelling?).
I like quillpad from f-droid as my Google keep alternative. Pretty identical to keep aside from the online syncing.
I see quillpad has Nextcloud syncing. This is a good start. And I think it’s possible to sync using Syncthing too.
I used to use Keep Notes by Google. Did the job pretty well but obviously there should be better FOSS & privacy-respecting apps: NoNonesense Notes!
If you liked Google Keep, you might want to check out Quillpad
Not bad, but it looks like it doesn’t support collaborative editing which I frequently use on Keep.
Notepad++ if you just need to type something up.
Trilium Notes, Logseq, or Obsidian.md if you’re looking for something more advanced.
Self-host something like bookstack, docuwiki, mediawiki, or wikijs for something more… permanent? I wouldn’t really use these to jot something down real quick but I do put a lot of finalized? notes in a wikijs docker image I host.
Obsidian.md. It runs on markdown files, so even if you decide you don’t like Obsidian, you’ve still got all the files. It’s super easy to sync with SyncThing or probably Google Drive or whatever. It’s free, and the are a ton of plugins for it. Peri sure there’s a Lemmy community for it around, too.
Quillpad is like an open source Google Keep and you can use Nextcloud to sync it all.
Ideally, I’d want a way to import my Google Keep lists into it then I could bin Keep for good.
Do I need Nextcloud to synchronize? I like the interface but I don’t really want to use Nextcloud.
At the moment, it is Nextcloud but I believe the plan is to give more options.
Yeah quillpad is great!
Markor.
Then I also add my notes / docs folder to syncthing, and have it on every device.
I found Obsidian good, and Markor the best, on Android.
Notion has been pretty great so far; I recently moved there from Evernote. Only downside (for me) is that it’s based on electron.
Also no offline mode which can be frustrating.
https://www.f-droid.org/en/packages/com.simplemobiletools.notes.pro/
This and others by simple are exactly that.
Notes. Gallery.Dialer. keyboard. Clock.
No ads. Absolutely zero unnecessary permissions. No telemetry or sneaky internet connections.
According to this article, and others I’ve seen pen and paper is still best.
.txt file + syncthing
For true rebels: pen and paper
Google keep works fine for me.
I like QuickEdit