Hey y’all. I’ve been testing a bunch of Note taking solutions and nothing seems to check off what I want and need.
I want a simple interface (both for list view and note editor/view), preferably similar to Google Keep, but a regular list is fine as well.
Key features:
A. being able to drag and drop re-order checkbox lists.
e.g.
- [ ] item 1
- [ ] item 2
- [x] item 4
- [x] item 3
I’d like to be able to just drag and drop the above to sort things correctly.
B. E2EE at rest.
C. CTRL+F inside the note view/edit!!
Honestly, the only functionality I truly want is A. But most of the solutions I found are either proprietary or can’t do it.
Self hosted options I’ve tried:
- Joplin (can’t do A; UX is not great)
- Standard notes (A + C is gated by their self hosted premium subscription; I don’t mind paying for my apps, but the prices are ridiculous)
- Silverbullet.md (can’t do A)
- Quillpad (very similar to Google Keep and can do A, but has terrible file syncing, not E2EE)
Notesnook looks almost as insane as Standard Notes to self host (mimicing AWS stack locally is nuts). Has anyone tried Notesnook yet? I don’t want to spend another afternoon setting something heavy up only to find that the feature I want is gated by a heavy $.
Any suggestions or recommendations would be greatly appreciated!
EDIT: Woops! I am looking to use the notes app on both Android and Web/Desktop Linux. Preferably an open source solution.
You must log in or # to comment.
I spent several years looking for the perfect selfhosted solution to this, but ultimately I realized an offline solution was just going to be better. So I started using Obsidian which is as simple or complex as you want with no paywall.
Some of the self hosted solutions I’ve tried were:
I settled on obsidian really quickly as well. And now sync thing + tailscale + obsidian means I am done experimenting and things just work.
Unless you’re using syncthing on Android which is a nightmare
You can also get obsidian to sync using the guide here: https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/s/GegPIcBjFg. It’s really good.
I use Logseq with ToDoList plugin to handle task list. Logseq is similar to obsidian but open-source. And to syncronize notes among devices, I use syncthing. No need to selfhost.
I use Tasks.org with caldav (Radicale) on android and thunderbird on pc, would that work?
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.tasks
I see tasks.org supports etesync, which encrypts data. I have never used it though
I see 🙂
I used emacs org-mode before. Can do a lot of stuff on PC, but mobile experience was lacking. And learning curve is crazy
I am currently testing out logseq + syncthing. I don’t reorder things much anymore though
Good luck!
I use notesnook but I don’t self host, just the app locally. It has an option to insert a task list into the note, and that has drag and drop reordering. It also encrypts at rest, and has text search. Hope that helps your decision.
Thanks! I had tested Notesnook with the official server. It worked the way I want. but it seems their self host server doesn’t have that feature. Not obviously tho. Which is really weird, since I’m using the same client app (where I assumed this functionality would live).
That’s a very specific and interesting exclusion, weird. Well sorry dude, best of luck finding something that works.
Hi quaff!
The app I use for this purpose is called Notally, on android. It supports reordering the checkboxes, but it doesn’t do find in page or sync to web (although it can do backup /restore – I sync the folder with nextcloud and I can access the text files)
That said if you try it, you might love how simple it is and use it for something!
Triliumnext can do everything you want. Its pretty damn powerful
Whoa. This actually works pretty close. Although, I am not seeing the ability to drag and drop re-order list items. Which is the big feature I want and need.
I am seeing in their github issues that CKEditor doesn’t support it. Thanks for the suggestion though!
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
I suppose I should have mentioned more directly, I’d prefer if it’s an open source solution.
deleted by creator
Thanks.
I just set up Notesnook lol I can drag and drop reorder list items (checkbox list) on the official server, but not when connected to my own… Same exact mobile app (just different server)… The fact that Notesnook and Standard Notes both claim to be open source, but don’t share all of their code with the open source world. Maybe it’s gated by env vars. Who knows. I have half a mind to give Obsidian a chance if it can do what I want.
deleted by creator
What I want is being able to hand draw something quickly in my notes, what’s the app that has text and drawings?
Have you considered Kanban apps? All of them should support A+C. I’ve used Wekan and Kanboard. Hope this helps your searching!
Obsidian and good ol’ paper and pen. (or epaper). The paper I use is on bullet jpurnal style.
Docmost?
it might be worth watching this PR for memos, which adds encryption at rest. I can’t vouch for it, as I didn’t read the code but I do use memos and might consider this if it’s merged.
https://github.com/usememos/memos/pull/5130
This is not E2EE, but I don’t think E2EE is that important if you’re hosting your own data. And clients can use TLS for encryption in transit.
Can’t drag and drop to reorder lists. But it looks cool!
Not sure of your specific needs, but I feel that self hosting (i.e. setting up a proper server) is unnecessary. Just pick a local first program and use it with syncthing.
The usual trio (which may be overkill) are Obsidian (admittedly not open source), Trillium, and logseq.
Notesnook. And if you like it, buy the pro ASAP since they’re raising the prices this week.
I self-host Notesnook and found it easy to set up. Been using it as my main note-taking app for years now and I’m really happy with it.
Are you able to drag & drop to reorder checkbox list items in notes? 🙏
Yes, if you use the “task list” block. You can also have checkbox bullet points but I don’t use them, not really sure what the use-case for those are when you can just use the task list.
