Welcome! This is a community for all those who are interested in protecting their privacy.
PS: Don't be a smartass and try to game the system, we'll know if you're breaking the rules when we see it!
cross-posted from: https://fosstodon.org/users/notesnook/statuses/114059550980301173
Choose your warrior:
- @StandardNotes
- @notesnook@fosstodon.org π‘οΈ
- @joplinapp
All of these are open source, private and encrypted. Of course, Notesnook is still the best π
#notetaking, #privacy, #security, #notesnook, #opensource
Where's Zettlr & LogSeq ?
I'm a happy Obsidian user. It's not open source but really good.
And with Obsidian I still own my files, which are just in markdown and can be read by literally any other program.
Same. Although I'd love a fully open source, non-electron alternative.
I don't know about electron but I tried Logseq because Obsidians license didn't work for me. It's open source and markdown files too
Also now free for commercial use!
Seconded. I'm not terribly happy it's closed-source, but the team seems quite ethical in their approach to software development and user privacy, and for anyone not in the know about Obsidian, the big highlights that still make it worth it for me are:
[[Name of Note]] (shows as Name of Note in reading mode) so you can easily structure your knowledge, and build relationships between notesI am a happy MediaWiki user and it's FOSS.
I'm also a big fan of Obsidian.
Shoutout to Logseq (AGPL licensed) https://logseq.com/
Found it was perfect for my ADHD.
What makes it different in regard to your ADHD?
Unlike every other note app Iβve ever used, you donβt need to organize things manually or manage an organizational hierarchy (like folders, etc). Thatβs where I always fall over in other apps, eventually. Organization happens automatically in Logseq.
It gives you a new, date-stamped journal entry everyday, and you jot down notes in that. You can link to other pages just by adding a hashtag or using 2 square brackets around some text. Each link/hashtag is automatically given its own page, and if you visit it, youβll see all your mentions of this page, neatly organized in a chronological order by the date. So think about daily work on a project/goal, or anything around a specific topic, all of it is automatically organized for you.
Under the hood, all the links form a graph and Logseq is backed by a graph database, so it visualizes this graph for you and gives you some powerful querying tools on top of it too.
this is why I abused the sitcky notes app on windows, no structure at all, just open one and type what you need
I chose Nextcloud Notes because I already have it anyway, and it's good enough for me.
Just a friendly reminder that if you use an external nextcloud, that it is most likely unencrypted. The recommendations in the post body (or my own, like using https://cryptpad.fr/) are probably a better choice if you are not self hosting nextcloud yourself.
However if you are self hosting it, it should be fine π KIM these are just recommendations :)
Jup, the main requirement for a notes app was that I was already selfhosting it :3
Just checking, glad you enjoy it :D
I like Joplin, and Iβll use Standard Notes as soon as I donβt have to pay extra, Iβm already paying Proton.
What's everyone's goto app for sharing notes with others? I'm looking for something to share grocery lists and whatnot with my SO, and I want as little friction as possible.
I have some self-hosted services, but I didn't like NextCloud notes and one or two others I've tried. It doesn't need to be fancy, but I would very much like checkboxes that I can... check. I don't need users, and honestly, no user accounts could be super nice, just attach a URL and go for it.
So yeah, slight preference for self-hostable services, but I'm fine with anything, provided it's reasonably privacy friendly (nobody else needs to know the quantity or size of our sex toys lol).
Memos might work, I had it running for a week or two and it works well, very Google Keep like if that's what you're after. Edit woops, forgot the link lol https://github.com/usememos/memos
I don't understand why these Google alternatives don't lean hard on actually replacing Google's services.
Myself as an example; if Notesnook had collaboration, I'd switch in a heartbeat.
Thr main use-case for an app like this for me is in things like grocery lists, to-do lists etc, all of which are impossible or annoying to do with Notesnook.
For general offline notes that need to be encrypted there are other solutions I'd rather use. I'd like if I could just use one app for it.
Me and my partner would HAPPILY pay for an app to get out of Google'S clutches.
There's money on the table, but they ain't counting it yet.
Why?
Is this really true about Keep? I mean, I know it's a Google product, but is it really that insecure? I've never heard much negative stuff about it.
By merit of it being owned by google, it is insecure.
Your notes are (or at least were 4 years ago when I last used it) stored in plaintext on your gmail under the notes tag. You don't hear negative stuff about it because 99% of people don't use notes for sensitive info, or even things they care about. It is also not a high profile app like messaging apps. It is just something everyone assumes is completely fine.
Google wants my shopping list and honey do lists that's shared between my wife and I? Ok enjoy, wanna come help paint my office?
I have multiple notes apps but one thing that's prevented me from ditching keep is that I have dozens of old notes which I'd like to transfer to the replacement app.
I'm pretty tech savvy but have had a look and couldn't find an easy way to export my notes from keep. Anyone have any advice?
Obsidian imports keep notes and does a good job. Its not open source but does store locally as markdown files, and is the only notes app I've tried that I really like so far.
I've spent a lot of time manually moving my notes into Obsidian. Not done yet but it's quite therapeutic when I sit down to do and I rediscover a lot of cool things I decided to jot down years ago
I use cryptpad (https://cryptpad.fr/) for writing my notes, or storing them directly to the cloud
How does cryptpad rate? I've shared docs with others where neither of us has them saved to an account, just accessed with a link. Seems pretty private that way, other than maybe someone could see the IP address traffic? How's it if you have an account with them?
Switched to !joplinapp@sopuli.xyz awhile ago and I'm happy and content.
It has some rough edges but the UI is nice and it has all I need.
Can someone please explain what is meant by being a few clicks away from notes being public or deleted?
Probably referring to the fact that, since a company hosts your notes, the notes are at their mercy.
They could delete them or release them. Accidentally or on purpose.
My guess they mean that you or someone on the app side can either purposely or accidentally make your notes public or delete them.
Sadly there still isn't a good alternative for real-time (live) collaboration
Onlyoffice works pretty great for that, and Libre office will have that shortly as well.
How are their android apps though? As far as I'm concerned, that is the difference between a word processor and a note application
Libreoffice suggests to use Collabora Office for mobile, since it's based on Libreoffice.
Onlyoffice offers both an Android and iOS version.
I just store my notes locally. Using QOwnNotes currently as I looked at a list of FOSS options and picked what I liked the look of. Manage my own backups already so just included the notes.
After looking at Notesnook, I don't really understand the difference. It has features that Google Keep lacks, but if the company were to shut down their servers I would lose anything not stored locally, right? If I delete a file on one device it's presumably removed from the others upon sync, so couldn't they remotely delete my files from any connected device if they wanted to?
I don't understand encryption in the first place, so this is probably an ignorant question, but can't the company that runs the software choose to release the encryption keys anyway? My understanding is that encryption only protects my data from interception by a third party.
Assuming I'm not wrong on those points, isn't it better to only store files locally, and to share them either on physical media or via a service which won't store the files long-term? Is the issue of leaked or lost data not inherent in any hosting service?
Sorry if everything I'm saying is really stupid. I'm not trying to troll or argue in favor of Google services or anything. I just don't understand how to evaluate any given service's trustworthiness or safety.
e: I just thought to check whether Google Keep is encrypted and the internet says it is. Now I extra don't get it. Very confused.
Regarding encryption, some companies hold the encryption keys, but many, including Notesnook, use end-to-end encryption. This means the encryption happens on your device and the keys are generated from your password and stored locally rather than on the company's servers.
In that scenario the company never has access to the keys in the first place, so they wouldnβt be able to release them even if they wanted to.
Google Keep on the other hand does not use end-to-end encryption for your notes. While it does use encryption to protect data both during transmission and while stored on its servers, Google retains the ability to access the content of your notes. This means that although your data is safeguarded against external threats, Google's internal systems can still access your information.
The best note taking tool for privacy is one of those physical journals with a lock on it.
I started out using obsidian and it's pretty decent, but honestly Joplin is my favorite so far.
I tried logseq and absolutely fucking hated it.
I have a Synology NAS which has the DS Note app which gives you self-hosted cloud notes on mobile. It's not the best app but it's better than google
I found no replacement for notion that uses this block structure. I love it, but notion sucks so much aaaaaaassss. I wanna move, but every export feature breaks something in my structure and i hate it :(