2019-09-11-joplin.md (2480B) - raw

      1 <!-- title: My note taking app: Joplin -->
      2 <!-- slug: joplin -->
      3 <!-- categories: Decentralization, FOSS, Privacy -->
      4 <!-- date: 2019-09-11T00:00:00Z -->
      5 <!-- lastmod: 2019-09-24T00:00:00Z -->
      6 
      7 Two years ago I had an iPhone and, back then, the native "Notes" app worked
      8 pretty well for me. However, when I changed to Android I had some trouble
      9 finding a similar app or a different one that would fit my needs. For some time
     10 I used Google Keep, but I didn't like how the main view would show you the whole
     11 note (instead of having only one line per note, which allows more notes to fit
     12 in the screen). I changed to Evernote for some time—which was definitely more
     13 suited for me—but there were too many ads about getting premium features and,
     14 since I didn't need them, I eventually got tired of it.
     15 
     16 Back then I already knew what Markdown was, since I had used it to build a
     17 website, and I realized that an app with Markdown support could be a very good
     18 alternative. I looked around and finally found [Joplin][j], a free/libre and
     19 open source app that supported Markdown as well as synchronization—perfect for
     20 my needs, since I like having notes backed up in case I lose access to my phone.
     21 I have been using it for half a year and so far it has been a great app. I type
     22 my notes with Markdown and once I'm done it renders them beautifully. It also
     23 lets me backup a copy with Nextcloud which is good since it doesn't force me to
     24 do it through Google Drive/Dropbox and on top of that I can set up end-to-end
     25 encryption for my backed-up notes! I haven't paid a lot of attention to what
     26 algorithm is used to encrypt since I trust my Nextcloud provider, however, I
     27 know metadata is not encrypted (I'm guessing to make synchronization faster),
     28 but that's fine with me. This also allows me to synchronize my notes with my
     29 computer, something that I had never thought would be useful before, but as I
     30 use my computer more and more (and my phone less and less), it is becoming very
     31 convenient.
     32 
     33 Moreover, since I use it on my computer and I can arrange notes with the use of
     34 notebooks, it is becoming more of a personal wiki than a note-taking app. I have
     35 a notebook named "Notes", but the remaining notebooks hold information in a less
     36 "casual" way. I suppose everyone uses notes that way, but being able to use
     37 Markdown allows me to store lots of information in a more convenient way,
     38 especially when dealing with links and fragments of code.
     39 
     40 
     41 [j]: <https://joplinapp.org> "Joplin"