this post was submitted on 24 Feb 2025
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cross-posted from: https://fosstodon.org/users/notesnook/statuses/114059550980301173

Choose your warrior:

All of these are open source, private and encrypted. Of course, Notesnook is still the best πŸ˜‰

#notetaking, #privacy, #security, #notesnook, #opensource

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

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 :(

[–] JC1 1 points 3 days ago

I'm looking into this also. The closest I found is Siyuan notes. I'm trying to setup the sync during the trial period.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago

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

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago (4 children)

Sadly there is still no alternative to Notion (it’s not a note taking app, it’s database). Only SiYuan is somewhat close to Notion in its database capabilities, but comes with its own set of issues.

I would absolutely love to self-host real Notion alternative!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago

Closest self host I found was Outline.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago

Have you heard of AppFlowy? It's basically Notion, but open source and privacy-respecting. Iirc, it has an import function from Notion

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

There's I sadly not a motion alternative. As the person you answered to said: notion is a fancy frontend nosql database. I'm forced to use it at work and have to admit it's need three Foss tools to handle everything my employer does with notion (documentation, task management and planning, client collaboration, project coordination, budget planning, they use the full scope).

I'd still prefer docmost (thanks btw! Didn't know it beforehand). No sell though for the full transfer.

And they is even without the "I need someone to shout at when something goes wrong" aspect the corporate world enjoys about "SAAS" (service my as, you just don't allow me to install it myself).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

My bad, I missed the part about the database. But at this point, what you're looking for is probably not an alternative to Notion, but rather an alternative to Airtable, an actual no-SQL, no-code database. Fortunately there is great FOSS & self-hostable alternative to Airtable: NocoDB

@[email protected]

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago

Oh don't be sorry, I was one of today's lucky 10,000 because of your link!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago

Sadly, it's too simple

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Have hundreds of notes in Joplin so far... Awesome software!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Also using joplin. It's pretty great

Edit: Fixed Joplin, fucking autocorrect

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago (2 children)

I still use a pen and notebook. But I have an excuse: I prefer pen and paper to write (and I'm starting to get old too) ;)

The only digital note taking app I still use is the one that comes with the E2EE filen.io cloud storage, from Germany. It certainly is very limited but it's more than enough for my occasional note-taking usage and it's synced everywhere I may need to access it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

I use a pocket notebook for my weekly "todo" list type notes. I have a Obsidian vault for long term documentations and projects and stuff like that. I tried doing everything in obsidian but between having to pull out my phone, navigate to the app and then type on the shitty phone keyboard it was more troublesome than just carrying around actual notebook.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I'm 99% sure they ripped the note editing functionality from Standard Notes.

Which would upset me, except Standard Notes borrowed a lot of code for the editors from other people, and try to sell them back to you with a yearly license, even if you host your own server.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I’m 99% sure they ripped the note editing functionality from Standard Notes.

Not sure to understand, how could anyone 'rip' a note editing feature? Put text in a file (hopefully encrypted since it's online) is kinda the purpose of all note-taking app... which they all copied from their analog (and much older) version pen + paper. And the vast majority of them do it using Markdown, too. Even sync is available in most note-taking apps (with or without E2EE encryption), or do you have something a little more specific in mind they would have ripped?

and try to sell them back to you with a yearly license, even if you host your own server.

That's one (other) reason I like filen: lifetime plans are available (the most interesting ones are offered for a limited-time once a year during blackfriday). No sub.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

"Rip" is probably too crass a word. But there's a lot going on with fancy text editors written in JavaScript, just below the surface. They are much harder to build than you might expect!

Many of Standard Notes' editors are wrappers for open-source text editors that were created by somebody else*. Today, Standard Notes' premiere note type is the Super Note. It is also a wrapper around Facebook's Lexical Editor. (Since Lexical is MIT-licensed, SN can legally use it and charge people money.)

When I look at Filen's Note UI, it bears a striking resemblance to Standard Notes' advanced editors. It's also implemented in HTML on both mobile devices and its web interface. I'm reasonably certain they did not reinvent the wheel, and simply copied from Standard Notes in a way similar to how Standard Notes copied a bunch of third party plugins.


* Standard Notes charges you recurring fees for the privilege of using Super Notes, even if you shoulder the burden of self-hosting it. There is nothing unethical about reusing code from an open source project, but I have disdain for these fees, specially when SN could/should simply offer paid plans with the promise of convenience. This is how BitWarden and Ente make money without being hostile to self-hosted users: offering convenience as an option.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (5 children)

I’ve never used a proper note taking app, but recently started using Tana (Startup, free-to-use with some limitations after giving a credit card and cancelling during a two week trial).

It’s not open source and it only supports full HTML bulleted list or a heavily proprietary JSON format (which is kinda useless outside Tana) exports. Also most of the paid features are AI BS which I don’t mind missing out on, but there are file-size limits on the free version.

However, I’m finding the UX and features so far amazing! It’s got easy relationships and a tagging hierarchy systems to which you can add fields and it supports a whole bunch of view options and query stuff. You can scroll through this 46 min YT video to get a feel for it!

Edit: forgot to mention at time pf writing (felt it was implied I guess), it’s cloud only, no local, one of the reasons I feel it’s not ideal

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 days ago

Hell is Google Keep? I'm pretty deep in their ecosystem, never heard of it.

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