Joplin — Your notes are yours only

Note-taking from anywhere to (almost) everywhere

What is Joplin

A OneNote notebook is a nice place to keep your notes, especially since the application is available on a broad range of platforms. In fact the only major player who is not supported — and probably will not be in the future — is Linux.

However, if you want to access your notes from all devices, even the mobile ones, you are forced to store the notebook(s) on OneDrive — and that might not be everybody’s favorite when it comes to store sensitive data.

This is where Joplin steps in!

photo: joplinapp.org

Joplin is a free, open source note taking application with markdown syntax support.

Not only that it is available on every common platform:

• Windows
• macOS
• Linux
• iOS and iPadOS
• Android

for the console-lovers out there who are running on Windows, macOS or Linux there is even a terminal version available

Key Features

Beside of the versatile platform support there are a bunch of other things which are worth mentioning:

• Open Source
  As stated earlier already Joplin is an open source project — and as such, it costs only as much as you are willing to donate
• Synchronisation Options
  You decide! Unlike OneNote, your are not tied to a specific company or service for keeping your notes in sync. There is a broad range of possibilities to choose from:

1. NextCloud
2. Dropbox
3. WebDAV
4. OneDrive

• Optional E2EE
  Joplin supports end-to-end encryption on all the applications.
• Offline Support
  Create, edit and delete notes without internet connection. As soon as you go online the changes are synced.
• Version History
  Enable the note history feature and select how many days of changes shall be kept — no cold sweat when things have been deleted or modified accidentally.
• Web Clipper
  For users of Firefox and Chrome there is a Web Clipper plugin available which saves web pages and screenshots from the browser.
• Use of external editors
  Markdown syntax can get tricky to handle, especially when tables are involved. Joplin allows to embed external editors like Typora in order to edit notes in WYSIWYG-style
• Attachments
  Embed pictures in your notes or attach files of any type — everything is possible

Beside of that a lot of other things come in handy:

• Tags
• Fast and powerfull search function
• Notebooks and sub-notebooks
• Notifications
• Note templates
• Custom CSS
• Broad language support
• Importing notes from Evernote
• Todo-list support

Working with Joplin

Desktop Versions

In the desktop version, the GUI is mainly divided into 3 columns:

• Left: List of Notebooks/Sub-Notebooks and Tags
• Middle: List of Notes within a Notebook/Sub-Notebook
• Right: Editor area

The editor area itself can be toggled in order to show either

• Markdown syntax / plain text view
• Preview of the rendered text
• Split view, showing markdown and preview next to each other
• WYSIWYG view (this option works similar to Typora’s approach — but is marked as experimental for now)

Mobile Version

The design of the user interface on the mobile versions is generally quite close to its desktop sibling, but due to the limited screen size things have been split up to different views

What is missing?

Actually, there is not a lot left to ask for.

From my point of view, the possibility to add scribbles and handwriting would be a nice add-on, but on the other hand side there are applications like GoodNotes and Notability which are focusing on pen-support and handwritten notes.

In fact, when you want good handwriting support as well as a decent handling and formatting of text we are back at Microsoft’s OneNote again.

Competitors

Just a brief look at some relevant note-taking-apps out there which should be considered as well:

• Inkdrop
  Developed by Takuya Matsuyama, Inkdrop is quite similar to Joplin in terms of GUI and feature set. It is one of the few apps which is also available on Windows, Linux, Mac, Android and iOS.
  5$ per month and you are in, 10GB of storage included
• Typora
  WYSIWYG markdown editor for Windows, macOS and Linux.
  Notes are stored as plain text markdown files, using the directory structure of the file system to keep things organized. Version history and tags are therefore not on the feature list.
  Free in the beta phase.
• Bear
  A nice markdown editor for iOS and macOS wich uses a unique approach of nested tags to keep things organized.
  15$ are charged on a yearly base in order to enable synchronization across all your devices.
• iA Writer
  Another good markdown editor which is focusing on distraction-free writing.
  Unfortunately only the iOS and macOS versions are full-blown — the Windows sibling lacks a lot of features and the Android version seems to be abandoned for now.
  9$ for the iOS version, 30$ for the macOS one.
• OneNote
  The well-known digital note taking solution from Microsoft.
  Available on Windows, macOS, iOS and Android. Good pen- and handwriting-support on all platforms. Downside: data is stored in a proprietary format and if you want to sync across iOS and Android devices too, this is only possible via OneDrive.

Verdict

If you are on the one hand side looking for a full-featured, cross-platform note-taking app and on the other hand side taking privacy seriously — you should definitely give Joplin a try.