Hey everyone, I’m trying to replace most of the private owned app I use by FOSS ones, and today i’m pointing at notion.
I just use it as a way to organize my notes and use it both on my laptop and phone, and i’m looking for something that can have that fonctionnality.
I’ve already looked into a bunch of foss note taking apps but I didn’t see any that could do it. (maybe i didn’t look hard enough tho)
I’m willing to use syncthing or smth similar if needed.
do you have any recommendations? anyway, have a nice day and thanks to everyone making the internet/softwares more libre and accessible!
I use Notesnook, but as an alternative to Notion and more complex features, it’s way too simple.
I use Notesnook and I’m happy with it. They have a flagship instance with free accounts if you don’t want to self-host.
If you want something more lightweight and are up for using syncthing, just a bunch of markdown files synced with syncthing also works. You can encrypt them with your pgp key if you want encryption, but that doesn’t encrypt metadata like file names, directory structure, or when files were last edited.
Syncthing has encryption as well. You can have a device be “untrusted” so you put in an encryption password, and data sent to and stored on that device will be encrypted.
Although this does encrypt file (and directory) names, the caveats about folder structure and modification time still apply.
Putting in another recommendation for Notesnook.
The android app is busted for me. I’ve uninstalled and reinstalled and it will not let me login or load anything at all.
Standard Notes
Probably Nextcloud
I love Nextcloud but it’s such a beast to setup
The inbuild notes in the Vivaldi browser (Markdown) are synced between Desktop and Mobile, no third party app needed.
Anything with cloud support, really. I’m using iotas and some Android nextcloud notes app. Most apps will just write notes to .md files you can sync with nextcloud/owncloud using the desktop client.
Joplin. I use it on my phone, multiple laptops and Linux desktops.
I second this.
I’ve never used it, but I’ve heard good things about Notesnook.
Been using Notesnook for almost 3 years now and it’s just awesome. Highly recommend!
obsidian is not FOSS BTW
Joplin can sync between phone and laptop with a number of network storage options
https://joplinapp.org/help/apps/sync/
or you can self-host Joplin server.
https://github.com/laurent22/joplin/blob/dev/packages/server/README.md
EDIT: I am going to edit this to reflect that I HAVE NOT tried Joplin 3.5 which says: "
More reliable syncing and sharing
Syncing and sharing have been made more robust in everyday use. Joplin now handles repeated syncs more efficiently, avoids unnecessary data usage, and is better at detecting and syncing all changes, particularly when using WebDAV and S3 sync targets."
Until I have new data I will scratch this out:
In Joplin, I have never been able to successfully use an s3 instance with two or more joplin clients. It corrupts eventually. This is using a bucket for storage directly, not WebDAV.From my research the best bet is self host, webdav, or some kind of file sync
That’s weird… I’ve been using S3 to sync Joplin between Linux and Android without corruption issues for more than a year now.
Looks like you are lucky so far. It is still in beta and not considered a full fledged part of Joplin, they have told me as much.
I admit I havetn’t tried in the last six months. I think I might, the release notes for January 2026 say they improved sync.
I also was using 3 clients, so maybe I hit it faster. Maybe 2 is ok.
yeah I use webdav on my home NAS with just one phone and one laptop. probably going to self-host serve so I can do shared notes with the Baroness.
Logseq. It works with Markdown or Org. Joplin is fine but I’ve moved away from it for Orgzly Revived + Logseq mobile/Emacs Orgmode + Logseq desktop all integrated with each other to do some stuff Logseq and Orgzly cannot do alone.
You will not find a better option honestly I love my tools. Tried a lot of things and this is one that will grow with you and never overwhelm you if you respect it.
Particularly nice to be able to smoothly turn Logseq/Orgmode stuff into LaTeX stuff and use Emacs Zotero integrations. I can publish professional-level papers and articles of pretty much any kind, from the same system where I work on Minecraft mods and remind myself to do house chores so my wife thinks I am a genius (because I am). I could write an entire textbook with it. It feels like being forced to use a revolver for years, and then switching to an AR platform.
I’ve been using Zettle Notes with syncthing for a few years now. It syncs with my laptop as just a directory of markdown files that I also edit with Vim (plenty of good plugins like Vim wiki).
notesnook
Actually, you can use Signal for this, if you have it on both your phone and laptop, and use “note to self.” I prefer this because it’s very straightforward and isn’t bogged down with a lot of extraneous extra features that other notetaking apps I’ve tried tend to have.
