A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.
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I've used Joplin before which was okay-ish (but borked the e2e encryption during an update).
Now I would recommend Silverbullet if you are really keen on self hosting a notes app.
But the notes that work best for me is simply Obsidian + Syncthing-Fork (you could self host a syncthing server), thanks to its sheer ability to adapt to nearly any use case thanks to its plugin.
If you go this route, OP, and have an Android phone, then you should know the (very sad and disappointing) news that SyncThing for Android is about to be shut down.
But Syncthing Fork is not shut down and is still maintained (never used the main version tbh).
https://github.com/Catfriend1/syncthing-android-fdroid
https://f-droid.org/packages/com.github.catfriend1.syncthingandroid/
Oooohh. TIL. Thanks!
What was wrong with Joplin? I was thinking about giving it a try.
Not the OP, but I believe they're talking about the upgrade from 128 bit AES to 256 bit AES. It created some compatibility issues between clients for a few days as the ones that weren't updated yet couldn't decrypt the newer 256 AES encrypted notes. That was my experience anyways. It's a great app/server from my personal experience.
After trying a bunch, I'm using Obsidian + now. Good thing with Obsidian is your notes are ultimately a bunch of plaintext files, so you can do whatever you want with them, and it comes with clients for most platforms.
Another option is Trilium, it is pretty powerful, and has a webapp so as long as you can access a browser, you'll be able to access your notes. https://github.com/zadam/trilium
Been using Logseq since February and it's been a game changer. My only gripes are a) inability to access via browsers, and b) lack of a quick note function. Sometimes I still use Keep to jot something down and transfer later. Logseq spends a solid 5+ seconds syncing upon opening, which can feel like an eternity when trying to quickly log something.
For browser, there is a webapp that can be selfhosted. See here https://github.com/logseq/logseq/blob/master/docs/docker-web-app-guide.md
I think you need chromium browsers due to the API they use, but it should work.
+1 for the open source option: Trilium The project is being maintained here: https://github.com/TriliumNext/Notes
I use Memos and love it.
I connect to it from my desktop at home and from my phone via a WireGuard VPN and it's everything I need. Worth a look, I think.
Memos fits a wide variety of uses and is the first note system that has clicked for me. I use it for quick notes so I don't forget things, journal-like entries, save for later (like Pocket), shopping lists and other todos.
Obsidian is pretty neat. Can use it with Syncthing, although I guess you need Syncthing-Fork on Android now.
What's this about Syncthing now?
Dev discontinued the app due to google being difficult to maintain.
Obsidian is not open source but i also think it's pretty neat.
Welcome to the rabbit hole of selfhosted note-taking apps. https://selfh.st/apps/?tag=Note-Taking
Unfortunately, this is going to be a bit of a journey. You'll probably end up going through a few of these options until you find one that works for you and fits your workflow.
I'd vote for anytype or obsidian
Anytype has a learning curve, But it has built-in encryption and IPFS syncing provided by the company. The templating system is really slick and the relational aspect is pretty solid.
Obsidian + syncthing fork is a really solid contender. It's much easier to work with out of the box but the features are a little more generic.
Neither of these are really self-hosted, so much as they are contained in their own ecosystem. You get some measure of higher availability that you have to really work for if you're really self-hosting a product.
I setup nextcloud and just use that to backup my Obsidian notes. But I also use next cloud deck depending on the type of notes or list I'm making
Nextcloud has a Notes app too
This is what I use
Obsidian but with syncthing here, just syncs the files across my devices.
You should take a look at the selfhosted live sync plugin for obsidian. It's been working flawlessly for me for the past year.
Doesn't it actually require you to sign up to an account on some app hosting platform, rather than self host it?
No, but that is an option if you dont have the hardware to self host it. I have it on one of my vms on my server in the basement.
EDIT: I just took another look at the github repo and it kind of looks like you can't just selfhost it, but you can, the main readme is just a little confusing. Click on the "Setup your CouchDB" link in the manual section and the selfhosted via docker guide is there.
Trilium. You'll be ~~glass~~ glad you tried it.
Are you threatening to nuke my home if I don't!?
Ooh, typo. I'll edit it so that those who fulfill these kinds of things know not to glass your home.
Eh, if you want. It's a rental...
Trilium is an excellent option, however, the original project is no longer maintained. There is a new community fork that is active here: https://github.com/TriliumNext/Notes
Results from me asking this 1Y ago: https://lemm.ee/post/4593760
Went with Joplin and using it since.
I use nextcloud notes because I already have nextcloud and my needs are not that sophisticated
I use Joplin, no complaints.
Nextcloud is a really good all-in-one solution for self hosting data
I've been getting on well with notesnook, the self hosting is in beta right now but its just a docker container. Docs are coming for self hosting in the near future.
The criteria for me when I was looking for a notes app were:
Notesnook hits all of these. I wish it had a dedicated desktop app but that's something I can just use a browser window for.
It's still in alpha but hoarder is promising
It's designed to organize bookmarks, but can also support markdown notes with picture (a single picture, not multiple pictures)
Unfortunately at the moment the mobile app is so alpha that doesn't support creation or editing such notes, only new bookmarks or new photos.
It uses a headless chromium to make screenshots for URLs.
Optionally, can use a bullshit generator like ollama or openai api keys to automatically create a lot of useless tags to each note
I use https://silverbullet.md and love it, it's a bit more than a note taking app, but it's definitely worth it.
My solution is basically what @mojolobo mentions with Nextcloud behind it and I love the concept. Because Obsidian (via a WebDAV plugin on the phone) just syncs with the "Notes" folder in my Nextcloud root it really is just a bunch of .md (markdown) files. It gives me an added sense of security (on top of the self-hosting aspect) because I can see those files everywhere I have Nextcloud installed, I can edit them manually if I wanted to. On the PC you just point the Obsidian app to the folder, on phones you do it via a WebDAV plugin.
I'm just using a self hosted git repo with markdown files. I was having trouble finding something open source that I could edit with vim that also had a good mobile solution. I also didn't want to get locked into a file format that was specific to an app.
Markdown is ubiquitous and I use git all the time as a developer so it was easier to tack something onto an existing workflow. It's a little janky but at least I won't be screwed by devs abandoning whatever app I was using.
Appflowy if Notion appels you. It is not 1.0 yet so some features you need might not be there.
Probably Joplin is the easiest to use. Looks like OneNote but it's different in many ways.
I use Joplin on top of Nextcloud.
You can browse the collection on OpenAlternative here: https://openalternative.co/categories/notetaking
I use radicals for CalDAV and save notes there together with my calendars. On Android there is jtx Board which let's you work with them. Sadly on Linux I couldn't find anything so I started writing something myself but don't have much time to work on it https://github.com/jeena/JNotes