Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by tsurba 29 days ago
Joplin is open source, syncing setup between devices is one login to Dropbox, works for free, with native apps on Windows/OSX/Linux/iOS/Android. It has a bunch of plugins too. If you just need markdown files with syncing, use it rather than paying for Obsidian sync.

The 2GB free quota on Dropbox is plenty enough for text (and some screenshots). Or you could self-host obviously. Git while lovely for source code is a hassle for notes.

3 comments

It saves to sqlite though, not markdown files you can edit on disk.
Why is that a problem if you are already going to be using specific software to interface with your notes don't you want it stored in an optimized foolproof format that is also one the preferred format recommended by library of congress?

And if you want always direct edit access and do it often why not then a simple plain text since either way you will be dependent on the software if you like the additional features it offers which aren't inside .md like linking and other

You can use standard markdown links in obsidian, and even wikilinks are often supported (e.g. pulldown-cmark supports them). Or you can configure obsidian to prefer standard markdown links (https://obsidian.md/help/settings#Use%20Wikilinks)

My notes were _already_ a folder of markdown, so I pretty seamlessly moved from VS Code as my notes app to obsidian and could move back to a text editor if obsidian turns evil. This might be part of why I’m less enthusiastic about their canvas thing, but then I was never a mind map or scrap board person anyway.

Yes it's often a problem. I am a Joplin user. Many times I have thought "X would be so much easier if these were just Markdown files on disk." Joplin has an API you can use, but it's annoying. Files on disk would be better.

> if you want always direct edit access and do it often why not then a simple plain text

I like the Joplin UI and features. I also have use-cases where I want plain text access outside Joplin. Obsidian shows its possible to have both (but I also want software libre).

I stopped using Dropbox, but this is pleasant news that they have this much space.

I use git and it works well and gives me security my notes will not dissapear.

On mobile used to be more difficult so I used specialized app before but now Obsidian git works well enough.

It can be better but overall it works well enough for me. I would dictate things to my phone in daily note and later process those more in desktop.

Afaik it can be synced to nextcloud out of the box too
S3 as well, I sync with cloudflare r2's free tier and it works great