There are tons of Notes app available in the playstore and f-droid. I have use my fair share of them these are my best 5 recommendations. All of these are free to use and have to pay extra if you want specific features.
- All in one - Wenote - This is the most powerful note app I have used. This has memo, voice record, calendar, sync, color coding, various fonts, categories etc. Some of these features are behind a paywall. But It is a one time payment. It looks minimal and is light weight.
- All in one but foss - Joplin - This is an open-source project. Available on almost all platforms. If you want a powerful cross-platform note taking application then this is the best bet. This is Completely free but has an option of premium sync option. You can use free sync service to nextcloud and webdav.
- Security - Standard Notes - This is a note taking application that focuses on security. This is an open-source private notes app meaning your notes are end-to-end encrypted, so only you can read your notes. It has a minimal and clean UI. It has dedicated apps for most platforms and syncs your notes securely across all your devices, including your Android devices, Windows, iOS, Linux, and Web.
- Modern - Bundled Notes - This is the most modern looking Notes app on my list. It is aesthetically pleasing and intuitive. A powerful notes, lists, reminders and to-do app. Easily organise notes, lists, photos, files, and more. A google keep alternative.
- For casual use - Notally - A lightweight note taking application. A simple and elegant open source notes app. Notally is a minimalistic note taking app with a beautiful material design and powerful features. Dark mode, Completely free, Adjustable text size, Auto save and backup, No permissions required.
Great list! I've tested almost all of these.
Some questions I think need addressing: How are notes/notebooks stored/synchronized with these apps? Are the files encrypted? Do they have Android/Windows/Linux/iOS versions? Do they have self-hostable versions?
OneNote is really hard to beat. It is in fact my "killer app" that is keeping me from moving to Linux for my personal computer. So I tend to use it as a comparison for note apps. It's major downside is your data isn't encrypted, and I really don't trust Microsoft. If you keep your notebooks local and don't use Onedrive, you can sync between PCs, but not Android or iOS.
After several years of testing, Joplin is the best candidate/competitor to OneNote in the open-source, self-host category for me, since it does pretty much everything OneNote does, including having an iOS client, and (IIRC) a web-enabled interface.
Looking at your list, Wenote seems to be Google Keep-like, but all data is local (that's good! Your data isn't on someone else's server). Any idea how to keep that data backed up/synchronized somewhere?
Standard Notes is probably the best of the web-hosted note apps. It has a lot of features/capability, your notes are E2E encrypted, it's an open-source app (meaning the code is auditable), and IIRC, they have multiple clients. My only concern is sync is dependent on their infrastructure, so what happens if they shut down (as often happens)? I don't remember them offering a self-host option, though they may have it today.
Bundled is another Keep-like app. With these types of apps, organization is really challenging (and using tagging/search doesn't really fix that). It has a lot of interesting features that some people may find useful (like a Kanban board, neat!). I don't believe your data is encrypted (it's been a bit since I tested it), so I'd tend to shy away. Data security is important.
Notally is also a keep-type app. All data is device-only (👍), no sync available that I know of, so your data is at risk if you lose/break your phone.
Obsidian is another open-source notebook app that is fully encrypted and self-hostable. It supports markdown (great for people who are familiar with it, and easy to learn). There are clients for Windows, Linux, Android, and iOS. You can use their servers if you want, or self-host. It and Joplin are being actively developed.
Joplin has free nextcloud, onedrive, dropbox, webdav etc. It also has premium dedicated sync option that has extra cloud storage options.
In Wenote you have free google drive sync or you have to buy cloud addon for wenote to enable cloud sync.
OneNote is really hard to beat. It is in fact my "killer app" that is keeping me from moving to Linux for my personal computer.
My dude. This is so relatable.
I switched to Obsidian a while back after they introduced the Canvas plugin. As much as I love Obsidian, it's not an entire replacement for OneNote. 🥹
The Inking support, the syncing.
On Obsidian, I've set up a custom solution... I created a Mega account (20GB for free). Then I set it up to sync my Obsidian Vault folder. Then, I got an app called "Auto Sync for Mega" for my Android smartphone. That I linked with the Obsidian Vaults folder on my phone. This is a rudimentary, but simple and cost-effective way of sync.
I read somewhere that you can use GitHub to sync stuff... 🤷🏻♂️
I have 10+ years and gigs of notebooks. Uggh, gonna be a bear to switch.
Try Syncthing-Fork. All encrypted, no web servers holding your data.
https://github.com/Catfriend1/syncthing-android
I have 10+ years and gigs of notebooks.
My heart skipped a beat. 10+?! All the best 🫡.
Try Syncthing-Fork.
Is it local? I don't have the capability to set up local servers atm... I'll try it sometime soon tho.. thanks!
It runs as an app/service on devices. So if you have any computer at home, Windows/Linux/iOS, it can run Syncthing. It's easy to install and setup, installs like any other app.
I run it on all my family phones and laptops, and setup sync jobs that make sense for each user, e.g. Everyone gets a shared folder from their phone DCIM folder to a folder on their primary computer. Since it can sync 2-way,this makes managing photos much easier for them.
Edit: I admit to having been lazy with managing my notebooks. So I kind of see moving to a new notebook system as my opportunity to clean up/deduplicate, reorganize, etc.
Edit2: For Windows, SyncTrayzor makes things much easier to manage. https://github.com/canton7/SyncTrayzor/releases/download/v1.1.29/SyncTrayzorSetup-x64.exe
But you'd have to be on the same network for the sync to work, I presume.
Hey, thanks for the write up. This comment doesn't add to the conversation but I felt like this post deserved more than just an upvote.
I use noteshelf on my tablet for quick n' dirty notes, and then I write them down on obsidian so they're tidy.
An addition to the list in case you are still looking. Logseq with syncthing. Fully off the cloud.
