this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2025
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Recommendations for Note taking app with simple needs (lemmy.ca)
submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by quaff@lemmy.ca to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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Hey y'all. I've been testing a bunch of Note taking solutions and nothing seems to check off what I want and need.

I want a simple interface (both for list view and note editor/view), preferably similar to Google Keep, but a regular list is fine as well.

Key features:

A. being able to drag and drop re-order checkbox lists.

e.g.

  • [ ] item 1
  • [ ] item 2
  • [x] item 4
  • [x] item 3

I'd like to be able to just drag and drop the above to sort things correctly.

B. E2EE at rest.

C. CTRL+F inside the note view/edit!!

Honestly, the only functionality I truly want is A. But most of the solutions I found are either proprietary or can't do it.

Self hosted options I've tried:

  • Joplin (can't do A; UX is not great)
  • Standard notes (A + C is gated by their self hosted premium subscription; I don't mind paying for my apps, but the prices are ridiculous)
  • Silverbullet.md (can't do A)
  • Quillpad (very similar to Google Keep and can do A, but has terrible file syncing, not E2EE)

Notesnook looks almost as insane as Standard Notes to self host (mimicing AWS stack locally is nuts). Has anyone tried Notesnook yet? I don't want to spend another afternoon setting something heavy up only to find that the feature I want is gated by a heavy $.

Any suggestions or recommendations would be greatly appreciated!

EDIT: Woops! I am looking to use the notes app on both Android and Web/Desktop Linux. Preferably an open source solution.

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[–] SpookyMulder@twun.io 0 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

Every now and then this question comes up. It's a timeless software engineering conundrum. Kind of like how med students might start to think they have all kinds of diseases and conditions because they're learning all these symptoms.

Software engineers, especially new ones, tend to be heavily biased toward applying technical solutions to non-technical problems. Most never actually grow out of this.

I'll advise what I advise every time someone approaches me or one of my peer groups with this very question:

Get yourself a notebook and a pen.

I'm dead serious, not trolling, and not some kind of technophobe zealot.

When it comes down to it, if you let go of what you think you need in a to-do list app, you'll find that what you actually need is much simpler.

Notebooks are e2e encrypted. Self hosted. Offline. As ephemeral as you like. Indexable for search. Versatile. Take a picture of a page if you really want to. OCR it if you need to.

Pen and paper.

[–] Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe 4 points 1 day ago

I carry a phone, I'm not carrying a notebook and pen.

I did that 40 years ago.

Plus that list doesn't show up on my laptop or my desktop, other places I'm working.

It's not sortable by date/time, priority or project.

That's terrible advice, and doesn't even meet the basic requirements of the question.

[–] quaff@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 day ago

I hear ya. I don't carry a notebook with me, and don't like to fill my pockets. So I appreciate the low tech suggestion, but will have to pass on this!