Best lightweight note-taking app?
Best lightweight note-taking app?
Looking for an app for note-taking with the following features:
- No ads ever
- No nudges to upgrade, subscribe, unlock premium features, or any bullshit like that.
- No recurring fee (ok paying up-front for the app)
- Clean, simple interface
That's it. I don't need multimedia, multi-device syncing, cloud storage. I just need a place to write down ideas and grocery lists.
Recommendations?
Obsidian
- text files stored in markdown on your device
- no premium service to unlock features. You can buy sync and publishing if you want to, but there are no nags to purchase them.
- you can roll your own sync solution you wanted to. Its just text files. Same goes with publishing.
- community plugins if you want to extend it
- desktop clients and ios clients
- free forever
There is Google Keep.
But if you want to degoogle, well I'm reading the thread. I've heard of Joplin (spelling?).
Not an app, and I haven't really used it, but tinylist feels quite Google Keepy. You can add it to your home screen, but it doesn't seem to work offline.
Obsidian, Hands down.
Not open-source though sadly 😔
Not open source but the data portability is on a level nothing else matches!
But all your notes are just md files. It's straightforward that way
I absolutely second this, if you aren't worried about built-in syncing (I use Syncthing to solve this, also cool piece of software), and if you really like the idea of Markdown/text-only notes with image/file attachments, there is absolutely no better tool. Plus, if you think you can get value out of the note linking feature, you can make some incredibly detailed knowledge bases. Really powerful tool when you need it to be, dead simple note-taking by default, it's a damn good app
This definitely, also cross platform. So what more do you want...
Markor. It's as simple as it gets, but can scale up if you decide to later
Definitely this. Great app.
Markor.
Then I also add my notes / docs folder to syncthing, and have it on every device.
Seconded.
Notepad++ if you just need to type something up.
Trilium Notes, Logseq, or Obsidian.md if you're looking for something more advanced.
Self-host something like bookstack, docuwiki, mediawiki, or wikijs for something more.... permanent? I wouldn't really use these to jot something down real quick but I do put a lot of finalized? notes in a wikijs docker image I host.
I used to use Keep Notes by Google. Did the job pretty well but obviously there should be better FOSS & privacy-respecting apps: NoNonesense Notes!
If you liked Google Keep, you might want to check out Quillpad
Not bad, but it looks like it doesn't support collaborative editing which I frequently use on Keep.
I use signal mesagaing app. They have a note to self feature thats awesome.
Not sure how I never found out about this feature before but this is awesome, thanks for sharing it!
https://www.f-droid.org/en/packages/com.simplemobiletools.notes.pro/
This and others by simple are exactly that.
Notes. Gallery.Dialer. keyboard. Clock.
No ads. Absolutely zero unnecessary permissions. No telemetry or sneaky internet connections.
Obsidian.md. It runs on markdown files, so even if you decide you don't like Obsidian, you've still got all the files. It's super easy to sync with SyncThing or probably Google Drive or whatever. It's free, and the are a ton of plugins for it. Peri sure there's a Lemmy community for it around, too.
I've been using Notally for a while and I think it checks all your boxes.
Very much agreed.
.txt file + syncthing
For true rebels: pen and paper
Quillnote + Signal's "note to self"
You can find Quillnote in both Droid and Google's Play Store.
Quillpad is like an open source Google Keep and you can use Nextcloud to sync it all.
Ideally, I'd want a way to import my Google Keep lists into it then I could bin Keep for good.
Do I need Nextcloud to synchronize? I like the interface but I don't really want to use Nextcloud.
At the moment, it is Nextcloud but I believe the plan is to give more options.
Yeah quillpad is great!
One option is Notally on F-droid and on the Google Play Store. It's FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) and it has all of the features you mentioned. I use it as my everyday note taking app and I have zero complaints so far.
There's Safe Notes on F-Droid as well, which is pretty much identical to Notally feature-wise, but your notes are encrypted (locally).
Obsidian is kewl cloud sync aint free though.
If you don't mind self hosting, there is a community plugin for live sync backed to CouchDB.
I just save my obsidian workspace in Dropbox/google drive/etc and that does the job for me
Notion has been pretty great so far; I recently moved there from Evernote. Only downside (for me) is that it's based on electron.
Also no offline mode which can be frustrating.
I found Obsidian good, and Markor the best, on Android.
Element for Matrix. I know weird, but that's how I like it
Do you send messages to yourself? Is this a thing you can do? I never tried. That would be pretty cool. edit: um... yeah. create an empty room with just yourself in it. Now I feel silly.
I've always used ColorNote. It does have several advanced features but they're all optional. It's been updated for 5 years now and basically hasn't changed. Still free, no ads, easy to use. A rare exception on the Play Store. Whole app only 4Mb.
Apps:
- Zettel notes https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.eu.thedoc.zettelnotes
- Markor https://www.f-droid.org/packages/net.gsantner.markor/
Self-hosted:
Kvaesitso launcher also has built in note widget that can be linked to same local file as in an app. https://github.com/MM2-0/Kvaesitso
I use OneNote usually, easy formating and works well on PC and mobile. Notion is cool too, but has a lot more features than a simple note taking app.
Google keep works fine for me.
ColorNote
It meets every item on your list.
According to this article, and others I've seen pen and paper is still best.
ColourNote has been the best one I've found.
Carnet on f droid.
I like QuickEdit
I used Joplin then Obsidian for a long time but recently moved to zettlr on my PC. I use Quillpad on my phone. Both definitely worth a look IMO.
I switched to Nextcloud Notes from Joplin. Along with my own personal "Google Drive", Notes is great
I'm a big fan of a small app called UpNote. It's clean and simple with a few power features you can use if you really dig into it. It largely has the same baseline set of features as Obsidian, but it supports syncing across devices out of the box and has a one-time purchase of a lifetime membership.
Obsidian.... forever
Great, now how about a sketching app that follows all the same criteria that OP mentioned. Something for quick and dirty sketches. Nothing fancy. One that can do sketches and notes would be even better.
I use Another Notes App. It's super basic but that's exactly what I need.
It has a very optional but stupidly expensive subsctiption but even after long searching Standard Notes remains the best one I ever used!