This is a good time to switch to Notesnook, which has a OneNote importer.
Why am I about to shill so hard for this particular app? Simple, because after Evernote enshittified over a decade ago, I switched to OneNote as the least terrible alternative, and then spent the next ten years trying to find an actually good, open source notes app.
Call me Ahab because this motherfucker has been my white whale for a not-insignificant portion of my life.
Notesnook, finally, hit everything I wanted;
You can self host it (but you don’t have to)
Self hosters get everything on the paid plan for free
It has a web app, a desktop app, and a healthy ecosystem of phone apps, with - very importantly - 1:1 feature parity. Everything you want to do you can do from any of the interfaces and for the most part they’re even laid out identically.
It has a proper rich text WYSIWYG editor. It does not demand you learn FUCKING MARKDOWN. JESUS H CHRIST I DO NOT WANT TO LEARN A FUCKING SYNTAX TO MAKE NOTES, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?
But for those who care about that stuff, it is built on markdown, and all your notes can be exported in markdown, so there’s no lock in. And you can use markdown in the editor (without even having to switch modes like a lot of other editors).
Everything is encrypted by default. Notes can also be individually password protected.
You can share copies of notes with optional password protection and self-destruction.
It has a really slick UI. Everything works, everything is intuitive, there are tonnes of keyboard shortcuts. I find I actually have an easier time writing long form text content (such as a novella I’m working on) in Notesnook than I did in Word or LibreOffice.
It builds a TOC for notes automatically. You can link notes to each other, and links are bidirectional so you can track which notes link to a particular note.
You have sorting by both tags, and notebooks. Notebooks are infinitely nestable, and - this is really cool - notes can exist in multiple notebooks simultaneously.
It has robust web clipper for Firefox and Chrome.
Very robust attachment support.
God so much more, I’m having to deliberately stop here.
What it’s currently lacking is drawing support. If that’s a must have for you, check out Joplin instead (at least for now, I’ve seen some talk about Notesnook integrating Excalibur for digital canvas, which would be a superb solution).
I can’t create more than 5 (!) tags in the free version
it can’t export notes in anything else than borked text files in the free version (formatting lost, no markdown, no pdf, no html)
it doesn’t let me choose where I store my notebooks, in fact does not tell me where it saves them at all
backup files are not human-readable, they don’t appear to be zip files in disguise, they are seemingly locked to notesnook (“.nnbackupz”)
the importer/converter is on the web, and requires me to upload all my plain text MD files for conversion
I use QOwnNotes on the daily, which does not have any such limitations. On the other hand, it’s a markdown editor, which means your monitor space is divided by two : it has separate editing & preview panes. It’s honestly a bummer because apart from that it’s pretty much perfect
It has a proper rich text WYSIWYG editor. It does not demand you learn FUCKING MARKDOWN. JESUS H CHRIST I DO NOT WANT TO LEARN A FUCKING SYNTAX TO MAKE NOTES, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?
I’m curious about this agressive stance. Why is markdown so triggering for you ? I get the pros of WYSIWYG but it has also some cons.
On Lemmy for instance you use markdown without even noticing ?
I use Obsidian and I’m happy with it. The markdown syntax is really easy and it’s « almost » WYSIWYG because you see the markdown only at your cursor. It even has a plugin for excalidraw.
Yeah after spending my adulthood on reddit and lemmy markdown is second nature and I don’t like it not being maintained in notesnook thr way it is in Obsidian. I’d prefer a foss solution though and notesnook looks like otherwise it’s better
Following this I had it up and running in no time. Check the comments as well, I added some notes on getting attachments working. If you’re still having issues shoot me a message and I’ll try to help.
I don’t know what the fuck is going on. The client app connects to all 4 servers it needs a connection to. I can create a user on the server and all clients can login using it, I just can’t get notes to sync.
With that change, and setting the port of the domain to 9090, I can access minio in the browser. But I don’t know if that’s necessary or not. I’m stumped.
It looks like that’s a minority of users. Currently 4.6/5 on the Play Store, with 100,000 downloads. Embarrassingly, I still use Evernote but I need to ditch it. I’m going to try it out!
I’ll give it a look. I’ve been using Joplin since Evernote enshittified, and I didn’t know it had drawing support. I very rarely use Markdown, though. You can hide that with two interface tweaks, which I did years ago on my machines. (I have to look it up again every time I add a new machine, so it’s not perfect.)
Is Notesnook FOSS? I expect any closed-source software to enshittify over time. 🙁
I came back here to say “It says right on their home page that it’s open source.” :-)
I installed it & I’m running the importer now to see how well it handles large numbers of notes. Thanks much for the tip!
I did find that with a very large OneNote account the importer struggled, specifically because OneNote was timing out and rejecting the requests after a while.
My solution was to backup (in onenote) and then delete the notebooks that had been moved already and then run the importer again.
Worth mentioning that the bidirectional linking works for notes themselves, or even certain parts in notes. So if Note A has a list and I want to link to a certain list item from that inside Note B, I can do that. Super cool functionality imo
For me it doesn’t roll off the tongue. For lack of a better word, it’s dinky. Generally speaking, naming a product for its primary feature narrows its future growth.
It’s also a bit awkwardly close to a reality TV personality I personally detest.
It’s also not open source. Totally people’s choice if they still want to use it, but that’s important to many. If so, I do predict you’ll eventually experience the inevitable enshittification…
This is a good time to switch to Notesnook, which has a OneNote importer.
Why am I about to shill so hard for this particular app? Simple, because after Evernote enshittified over a decade ago, I switched to OneNote as the least terrible alternative, and then spent the next ten years trying to find an actually good, open source notes app.
Call me Ahab because this motherfucker has been my white whale for a not-insignificant portion of my life.
Notesnook, finally, hit everything I wanted;
What it’s currently lacking is drawing support. If that’s a must have for you, check out Joplin instead (at least for now, I’ve seen some talk about Notesnook integrating Excalibur for digital canvas, which would be a superb solution).
Anyway, please check out Notesnook. It’s excellent, and I like sharing excellent things. https://notesnook.com/downloads/
I am trying it out given all the praise.
I use QOwnNotes on the daily, which does not have any such limitations. On the other hand, it’s a markdown editor, which means your monitor space is divided by two : it has separate editing & preview panes. It’s honestly a bummer because apart from that it’s pretty much perfect
I’m curious about this agressive stance. Why is markdown so triggering for you ? I get the pros of WYSIWYG but it has also some cons. On Lemmy for instance you use markdown without even noticing ?
I use Obsidian and I’m happy with it. The markdown syntax is really easy and it’s « almost » WYSIWYG because you see the markdown only at your cursor. It even has a plugin for excalidraw.
Yeah after spending my adulthood on reddit and lemmy markdown is second nature and I don’t like it not being maintained in notesnook thr way it is in Obsidian. I’d prefer a foss solution though and notesnook looks like otherwise it’s better
What a fucking shill. I’m downloading this right now.
Did you by chance self host the sync server using docker compose? Their instructions aren’t great and I was hoping you had some tips.
For anyone else interested, if I figure it out, I’ll post what I did here.
Edit 1: I finally got it all setup but syncing isn’t working so I guess I did something wrong 🙄 . Troubleshooting now
So yes, I did, and yes, their docs suck (better documentation is on their roadmap).
There’s a really good guide here on Lemmy that I recommend instead. https://lemmy.ml/post/25006407
Following this I had it up and running in no time. Check the comments as well, I added some notes on getting attachments working. If you’re still having issues shoot me a message and I’ll try to help.
$5 says you need a srv record or something that wasn’t obvious from the docs
I don’t know what the fuck is going on. The client app connects to all 4 servers it needs a connection to. I can create a user on the server and all clients can login using it, I just can’t get notes to sync.
Official docs here
I found this tutorial1 and this tutorial2
Tutorial2 makes this one port change to the official docker compose file but otherwise is seemingly the same as tutorial1:
notesnook-s3: image: minio/minio:RELEASE.2024-07-29T22-14-52Z ports: - 9009:9000 - 9090:9090With that change, and setting the port of the domain to 9090, I can access minio in the browser. But I don’t know if that’s necessary or not. I’m stumped.
Ok you win, I’ll try it.
Any ink support?
For drawing I suggest Rnote
That looks nice. Thanks for the suggestion.
1 star reviews on the app store consistently mention sync issues and bugs that delete notes and don’t allow opening. Have you encountered any of this?
Not even once. The syncing has been incredibly robust for me. It also has a really nice flow for handling conflicts.
Of course, it’s worth keeping in mind that it can new self-hosted, so experiences will vary.
I’m using the self hosted version. Take from that what you will.
It looks like that’s a minority of users. Currently 4.6/5 on the Play Store, with 100,000 downloads. Embarrassingly, I still use Evernote but I need to ditch it. I’m going to try it out!
I’ll give it a look. I’ve been using Joplin since Evernote enshittified, and I didn’t know it had drawing support. I very rarely use Markdown, though. You can hide that with two interface tweaks, which I did years ago on my machines. (I have to look it up again every time I add a new machine, so it’s not perfect.)
Is Notesnook FOSS? I expect any closed-source software to enshittify over time. 🙁
Yes, it’s all open source and can be self-hosted. They run a paid plan, but if you self host then you get all the paid features free.
I came back here to say “It says right on their home page that it’s open source.” :-) I installed it & I’m running the importer now to see how well it handles large numbers of notes. Thanks much for the tip!
I did find that with a very large OneNote account the importer struggled, specifically because OneNote was timing out and rejecting the requests after a while.
My solution was to backup (in onenote) and then delete the notebooks that had been moved already and then run the importer again.
+1 for notesnook. It’s probably my go to example of how good open source projects can be.
Lots of limitations for markdown: No underlining No colors Limited table formatting
Not like markdown can underline without using html markup…
Worth mentioning that the bidirectional linking works for notes themselves, or even certain parts in notes. So if Note A has a list and I want to link to a certain list item from that inside Note B, I can do that. Super cool functionality imo
real MVP right here.
Not to judge a book by its cover (ironically), but that name…
Which name, “VoroxPete”? Is that a shill or a liar in something?
I’m referring to the odd choice for the name of the software.
Oh, the name of the software: Notesnook? Ok. You obviously don’t owe me anything, I’m just curious why you find it so odd?
For me it doesn’t roll off the tongue. For lack of a better word, it’s dinky. Generally speaking, naming a product for its primary feature narrows its future growth.
It’s also a bit awkwardly close to a reality TV personality I personally detest.
Yeah, it’s not the best. If it was available, they should have chosen NoteBook or NoteSync or something…
Obsidian also has an importer, and some good sync plugins.
It’s also not open source. Totally people’s choice if they still want to use it, but that’s important to many. If so, I do predict you’ll eventually experience the inevitable enshittification…
One big plus for Obsidian in my book is that it’s just plain text. All your notes are stored in simple .md files
So even if Obsidian goes to shit you can use virtually any text editor to edit and view your notes
Plus it has a vim mode and allows css style changes since it’s Electron
Yeah I just like that there are community plugins to sync over WebDAV, S3 or couchDB, instead of needing a bunch of new crap to run.
I will try it! Never heard of it. I also hate the markdown nonsense.
What notepad requires markdown?
too bad it doesnt support handwriting i was looking for something to unify my handwritten and markdown note-taking
If you can, take a moment to upvote Drawing Support in their suggested features section; https://notesnook.com/roadmap/
You badass you