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.

  • orosus@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    5 hours ago

    I use Logseq with ToDoList plugin to handle task list. Logseq is similar to obsidian but open-source. And to syncronize notes among devices, I use syncthing. No need to selfhost.

  • iopq@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    5 hours ago

    What I want is being able to hand draw something quickly in my notes, what’s the app that has text and drawings?

  • Meron35@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    6 hours ago

    Not sure of your specific needs, but I feel that self hosting (i.e. setting up a proper server) is unnecessary. Just pick a local first program and use it with syncthing.

    The usual trio (which may be overkill) are Obsidian (admittedly not open source), Trillium, and logseq.

  • k4j8@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    6 hours ago

    Have you considered Kanban apps? All of them should support A+C. I’ve used Wekan and Kanboard. Hope this helps your searching!

  • Encrypt-Keeper@lemmy.worldEnglish
    7·
    13 hours ago

    I spent several years looking for the perfect selfhosted solution to this, but ultimately I realized an offline solution was just going to be better. So I started using Obsidian which is as simple or complex as you want with no paywall.

    Some of the self hosted solutions I’ve tried were:

  • tal@olio.cafeEnglish
    71·
    15 hours ago

    You might want to list the platform you want to use it on. I’m assuming that you’re wanting to access this on a smartphone of some sort?

    • quaff@lemmy.caOPEnglish
      6·
      15 hours ago

      Ah good point. I edited my post! Android and Web (nice to have is desktop Linux support). Thank you!

  • CaptDust@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    3·
    14 hours ago

    I use notesnook but I don’t self host, just the app locally. It has an option to insert a task list into the note, and that has drag and drop reordering. It also encrypts at rest, and has text search. Hope that helps your decision.

    • quaff@lemmy.caOPEnglish
      2·
      13 hours ago

      Thanks! I had tested Notesnook with the official server. It worked the way I want. but it seems their self host server doesn’t have that feature. Not obviously tho. Which is really weird, since I’m using the same client app (where I assumed this functionality would live).

      • CaptDust@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        3·
        12 hours ago

        That’s a very specific and interesting exclusion, weird. Well sorry dude, best of luck finding something that works.

  • Spooky Mulder@twun.ioEnglish
    22·
    9 hours ago

    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 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.

    • quaff@lemmy.caOPEnglish
      2·
      9 hours 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!

  • fossilesque@mander.xyzEnglish
    2·
    15 hours ago

    You can do all this with Obsidian and plugins. I just saw a nice keep like interface one. You’ll have to play around a bit but it’s definitely doable.

    • quaff@lemmy.caOPEnglish
      2·
      15 hours ago

      I suppose I should have mentioned more directly, I’d prefer if it’s an open source solution.

        • quaff@lemmy.caOPEnglish
          2·
          13 hours ago

          Thanks.

          I just set up Notesnook lol I can drag and drop reorder list items (checkbox list) on the official server, but not when connected to my own… Same exact mobile app (just different server)… The fact that Notesnook and Standard Notes both claim to be open source, but don’t share all of their code with the open source world. Maybe it’s gated by env vars. Who knows. I have half a mind to give Obsidian a chance if it can do what I want.

          • fossilesque@mander.xyzEnglish
            2·
            13 hours ago

            The plugins are open source at least, and the notes it makes aren’t proprietary. It’s just an app to interact with them. Been using it as a trapper keeper for years and it’s been able to keep up with my changing needs. :) !obsidianmd@lemmy.world There’s thousands of plugins and the discord is a huge resource.

  • Eager Eagle@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    14 hours ago

    it might be worth watching this PR for memos, which adds encryption at rest. I can’t vouch for it, as I didn’t read the code but I do use memos and might consider this if it’s merged.

    https://github.com/usememos/memos/pull/5130

    This is not E2EE, but I don’t think E2EE is that important if you’re hosting your own data. And clients can use TLS for encryption in transit.