I love the idea of having all my quick notes, to-do lists, knowledge base, journal, plans, etc., in one single, neatly organized place. Why wouldnāt I? But deciding on which Notion alternative to use is overwhelming.
There are so many options, and all claim to be the best. Online opinions are all over the place (as expected), and these apps arenāt exactly simpleātheyāre complex for good reasons, but that makes choosing one even harder. And donāt get me started on the endless YouTube videos on the topicāI could spend weeks or months researching this and testing every single one of them, but honestly, this is not how I wanna spend my time so I will ask you guys instead.
My Current Setup:
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Markor: Used it for quick thoughts, journaling, and to-do lists but stopped using it because itās not suited for everything, and thereās no sync between Android and Linux (becsuse it is android only).
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Obsidian: Currently using it as my knowledge base and for long notes, simple to-do lists, and occasional journaling. Havenāt fully migrated to it or created an organized setup because Iām looking for a FOSS Notion alternative.
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Standard Notes: Good for quick notes, but most features are paywalled, making it feel limited.
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jtx Board: My go-to for journalingāitās simple and quick to use.
What I need:
- FOSS, but only if itās just as good as proprietary options in:
- Auto-sync between my Android phone and Linux desktop
- Journaling
- Quick notes
- To-do lists
- Planning
- Managing personal projects
- Writing down thoughts
- A really good Android app
- Easy to use
- Free for personal use
What I donāt care about:
Collaboration. This is for my personal useāno sharing, no team features.
Given my messy current setup and specific requirements, can anyone give me some recommendations?
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I would like a second for my brain
use syncthing with markor, nothing simpler imho
Joplin is missing from your list. Does not fill all of your requirements, but I use that and logseq
+1 for Joplin. You can self-host it. If you do, you can share notes between the users of the server. I wrote a tutorial on how to install it with docker. Should you need it, pm me.
I use Joplin also, two years now. But fwiw its a database with markdown writed notes. Its not a management solution for a repository with seperate markdown files per note.
+1 for Logseq
Daily journaling by default. Then you can create pages for other info. You write info in blocks, similar to notion, which also allows to link at a block level. Thereās some plugins out there for todo lists. I basically add a todo in my daily journal, and then I can access a list of all open todo items.
For sync, I use syncthing to copy the markdown files between devices.
I am currently use Outline. Pretty nice and stable. First setup isnāt that easy sadly.
Outline is great. We use it combined with Plane as an alternative to Atlassian (JIRA), too. Itās basically a Linear clone. All self-hosted.
@Im28xwa@lemdro.id I highly recommend checking out this combo. We went through a pretty extensive search to end here before cutting out Notion and other platforms.
The one catch I found is while Outline supports OIDC for central login, Plane does not (or didnāt when I set it up).
Thank you, I just created an account with Plane, looks great!
I use obsidian + self hosted Live Sync https://github.com/vrtmrz/obsidian-livesync. My data is fully encrypted and stays with me and my devices. The apps themselves are incredible, absolutely packed with features and the community is extremely engaged and actively developing awesome plugins to further extend the capabilities.
The only downside is that itās closed source, but the data format is widely understood, so if obsidian went belly up for some crazy reason there are import tools for basically every open source platform.
Iād love to use this setup, however, the Obsidian Android app requires a kind of file access that is concerning:
Obsdian uses a shared location ā/Documentsā so that other apps can access the files (e.g. third party sync services) or add stuff.
Itās a no-go for me. :/
If youāre concerned, you can use an android firewall to block Internet access from the app aside from your sync server.
But to be clear, the concern voiced in that thread is not the privileges that obsidian has, itās that other apps can read the obsidian notes. So your risk profile will vary with what notes you take.
you can use an android firewall to block Internet access from the app
True, however, AFAIK if your phone is not rooted, you canāt have a firewall and VPN running at the same time (the firewalls Iāve seen must be configured as VPN).
not the privileges that obsidian has
Also true, although Obsidian has access to that shared storage, and therefore, Obsidian being closed source, you have no way of knowing what they do with the files other apps create in that storage directory. Iām not saying they are acting maliciously, but I donāt like this approach (software vulnerabilities, supply chain attacks, etc.). The devs recognized the issue in another thread, but thereās no solution to the problem as of yet.
If I got it right, file access in latest Android versions must ask permissions to the user, so it should be not an issue for you
Obsidian asks for the permission upon first launch, but if you donāt give it access it wonāt work at all (itās a required permission for the app).
I love the interface behind anytype but itās not foss.
Iāve mostly moved into obsidian with a bunch of plugins. One of the plugins in obsidian interfaces with my self-hosted llama instance, so right inside my docs I can have it generate AI content without reaching off my network.
What are you using to host the llama instance? So far Iāve only run AI locally via Jan, but Iād be interested in having a similar setup.
Iām afraid itās the royal local ;)
Llama and Open web UI or running in docker containers. My server is running tail scale, when any of my devices arenāt connected to my home Wi-Fi they light up tail scale.
I have run on Pinokio before without any problems. I think Pin and Jan are rather equivalent.
What is royal local, sorry?
Conceptually the same as a royal āweā. Like when you tell a child āweā donāt do that, you donāt mean them and you you mean a larger group. So when I say locally I mean on my network. And when I say on my network I mean I expand my network to wherever I am via VPN. All my web searches and my AI calls get serviced via a docker server at home.
I went through that process and chose Craft in the end.
There is also cryptpad i think. Might be what you are looking for
Filen checks off most of your requirements https://filen.io/
- Auto-sync between my Android phone and Linux desktop
- Journaling
- Quick notes
- To-do lists
- Planning
- Writing down thoughts
- A really good Andoid app
- Easy to use
- Free for personal use
Filen is missing project management stuff like Kanban etc, just use cryptpad for that. Cryptpad https://cryptpad.fr/
Edit: Another comment mentioned Plane, Iād recommend it over Cryptpad. Cryptpad is really barebones in comparison even though theyāre growing and adding features and integrations.
My recommendation is now Filen + Plane https://plane.so/
