I’m completely new to selfhosting but see a lot of potential. I wonder if anyone knows a good way to self host a notetaking app? The point is that I need to access my notes on multiple devices so self hosting them could be a nice idea. I currently use google keep and goodnotes but would like to leave those behind…
I’ve used Joplin before which was okay-ish (but borked the e2e encryption during an update).
Now I would recommend Silverbullet if you are really keen on self hosting a notes app.
But the notes that work best for me is simply Obsidian + Syncthing-Fork (you could self host a syncthing server), thanks to its sheer ability to adapt to nearly any use case thanks to its plugin.
If you go this route, OP, and have an Android phone, then you should know the (very sad and disappointing) news that SyncThing for Android is about to be shut down.
But Syncthing Fork is not shut down and is still maintained (never used the main version tbh).
https://github.com/Catfriend1/syncthing-android-fdroid
https://f-droid.org/packages/com.github.catfriend1.syncthingandroid/
Not the OP, but I believe they’re talking about the upgrade from 128 bit AES to 256 bit AES. It created some compatibility issues between clients for a few days as the ones that weren’t updated yet couldn’t decrypt the newer 256 AES encrypted notes. That was my experience anyways. It’s a great app/server from my personal experience.
After trying a bunch, I’m using Obsidian + <your choice of sync plugin> now. Good thing with Obsidian is your notes are ultimately a bunch of plaintext files, so you can do whatever you want with them, and it comes with clients for most platforms.
Another option is Trilium, it is pretty powerful, and has a webapp so as long as you can access a browser, you’ll be able to access your notes. https://github.com/zadam/trilium
Been using Logseq since February and it’s been a game changer. My only gripes are a) inability to access via browsers, and b) lack of a quick note function. Sometimes I still use Keep to jot something down and transfer later. Logseq spends a solid 5+ seconds syncing upon opening, which can feel like an eternity when trying to quickly log something.
For browser, there is a webapp that can be selfhosted. See here https://github.com/logseq/logseq/blob/master/docs/docker-web-app-guide.md
I think you need chromium browsers due to the API they use, but it should work.
+1 for the open source option: Trilium The project is being maintained here: https://github.com/TriliumNext/Notes
I use Memos and love it.
I connect to it from my desktop at home and from my phone via a WireGuard VPN and it’s everything I need. Worth a look, I think.
Yeah Memos is great. I use it as a personal journal. It supports great features like Postgres database, tags, filters, S3 for assets, SSO with OIDC. Dev works on more features like referencing notes if I read correctly
Only downside for me is, pictures are always at the end of a note, not inline like in wikis
Welcome to the rabbit hole of selfhosted note-taking apps. https://selfh.st/apps/?tag=Note-Taking
Unfortunately, this is going to be a bit of a journey. You’ll probably end up going through a few of these options until you find one that works for you and fits your workflow.
I’d vote for anytype or obsidian
Anytype has a learning curve, But it has built-in encryption and IPFS syncing provided by the company. The templating system is really slick and the relational aspect is pretty solid.
Obsidian + syncthing fork is a really solid contender. It’s much easier to work with out of the box but the features are a little more generic.
Neither of these are really self-hosted, so much as they are contained in their own ecosystem. You get some measure of higher availability that you have to really work for if you’re really self-hosting a product.
Hm at some point Anytype apps will be configurable for custom servers tho (i assumed they were already but i might have been wrong).
Obsidian also has some interesting sync plugins that dont require syncthing
The crypto is decent, it’s electron so it’s source available. If you want to ignore their hosting solution, you can disable the syncing and just take the vault from its config directory and sync it yourself
The real downsides are that it’s not actual open source, so if they decided to screw around with the security or turn the crypto off somebody can’t just fork it.
