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 wouldn’t 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 aren’t exactly simple—they’re complex for good reasons, but that makes choosing one even harder. And don’t get me started on the endless YouTube videos on the topic—I 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 it’s not suited for everything, and there’s 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. Haven’t fully migrated to it or created an organized setup because I’m 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 journaling—it’s simple and quick to use.
What I need:
- FOSS, but only if it’s 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 don’t care about:
Collaboration. This is for my personal use—no sharing, no team features.
Given my messy current setup and specific requirements, can anyone give me some recommendations?
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 Joplin.
Been using it for two weeks and already, I’m loving its light weight feel.
Everything is markdown. Easy to upload images. AWS backups.
+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. There’s 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 isn’t that easy sadly.
Outline is great. We use it combined with Plane as an alternative to Atlassian (JIRA), too. It’s basically a Linear clone. All self-hosted.
@[email protected] 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 didn’t 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 it’s 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.
I’d love to use this setup, however, the Obsidian Android app requires a kind of file access that is concerning:
Obsdian uses a shared location “/Documents” so that other apps can access the files (e.g. third party sync services) or add stuff.
It’s a no-go for me. :/
If you’re 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, it’s that other apps can read the obsidian notes. So your risk profile will vary with what notes you take.
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 don’t give it access it won’t work at all (it’s a required permission for the app).
you can use an android firewall to block Internet access from the app
True, however, AFAIK if your phone is not rooted, you can’t have a firewall and VPN running at the same time (the firewalls I’ve 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. I’m not saying they are acting maliciously, but I don’t like this approach (software vulnerabilities, supply chain attacks, etc.). The devs recognized the issue in another thread, but there’s no solution to the problem as of yet.
I would like a second for my brain
use syncthing with markor, nothing simpler imho
I love the interface behind anytype but it’s not foss.
I’ve 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 I’ve only run AI locally via Jan, but I’d be interested in having a similar setup.
I’m afraid it’s the royal local ;)
Llama and Open web UI or running in docker containers. My server is running tail scale, when any of my devices aren’t 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 “we”. Like when you tell a child “we” don’t do that, you don’t 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.
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, I’d recommend it over Cryptpad. Cryptpad is really barebones in comparison even though they’re growing and adding features and integrations.
My recommendation is now Filen + Plane https://plane.so/
I went through that process and chose Craft in the end.
