I’ve been on the hunt for a Google Keep replacement and the most obvious choice is Quillpad. However it can only sync with Nextcloud and that functionality is somewhat broken. For example, if I create a To Do list in Quillpad, I can of course check the boxes as items are completed. I can do the same in the Nextcloud instance under Tasks. But if I create a To Do list in Nextcloud, you cannot interact with them in Quillpad after it syncs. They’re displayed, but you can’t do anything with them.
All that said, the other choices were Zoho Notebooks (don’t trust them) and Carnet (weirdly slow on my phone) as far as similar apps. Quillpad still seems to be the best. Is there a way to get an app that only syncs with Nextcloud to sync with something else? DavX, Webdav, Caldav, etc? The reason I ask is because I wanted to like Nextcloud, but my admittedly older server (HP Microserver G8) struggles even with the optimized builds and it just has way more features than I need. I have a feeling the answer is no, but thought I’d ask anyway before I continue my hunt.
Take a look at Joplin
So, I did. And while I think its a great app generally, the mobile app is terrible. At least on Android. Can’t speak for the iOS folks. Just awful all around. The default font is way too small. And seemingly you can only change the editor font. Meaning that once the Markdown is rendered after you save a note, it’s back to the teeny tiny font. Disclosure, I just recently had to start wearing 1.25x reading glasses for looking at my phone with a rather large screen and even still, small font. The other thing I found weird is more of a nitpick: if you create a new To Do, the title field has a Checkbox in it. Presumably to differentiate a To Do from a normal note. But when you then move to the body of the new To Do, the checkboxes are gone and have to be invoked again. This happened on the MacOS and Android app. Very strange. Again, not a deal breaker but I’m also already using Obsidian and there is some significant overlap there. Unfortunately Obsidian falls short in To Do lists and tasks and I haven’t found a plugin to fix that.
I’m using the app on android, it’s maybe a little messy when you use it for the first time but when you start to use it daily, I think there is a lot of useful features all around. I understand for the font, but it’s not something that is bothering me, I can’t say anything on that. For the issue you are facing with To Do, you actually have two ways to create a To Do list:
I do love Markdown. But it is cumbersome with a mobile keyboard. And I may be mistaken, but I seem to recall it not entering a checkbox on the next line after a return. Like I said, the Windows and MacOS apps are terrific. Before I ran into the issues with the Android app I was ready to dive in then realized the files are stored in database rather than flat .md files like Obsidian (and I think Logseq, maybe Trillium too…). Part of my use case for Obsidian is as a daily journal and having the ability for my family/kids read it after I’m gone is vital to me. And a plain text file is readable with anything and requires no export of conversion process like Joplin did. On this topic though, that wouldn’t matter since its mostly To Dos and I don’t care what format those are in.
I have been battling a similar battle but landed on Obsidian. There is a community plugin called “Tasks” that fixed most of my issues. Takes some tinkering in writing the queries but it unlocked most of the functionality I missed
I’ll take a look at the plugins again. I did find one that works with todo.txt format, which is interesting but might not be exactly what I’m looking for for this purpose.