Why Joplin is the Best Note-Taking App

Back in the late 2000s, I was a devoted Evernote user. I attended local meetups, even met the management team, and was a paying customer, convinced it would stand the test of time. Then it started to decline. I tried various note-taking apps, but none truly excited me. OneNote felt bland and lacked crucial features like geotagging, which is important to me as knowing my location when taking a note can be vital.

I then discovered Joplin.

For me a good note-taking fills several needs.

  1. Note-taking (obviously)
  2. Knowledge management
  3. Sharing
  4. Ability to link notes and link to the outside world
  5. Ability store files

Features I insist on from all of my software.

  1. Ability to import/export easily
  2. I own my data
  3. Easily synchronizes to my phone and other devices

Sync

If I can't pull up my notes instantly on my phone, then the app is useless to me. With Joplin, my notes synchronize natively inside the app. Obsidian requires an external sync method. Yeah, maybe my sync method sucks? I can't fault Obsidian over performance of a feature it doesn't offer. Or can I? I do see some advantage of storing notes in the file system and not a database, but the disadvantages far outweigh the advantages.

Plug-ins

Yeah, yeah, Joplin has like four plug-ins while Obsidian has 32,768 and counting. That's not quite true. I agree, Obsidian has more plug-ins. But I don't care. The plug-ins I want are available for Joplin. All of those graphs showing how notes link. They're gee-whiz features. It's a cool visualization but how does it improve my life or make me more productive?

Sharing

I host my own Joplin Server allowing me to share my notes with the outside world. I would have to pay Obsidian for that and now my notes are on their server. I could get creative and use Nextcloud or just a plain webserver to share Obsidian notes, but that's more steps and I'm lazy.

Search in the Joplin desktop and Android app are fast. And accurate. I've found the Obsidian search to be a little buggy. It's a matter of taste. I don't like it.

GUI

Joplin has a clean, simple, familiar interface. Obsidian has the opposite of that. I open a vault, switch to a new vault, can't close the other vault because it's in use. But what's using it? Again, matter of taste, but for me this is the worst part of Obsidian, the interface. Even worse than the sync situation.

Conclusion

I have used a variety of apps over the years. Evernote. OneNote. Keep. Nextcloud Notes. Obsidian. They just don't work for me. Joplin does. You can use Joplin without hosting your own server. They offer a paid subscription. You can also store and sync in a variety of cloud apps. Check it out. You'll love it. Joplin web site.