Ask HN: How do you synchronise your notes?

15 points by flowinho 2 years ago | 38 comments

tl;dr: How is your personal / work setup?

Long version: I’m starting to burn out searching for a note system that suites my needs and values.

My values: - Privacy and Security - Open Source

My needs: - Markdown writing - Note printing (somewhat beautiful) - OS agnostic (i use Linux/iOS) - Sync across devices. - PDF storage (this is where trust comes in, as some documents contain sensitive info)

My capabilities: I run my own VPS, and as a software developer I’m familiar with git, ssh etc.

As always, tradeoffs are acceptable if I get something in return. For example it doesn’t HAVE to be open source software.

I‘m struggling to find something decent, that is not overblown. I don’t need note revision, I don’t need note-linking, I don’t need fancy productivity hacks or calendar-support.

Best wishes from Germany.

r13a 2 years ago |

Local Obsidian + Syncthing.

The magic of obsidian is that I rarely have to actually open obsidian. As the notes are in plain markdown, I usually just do my input from vim or vscode.

The magic of Syncthing is that it's (mostly) a set and forget thing.

The setup works on my PC, laptop, mobile and VPS.

Everything is backed up daily from a single point to a S3 backend with Restic. Also a set and forget thing.

swah 2 years ago | |

This means that you and commenters below are all Android users?

fhaldridge7 2 years ago | |

Same setup for me. Obsidian+Syncthing+Restic (with B2). Works great

umtksa 2 years ago | |

obsidian + syncthing on desktop + icloud on mobile

Tomte 2 years ago | | |

Don't you get constant sync conflicts? I set it up yesterday, and everytime I open Obsidian on iPad or PC (not at the same time) I get conflicts in two or three files (not my Markdown files, but some json files).

giaour 2 years ago |

I keep notes in markdown in a local folder and sync across machines with git. I tend to use VS Code to edit/read because I like the way its search feature works, but really any text editor would work fine. I sync with a private github repo, but any git remote would be equivalent.

Git history and did tracking is obviously more useful for text-based formats like md than it would be for PDFs, but there's no reason you couldn't include PDFs or other small binary files alongside your notes in the repo.

BA4gDY-cqjsEPWn 2 years ago |

Joplin - https://github.com/laurent22/joplin/

I use it with end to end encryption enabled and Dropbox as the storage backend.

flowinho 2 years ago | |

I used Joplin a few years ago but at some point I couldn’t restore synced notes and had some data-loss. This experience still makes me shy away from using it again…. Has it gotten better?

I_am_tiberius 2 years ago | | |

This happened to me as well. I started using it again though, in combination with joplin cloud. Data loss is still a big issue though. I just recently delete a note and couldn't find a way to restore it. Not sure if it would have been possible to do so, but if it's possible, it should definitely be easier.

BA4gDY-cqjsEPWn 2 years ago | | |

Data loss hasn't happened yet but this makes me concerned! Thanks for the tip! I'll look into alternatives myself now... :-)

runjake 2 years ago |

Obsidian with Obsidian Sync, because I want reliable sync between work devices and my personal iPhone. I don't use a lot of plugins, nor spend a lot of time perusing plugin options. The one plugin that is crucial to my Obisidian workflow is Omnisearch.

byteknight 2 years ago |

Obsidian + Remotely Save plugin Native cloud provider, sick, utilities, resultant, duplicate files, so I like to use remotely save with the OneDrive integration. You can also use S3 or WebDAV. I was playing with shortcuts on iOS and automated sending articles to ChatGPT, summarize, and save the article and summary IN MARKDOWN to obsidian automatically. Pretty cool.

tbalci 2 years ago |

I would vote for local Obsidian and sync over Git. This works across my work laptop, personal laptop, and my desktop. Obsidian covers: Markdown, note printing, OS agnostic, and PDF storage. You can go for sync + publish if you'd like to sync across devices without any additional software. I chose to use Git which works without any issues.

swah 2 years ago | |

Yesterday I wanted to try Obsidian once again - pasted a reference screenshot on my daily notes. Could not see the screenshot in the original size. Referred to the forums: you need some custom CSS to zoom on hover.

Once again, back to Apple Notes...

warrenm 2 years ago |

I use Apple Notes and Obsidian (synced via Nextcloud)

I also use Signal's "Note to self" feature, with autoexpire enabled (I send ephemera to myself thereon - if I haven't used/needed/looked at it in a week, it's not important)

aramndrt 2 years ago |

Ulysses with Ulysses sync.

I used to use Obsidian with iCloud sync between my Mac and iPhone. However, I found iCloud sync to be too unreliable, and Obsidian Sync was beyond my budget.

After recently exploring alternatives, I have now chosen Ulysses with Ulysses sync (taking advantage of a student discount at 11 USD/6 months). I write all my notes in Markdown and organize them exclusively within folders and subfolders, without using links and tags. This setup suits me perfectly.

meehow 2 years ago |

I really like Glow: https://github.com/charmbracelet/glow

Cloud part is done right. No accounts, no emails. Just your ssh key (which you probably already have).

brtv 2 years ago |

I quite like NextCloud. It's a general purpose file hosting software, so you can dump anything in there. On Desktop I use VS code to write markdown, and on mobile I can edit and preview md files on the fly with the Nextcloud app. And then there's also the dedicated Nextcloud Notes app.

I'm using a Hetzner StorageShare, but you can also host it yourself, it's open source.

warrenm 2 years ago | |

I used to use QOwnNotes (iirc) with NC on my desktop - and CloudNote (again, iirc) on my phone

But they would constantly complain about not being able to sync because a file was open :|

Now I just use NC to do the sync behind the scenes with Obsidian (or emacs, or any other editor of choice)

vs4vijay 2 years ago |

There are good Notes App (with syncing options):

  - Standard Notes (OSS, E2E encryption, Allows Sync)
  - AnyType (OSS, E2E encryption, P2P Syncing, Have option to host a node yourself)

---

If you want to separate Notes App and Syncing, then you could try following combination:

  - Obsidian/LogSeq with SyncThing
  - Obsidian/LogSeq with Git Sync
  - dendron vscode with Git Sync

flowinho 2 years ago | |

Oh wow! I did not know about anytype. Thank you for showing me another option. How long has the software been around? What is your personal setup? Do you use it?

joshxyz 2 years ago | | |

iirc they went open source the other day on github but it puts me off that you are required to login to use their desktop app.

with obsidian i can just open a git cloned repo folder with my notes and i can use it without sign in walls.

happyrock 2 years ago | |

Has anyone managed to get LogSeq to sync across Apple devices?

cpach 2 years ago | |

FWIW, the company behind Obsidian also offer a paid sync service.

keiferski 2 years ago |

I use IA Writer, which is all in Markdown. Not sure if it's on Linux, but it works well across iOS and Mac OS. The notes and attached files are just kept in folders on the Mac hard drive (i.e., accessible via Finder.)

https://ia.net/writer

throwaway154 2 years ago |

I email short notes to myself.

As notes are not a collections of facts but interlinkages of ideas I then take time to sit and put them together with a keyboard then save in a directory tree.

I email myself an encrypted .tar.gz of the directory tree at the end of the day.

Software is Zettlr.

CountGeek 2 years ago |

Trilium (https://github.com/zadam/trilium) , centrally self hosted, nothing to sync.

joshxyz 2 years ago |

Obsidian + obsidian-git extension + github private repository.

It just works.

flowinho 2 years ago | |

Pretty cool but do you store any sensitive information in there? Do you trust Microsoft?

mcdonje 2 years ago |

Side note: This is an extremely well written question. Thanks for covering all the bases and organizing it clearly and logically.

ablyveiled 2 years ago |

All my notes are in an `sshfs` mount -- it's fast enough for plaintext. The latency does suck though to be honest.

j4nek 2 years ago |

using Apple Notes sync via self hosted mail server. (Apple Notes is doing this via IMAP)

aosaigh 2 years ago |

Obsidian synced via iCloud Drive

NoZebra120vClip 2 years ago |

Google Docs