Taking Notes with Joplin

Since Evernote died, I've been looking for a thing to replace it with. I've tried dozens (not exaggregating) note-taking solution.

Right now I've reverted to the good (?) old "plain markdown files in a git-synced repository. Of course it comes with its own set of downsides, but after migrating (and sometimes leaving behind) my notes so many times I like how portable and universal plain-text is.

(I want to give a shout-out to Tiddlywiki. It stands out among the plethora of solutions I've tested, and I still sometimes use it for my mind-maps or designs).

What do you mean by "Evernote died"? To the best of my knowledge they are still up and running?

Probably even released some new ToS to scrape all user data for AI training, I imagine.

I don't know if you've tried Obsidian, but it's just a tool that sits atop your pile 'o Markdown files. No vendor lock-in or special databases. I use Syncthing to sync the files between devices and git to periodically back them up to a private repo.

I've had to be careful to steer clear of all the plugin nonsense that's tempting to dive into as a distraction from actually using the tool, but Obsidian is surprisingly awesome right out of the box.

I use the daily note template tool to generate a structured agenda for each day, which removes the friction that used to keep me from daily journaling and second brain stuff. Now I can't live without it. It's been life-changing for me, as a person previously crippled with ADHD and perpetually living in a state of intense anxiety.

If you have any questions, I'm happy to help out. I was also an Evernote (and Joplin, and...) user for years and was never satisfied until I made a list of my requirements and discovered that Obsidian ticks all the boxes. Haven't turned back since.

I'm sure the parent means Evernote has suffered from enshitification and monetary optimization. The Evernote you get today is not the same as the Evernote from 15 years ago.

You can go crazy with the plugins for sure, but I found three to be particularly useful:

1. Google Calendar - this is a pain to set up, but once it's set up you can pull your agenda into a note.

2. Tasks - This allows you to write a query which you can use to consolidate multiple TODO lists into a single note.

3. Homepage - Always keep one note open as a pinned home page.

Combine the 3 and I have a nice dashboard that shows my agenda for the day and all the various TODOs I have peppered through my vault.

I switched to amplenote, which im very happy with. And i tried all the other notetaking apps, from jopling (hate the lack of wysiwyg editor) over obsidian and all the rest. Amplenote is the first note-app I decided to pay for. It does everything evernote did, without all the crap. And a lot of things it does better.

Maybe you'll like wiki.vim (not to be confused with vimwiki). I, like you, tried a lot of solutions, and it's the only one that's really stuck over the past couple of years. I think it's because it doesn't try to do too many things and is just a thin wrapper over a collection of text files (you can specify to use Markdown). Obsidian is fancier but I find that I've been able to replicate most of what I need and don't miss the extra bells and whistles.

Oh, and I've found using a tool like gitwatch really helpful for keeping the repo synced without having to remember to commit.