With their recent update it seems they are on the last step to making their free version completely useless – are there any good alternatives out there? Preferably something that has a similar android app. I know I could use ssh+vi in a text file, but I’d prefer something a bit more streamlined
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I used to use evernote mainly to store OCRed pdfs with some metadata. Moved my workflow over to a self hosted paperless-ngx instance. I’ll never go back.
I’d like to do this too! Any idea how best to migrate my stuff from Evernote?
I used yarle to convert evernote exports to obsidian. The pdfs will be accessible in the filesystem then.
It’s not difficult to get the PDF’s onto the file system, you can just export them there.
What’s difficult is getting them imported with all the metadata they originally had into another system with the same preview and search capability as Evernote.
Obsidian doesn’t look great for dealing with PDF’s from what I can see. What’s your feeling, would it work well? Or is paperless-ngx somehow accessing them from obsidian?
I don’t understand why obsidian is involved if you access them with paperless-ngx.
My first idea was to use obsidian as note and pdf app. I did add some metadata to the notes, but I never used them - full text did it for me. Hence the obsidian path.
There are plugins for obsidian that allow ocr stuff, but I don’t use them. I kind of split my workflow.
It sounded like from your first post that you were using paperless-ngx for PDF’s now. Do you use it that way or something else?
Notes, todos, stuff -> obsidian
Pdfs -> paperless
😊
So any advice on migrating PDF’s from Evernote to paperless?
I personally love Logseq. I use syncthing to sync the files but they’re implementing their own syncing feature. Works really fantastic and is cross platform.
I second Logseq. FOSS, completely local, stores everything in text - works well with Git, lots of plugins - it’s almost perfect
I third logseq 😅
Has a (small) learning curve. But powerful once you learn it.
It takes a while to open the first time though.
Yes, It takes it’s time indexing the graph - and you have to re-index periodically if you want you queries and graph to be in shape. I have a pretty mature KB, and this process takes no more than a few seconds, so it’s fine.
Honestly, I love everything about it, except for the app itself. It ties me to the default editor, which is an Electron-based sluggish resource hog. I’d rather have some software scaffolding to work in an editor of my preference, but that is just me. I suspect most people in most use cases won’t find it as problematic.
Yes, in fact I was searching for any CLI/TUI app for editing Logseq’s files. I feel a Logseq LSP server might help.
I’ve been toying with the same idea. Having Logseq running in server mode + creating an LSP adapter should be doable.
First off, Notion is vastly superior to Evernote in every way (IMO). They have super streamlined apps for both Android and iOS, and the learning curve is negligible. Fully accessible in any browser, too. Once mastered, Notion is ridiculously powerful, and their free account ridiculously generous.
That being said, I recently discovered Obsidian, and although I have big love for Notion, I don’t think I’ll be using it anymore.
Obsidian also has apps, both for mobile and (native) desktop (Mac, Win, Linux),
is open source(edit: my bad, not open source), and has a thriving plugin community on GitHub.The learning curve is steeper, and Obsidian is one of those things that’s so flexible that it’s borderline overwhelming, but if you can wrap your head around how you want to use it, make it suit your needs, it’s the absolute bee’s knees.
Personally, I use Obsidian on my Mac desktop, and sync my Vaults (basically just a specific folder on your HDD containing your notes (individual markdown.md files) and folders) with Google Drive. I then sync the changes to my Android phone using Autosync for Google Drive, where I use the native Obsidian app, and Google Drive syncs to my Chromebook where I run the Obsidian Linux client.
I can’t stress enough how much I love Obsidian, it’s truly been one of my top 3 new software revelations in the last 5 years (Raycast and Midjourney being the other two). Highly recommended ❤️
Edit: Sorry, just now noticed this was posted in FOSS, so my suggestions might not be valid. Just thought since you’re coming from Evernote, and there are fantastic, free alternatives, you might want to look into those 🙂 Both my recommendations have paid options (Obsidian offers paid sync, but is completely compatible with free alternatives), but both work amazingly without ever opening your wallet.
I’ve heard good things about logsec + Syncthing.
I have used Joplin for a good while. I self hosted a little docker server for sync and off I went. There are paid sync plans available though. Nowadays I’m lazy and use the notes of my Nextcloud instance most of the time.
I’m also looking for an alternative to Evernote since they jacked up their prices. My primary use is as a document store for OCR and indexing of scanned paperwork.
For general note taking I’m starting to use Logseq, but I don’t think that’s the right solution for long term storage, I have over 10 years of scanned documents I want to port across
Paperless-NGX seems to be the best option I found so far, but not installed it yet
This is not at all what it’s meant for but I use Element messenger for this purpose. It’s on all my devices, it’s e2ee, it’s shareable if needs be. It’s also a damn fine messenger in its own right.
There are several that I’ve been using / trying out:
- Notion
- used to be good, but it’s becoming more and more bloated, and nowadays those AI command options seem to be cluttering the quick commands.
- It is freemium, and syncs with their servers.
- It has a really good table creation system, and the keyboard navigation flows really well.
- I stopped using it since it’s becoming slower and bloated, and migrated my language notes to Obsidian.
- Obsidian
- is very capable (except that it doesn’t a good WYSIWYG table creation / adjustment system),
- it has tons of community plugins, very fast, lightweight, and customizable.
- Completely free, but it does take some tinkering, and some parts do look kinda awful.
- If you’ve been taking long notes with markdown, then Obsidian will probably suit you.
- I have all my language notes written in Obsidian and synced to Github with a plugin.
- Anytype
- is the latest one I’m trying out. Still in alpha, version 0.32
- It is clunky at times, because the keyboard navigation is not well implemented, you still need to rely on mouse to select some sections.
- But it has a really interesting type / relation definition system, where you define an object type, e.g. Movie, and you can define templates, relation to other objects (e.g. relation to Directors, etc).
- I’m currently using it to plan my games / streaming backlog, it has a good table and data view system.
I believe all 3 of them have android apps.
- Notion
A bit of a self promo (I’m the main author), but you may also want to look at SilverBullet as alternative: https://silverbullet.md/
Bit more technical than EverNote. More like Obsidian, but 100% open source and self hosted.
I suspected the site was a demo of what the software LOOKED like, then I got to the part where y’all say it’s functional. That’s a REALLY cool way to do an intro!
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Joplin or Zim.
I used Zim in the past, it’s a very polished app with a lot of features.
I would say wonderful in terms of capabilities and concept, just OK in terms of UI but highly effective. I guess more then OK in the sense pretty much everything is there and just works. Wish they had an android app. The things I like about it are:
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You can have pretty large notes collections and still use and navigate. At least for me though it seems to be limited to 3000 or so notes in a single notebook for speed reasons. That is way higher than I think I could sanely navigate in a normal app like Joplin though because it is a wiki and can be hierarchical too.
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I like that it stores as simple files in the file system. Nice format for fairly large notes too. So I can just manipulate stuff there if needed and process stuff with standard Linux commands or with Python. Really helpful when importing stuff for example, or reformatting something.
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Obsidian. Very simple, all functionality is free, offline, all notes are accessible on your PC, you don’t even need Obsidian to open them because they are in Markdown. Has tons of community plugins for every need, even a Notion-like tables plugin. There is an android app which looks fine but I don’t use it much so I can’t say anything about it. But since all your notes are offline you have to think of ways to sync them. There is a paid Obsidian sync which you dont have to use or you can sync with any other method (manually, github, syncthing, etc…)
Edit: Oops, just realized the post is in FOSS community and Obsidian doesn’t seem to be open source. Sorry! I’m not going to delete the comment though, maybe it’ll help someone
you don’t even need Obsidian to open them because they are in Markdown
This is crucial for me. I have existing sets of notes in Markdown and still want to edit in Vim or other editors, but sometimes in Obsidian too.
