Take a look at Joplin
this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2023
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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:
- You can create a new Notebook and add to-dos in it and these can have a body for description purposes.
- Or you can make a note containing the to-dos using the markdown checkbox
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.
I use https://tasks.org/ and Ive no issues going back and forth between the app and nextcloud tasks.
I also use tasks.org but I'm not convinced it's a quillpad/google keep replacement?
It does do tasks nicely though.
I've been testing that one as well! One of the things I had hoped a replacement would offer is either a desktop app or web portal because if I'm entering many items, id much prefer doing it from a computer with a keyboard. But I'm realizing that is a pretty tall order. Zoho notebooks has it but I've read some alarming things about their privacy policy that don't sit well.
Have you tried the Notes app in Nextcloud? I moved all my keep notes to that not too long ago, and they show up as markdown files when you sync them to your desktop. There's a Notes Android app as well.
I did actually. And unfortunately Nextcloud doesn't run well on my hardware at all. Perhaps I'll revisit should I upgrade down the road.
I feel like NextCloud needs some relatively capable hardware to run on, and their minimum specs are bullshit.
I've tried it on a relatively capable PC (with an old i7) in a docker container in WSL, and it ran like shit. I'm sure it would have run better natively, but I don't want to devote that entire machine to NextCloud.
I've tried it on a Raspberry Pi 4 (2GB) and it ran like shit. People keep saying it runs on low-powered hardware, but I have yet to see it.
I have to agree with you here. I tried the official Nextcloud docker as well as the AIO container that has some performance optimization tweaks. They both ran terribly on my Microserver G8 with 16GB RAM and an upgraded CPU (Xeon E3-1265L v2). Which I realize is a bit long in the tooth tech wise, but even if I paused or stopped all other containers to try to give it even more system resources, it ran really poorly. I do have a Pi4 as well but figured why bother. I don't need all of the features NC has. I've been testing Seafile for storage/sync and while it has a quirk or two, it works insanely fast. But it's also a different beast entirely.
Personally I use memos as a Google Keep replacement. There are mobile apps for it as well called moememos.
Check out https://usememos.com
I've used it off and on a bunch since I started this self hosting journal. I really like the project, but I guess it just doesn't fit in with the way I use Keep. But man, its really cool. Had I not already picked a different method for journaling I would absolutely consider it for that. But, like Joplin, it puts the markdown files in a database that isn't easy to export if needed.
If hosting NextCloud is your problem, you can purchase a hosted instance for less than $20/year. Woelkli even has a free tier.
Not my only problem with Nextcloud. It's just a lot more app than I need or want. Plus the quirks of using something like Quillpad with it as mentioned in my original post.