Joplin

Joplin is a powerful, free, and open-source note-taking and to-do application designed for users who value privacy, flexibility, and control over their data. Unlike many cloud-based note-taking services, Joplin follows an "offline first" philosophy, ensuring that all your notes are always available on your device, regardless of internet connectivity.

At its core, Joplin excels at handling large volumes of notes organized into notebooks. The application uses Markdown formatting, giving you complete control over how your notes look while maintaining portability and simplicity. Whether you're a developer documenting code, a student organizing lecture notes, or a professional managing projects, Joplin adapts to your workflow seamlessly.

Privacy and Security are fundamental to Joplin's design. The app offers end-to-end encryption for note synchronization, meaning your data remains private even when stored on cloud services. You can sync your notes across devices using various platforms including Nextcloud, Dropbox, OneDrive, or Joplin Cloud, all while maintaining complete confidentiality. Your notes are encrypted before leaving your device, and only you hold the keys to decrypt them.

Cross-platform availability is another major strength. Joplin runs natively on Windows, Linux, macOS, Android, and iOS, providing a consistent experience across all your devices. The desktop applications are feature-rich and highly customizable, while the mobile apps offer full functionality for capturing thoughts on the go.

The application includes powerful search capabilities with full-text search across all platforms, allowing you to quickly locate information within thousands of notes. Advanced users will appreciate the plugin system that extends functionality, and the theming engine that allows complete visual customization.

Multimedia support is comprehensive, allowing you to attach images, PDFs, videos, and other files directly to your notes. The built-in Web Clipper browser extension for Firefox and Chrome enables you to save web pages and screenshots directly into Joplin, making it an excellent research companion.

For users migrating from other services, Joplin provides seamless import functionality, particularly from Evernote. The import process preserves formatted content (converting it to Markdown), resources, and metadata including geolocation, creation dates, and modification times.

The application supports tags for organization, making it easy to create cross-notebook connections and find related notes quickly. You can create to-do lists with reminders, helping you stay productive and organized. The note editor supports tables, code blocks with syntax highlighting, mathematical expressions, and diagrams, making it suitable for technical documentation.

Community-driven development ensures that Joplin continues to evolve with user needs. Being open source means the code is transparent, auditable, and continuously improved by developers worldwide. This also guarantees that your notes aren't locked into a proprietary format – Markdown files can be accessed with any text editor, ensuring long-term accessibility of your data.