Joplin can sync between phone and laptop with a number of network storage options
https://joplinapp.org/help/apps/sync/
or you can self-host Joplin server.
https://github.com/laurent22/joplin/blob/dev/packages/server/README.md
this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2026
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EDIT: I am going to edit this to reflect that I HAVE NOT tried Joplin 3.5 which says: "
More reliable syncing and sharing
Syncing and sharing have been made more robust in everyday use. Joplin now handles repeated syncs more efficiently, avoids unnecessary data usage, and is better at detecting and syncing all changes, particularly when using WebDAV and S3 sync targets."
Until I have new data I will scratch this out:
~~In Joplin, I have never been able to successfully use an s3 instance with two or more joplin clients. It corrupts eventually. This is using a bucket for storage directly, not WebDAV.~~
From my research the best bet is self host, webdav, or some kind of file sync
That's weird... I've been using S3 to sync Joplin between Linux and Android without corruption issues for more than a year now.
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Joplin. I use it on my phone, multiple laptops and Linux desktops.
I second this.
Do you ever regret that Joplin does not store notes in plain text? (meaning you couldn't edit your notes in a plain text editor if you wanted to)
Nope not a bit. But you mean through exporting stuff I assume(?).
If for any reason I need to move something to a text file (very rare) then I just cut/copy and paste without the MD.
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I also second this. Working like a charm for me over 4 different devices and 3 different Operating systems.
obsidian is not FOSS BTW
Sadly, because honestly, all the FOSS options that are mentioned in this thread don't even compare to how snappy, useful and expandable Obsidian is 😭
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Joplin. It’s cross platform and just works. No hassle.
notesnook
I use Joplin through some WebDAV with my cloud provider, kDrive.
Works perfectly once set up.
I don’t know if you could make it work directly from your phone to your computer though.
Notesnook should do it! It has a premium monthly subscription thing that gives you some extra functionality, but the free version does sync automatically between devices. I've been using it for a year now myself and have had no complaints.
Is there something wrong with Standard Notes that I should be aware of? It hasn't been mentioned here. It has the AES-256 encryption standard, there is a free tier, it's open source and it undergoes regular security audits.
Obsidian + Syncthing has been working prefectly for several years now for me, across Windows, Android and Linux.
Obsidian is not open-source...
I've never used it, but I've heard good things about Notesnook.
Been using Notesnook for almost 3 years now and it's just awesome. Highly recommend!
not (completely) open source but signal has a "note to self" function i use for that
I'm using Logseq and it's the least bad of the FOSS options I tried so far.
Its crazy, with a complete fresh install and 0 notes, this application takes half a gig of memory and is constantly making the CPU work, when it's just running, not even being used?
I think its wild that it hogs resources like this for a text editor 😅
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Could look into self hosting an Obsidian Sync server, see this blog:
https://pinggy.io/blog/self_hosting_obsidian/
Obsidian - https://obsidian.md/
edit: And you can obviously do it without pinggy's tunnel for remote access.
I've set up Joplin with Syncthing and it's been working for me.
Syncthing and Org Mode.
Org-mode is especially great for people who like branchy outlines as their notes. It allows to jot down a note quickly and to move them around in the tree as the heart desires. I have thousands upon thousands of notes, mostly short one- or two-sentence long.
Plus both Emacs and Orgzly allow some programmatic fiddling with the notes.
The downside is that copying anything with links or formatting out of Org requires converting its markup to Markdown or whatever.
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What also works is using SyncThing. That way you can sync any app that uses files that you want. I use Obsidian for note taking which creates .MD files in a designated folder, I sync that folder with my phone.
You can self host Anytype. It looks like notion, but is FOSS and total under your control.
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It's like obsidian (I hear) but FOSS. I love it and it's by far the self hosted service I use most.
It stores your notes in a plain directory hierarchy of markdown files so you can just point a cron shell script at it to git add/commit/push at your desired internal and you've got history tracking/backups too
Edit: also provides a PWA so you can "install" it on your phone instead of always using a full browser.
Edit x2: includes a Lua interpreter so you can get scripty with it. I use that functionality more than I expected and I suck at Lua
Edit x3: and it auto synchs to each device when open with conflict detection. Full copy is stored local to each device, synched when possible
Lol
I just researched PWAs with this article.
PWAs aren’t a silver bullet, but when applied in the right contexts, they continue to offer undeniable benefits
Now you are telling me silverbullet(.md)
provides a PWA
Hehe. So PWAs aren't a silver bullet but Silverbullet can be a PWA.
Is that one of those "all squares are rectangles but not all rectangles are squares" type things?
includes a Lua interpreter so you can get scripty with it
Any examples of what you're doing with scripts? I use some custom programming in Org-mode in Emacs, but curious about what other people are doing in different apps.
The two biggest things I use it for are programmatically generating "lists of lists" (lists of pages, more accurately) and as a semi-hacky way to get text colors. Semi-related, the "Treeview" plugin gives you a folder hierarchy panel off to the left (by default) which is really, really nice.
I should probably clarify that I didn't write these, I stole them from the Silverbullet community forums... also I should reiterate that I suck at Lua so take my explanations with a grain of "this person may not know what they're talking about" ; )
Lists of Lists :
I have a bad memory so I create a LOT of lists. I even have a base page named "Lists" that I then nest different types of lists under (TODOs for home, for work, for school, for projects, for selfhosting, etc). Since the table is programmatically generated, it's always up to date on each load. This first snippet relies on using frontmatter on the respective pages along with the tags property.
${query[[
from index.tag "todolist"
order by lastModified desc
select {
List="[[" .. _.name .. "]]",
Modified=_.lastModified
}
]]}
This retrieves all pages from the space index with a tag of todolist (from the frontmatter), orders them by lastModified, descending, and renders a table that contains the name and lastModified date. This is excellent for providing a list of pages (based on tag, todolist in this case) related to a topic and ordering them by the last time they were changed. I use this in the base page for pretty much all of my "folders". Screenshot :
Text Color Hack :
Since the Silverbullet markdown interpreter doesn't (currently) support plain HTML, and the way we usually color specific areas of text within Markdown is <span style="color: #fff">white text</span>, they had to get inventive. Somebody came up with a way to provide Lua functions that will accept text as a parameter and then render it with the specified HTML color/style.
In my CONFIG page (that is applied to the entire space) I included a space-lua code block like :
function Red(text)
return widget.html(dom.span {
style="color:#e60000; font-weight: bold;",
text
})
end
// Also about 5 more for different colors I use, snipped for simplicity.
Then, anywhere in my Silverbullet space I can use a Lua code snippet like The following word is ${Red("red")} and it will invoke the space-lua function named Red() on the text red, apply the styling, and render it with CSS color #e60000. Hacky? Yeah... but it works for now. Screenshot : 
... I've been meaning to build a generic Colorize(text, hexColor) function (which would likely take all of 30 seconds : ) but haven't yet. Maybe tonight.
EDIT: That did, in fact, take 30 seconds. Function :
// This assume "color" parameter is a valid/properly formatted CSS color, meaning a known word ("red"), hex ("#ff0000"), or presumably RGB/etc but so far I've only tested color names and hex (I typically use hex)
function Colorize(text, color)
return widget.html(dom.span {
style=string.format("color:%s; font-weight: bold;", color),
text
})
end
Usage : ${Colorize("any text", "#00ff00")}
Interesting, thanks. This Silverbullet thing turned out to be more complex than I originally imagined, I thought it's a hierarchical notes app as usual.
I have a bad memory so I create a LOT of lists
I'm the same way, but that led me to Org-mode with local files (synced to the phone) and loads of nested outlines, like thousands of items.
But since it's programmed in Emacs Lisp, I've made me some custom commands like logging taken medicine with the current time and date, adding an episode to the log of series watched, etc. I also plan on hacking together a brother extension that would send the page title and address to one of specific places in the outlines, but I keep putting that off.
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Standard Notes
Actually, you can use Signal for this, if you have it on both your phone and laptop, and use "note to self." I prefer this because it's very straightforward and isn't bogged down with a lot of extraneous extra features that other notetaking apps I've tried tend to have.
I use Notesnook and I'm happy with it. They have a flagship instance with free accounts if you don't want to self-host.
If you want something more lightweight and are up for using syncthing, just a bunch of markdown files synced with syncthing also works. You can encrypt them with your pgp key if you want encryption, but that doesn't encrypt metadata like file names, directory structure, or when files were last edited.
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I’ve been using a self-hosted Jotty instance, it’s been pretty great!
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Currently using siyuan. Just wish you could use the app with a self hosted instance.
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The inbuild notes in the Vivaldi browser (Markdown) are synced between Desktop and Mobile, no third party app needed.
Anything with cloud support, really. I'm using iotas and some Android nextcloud notes app. Most apps will just write notes to .md files you can sync with nextcloud/owncloud using the desktop client.
Probably Nextcloud
Setting up nextcloud for notes is, to take a quote from the late Robin Williams, like doing chemo cause you're tired of shaving your head.
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I use Notesnook, but as an alternative to Notion and more complex features, it's way too simple.
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