Comments on Sync issues finally drove me away from the Joplin note-taking app

People in the community seem to be fine with Zettelnotes for Android to browse their plain text (Markdown, really) notes:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.eu.thedoc.zettelnotes

No 1st hand experience from me because I don't have an Android device, though.

I transitioned away from a weird mixture of Google Keep and Evernote to Joplin several years ago. I used it from 2019 through 2021 but stopped using it because of the sync issues between my phone, personal Linux machine, and Windows work machine. Though even prior to 2021, I recall the occasional syncing problem and duplicates popping up.

I really do love the project, but I realized I was making my life complicated and just resorted to using a plain text file for keeping notes.

Zettelnotes looks like it could fit the bill, but it’s really not optimized for my workflow.

Congrats on your new job at Vivaldi! 😉

Syncthing might be the pain point, just check.

Just ran into this same issue today. Stuck on syncing. Tried pushing cancel, and now it's stuck canceling. >:|

Same problem when using OneDrive! I'd just stopped using Joplin on desktop and used it exclusively on Android. The two fell further and further apart. I couldn't migrate out of Joplin because I couldn't get the notes out of the mobile app. Your workaround got sync working again, so now I'm looking for another note-taking app. What's the one you'll be working on?

Thanks for posting. I'm also a fan of joplin but same issues with Android app and syncing, now it's completely unusable.

Did you take a look at Obsidian https://obsidian.md/ ? It uses Markdown for its files, allows easy linking them and offers huge modability through community plugins.

That's my experience as well. I can't blame Syncthing on this because it works fantastic with other apps I use daily (Obsidian, Todo.txt). I have problems only with Joplin. I don't have neither time nor desire to troubleshoot it anymore so I'm looking for alternative. Has anybody found something?

I've never been able to solve the duplicate issue completely. I have multiple desk and laptop computers and they were syncing well. Then after making a change of folder locations the issue came back (I thing the old multiple files came from my android phone.

Anyway, enough time wasted trying to fix things, I hate being beat but must move on. Just going to use plain text notes with SnycThing.

Yes that was the case for me too. Syncing notes with Syncthing, locally of course. I stayed with Markdown / plain text exactly because of that issue.

I guess some automatic Markdown editors can be really handy, because markdown actually makes sense as a WYSIWYG view, but faster.

In contrast I've had great success using a shared hosting server and WebDAV for synchronization for almost 12 months now since migrating from OneNote. Setup includes two Android (v2.12.3) phones, Windows laptop & desktop, with Linux migrations in the works, syncronizing 4 notebook profiles. The only issue experienced occurred yesterday, "ECONNREFUSED", syncing 1 profile from the desktop. And, all early indications are this cause is/was due to my hosting providers security configurations... but I'm still troubleshooting today before contacting the host... seems "they" might not like what I'm doing (or think I'm getting away with on a cheap plan)

My largest notebook (default) is over 85mb compressed, according to my latest backup. I have separate notebooks (profiles) for bookmarks, business and client notes.

Bottom line, the synchronization works. Sure, the Android UI needs work (to become a useable input tool) but the price is right for getting control of my note data and having it in an open text standard is priceless, IMHO.

Caveat, I disabled note history on all my notebooks early on after migrating from OneNote, before any value for having the feature was even evaluated. This was at a time when I had one huge notebook and the space needed on the WebDAV server for synchronization became a major concern.