Evaluating Joplin After a Year of Robust Use

I’m at the point in my life as a computer user where I can still get excited about a new tool, but I’m hesitant to write about it until I’ve been using it for at least a year. I set up Joplin on January 10, 2025 and I’ve been using it almost daily since. It’s time for a blog post about how I have it set up and how I’ve found it helpful.

Joplin: The Beginning (Again)

I tried Joplin back in 2020, but whether it wasn’t the right time or I approached it differently, I almost never found myself using it. But then my ancient Macbook Air (2012) died in the fall of 2024. After I replaced it, my Notes app began to sync between my phone and computer for the first time ever. That was really useful. I could take advantage of my typing skills or copy-paste on my computer and then use it on the go. I could update something between sets at the gym and finish it at home. And It got me thinking about how things could be even better.

What if I could sync between the unholy pile of devices that is my personal Macbook, my personal Linux laptop (Mint!), my work Windows laptop, my work Linux laptop (Ubuntu), and my phone?

That’s when Joplin came back to me.

Joplin: The Setup

One of the selling points of Joplin is, not only is it end-to-end encrypted (or can be) but you can synchronize it over a variety of services. You can subscribe to Joplin’s own cloud service (located in France and subject to GDPR), but you can also use Dropbox, OneDrive, or even your self-hosted NextCloud server.

I simply selected Dropbox in the Synchronization dropdown of the Settings area and followed the instructions. I use my 2GB (free tier) Dropbox plan and even with various other files in there, my usage has never caused an issue.¹

Joplin: The Day-to-Day

The real star in Joplin are its Markdown notes. You can also manage to-do items, upload files, clip websites, email things to yourself, draw, and write notes in a rich text editor, but the basic Markdown interface is exactly what I need.

I’ve been using notes for for:

• Code snippets with additional context
• Notes on my work projects
• To-do lists
• Email drafts
• Blog posts²
• Article drafts (solo-authored, though you can set up sharing in Joplin)

The nesting folder structure makes it easy for me to organize things, but search helps if I can’t remember whether the text I’m looking for is in the note: “Email Drafts” or “[Project Name] Emails.”

I’ve found that having it ready to hand and knowing I’ll be able to access it all my devices has made me better at making notes throughout a process. For example:

• I’ve been documenting all the ways I use MarcEdit in the terminal: code snippets, sample validation file syntax, paths to where I’ve got those files saved on different computers so I can plug and play.
• I made a file of links for video and blog posts of various powerpole tutorials so that I could learn how to add them to my ham radio equipment last summer.
• I’ve even got a note called “Warmups” with a dozen dynamic warmup options in case I want to change things up at the gym.³

Basically, I keep it running in the background on my laptops when I’m using them and pull it up on my phone when I need it. If I haven’t been using that machine in a while, I might have to wait briefly for it to sync, but they’re small files and it goes quickly. Whatever you already had is always already available and loaded on your machine.⁴

Joplin: Cool Things I’m Not Using

For me, Joplin is really a note-taking/text drafting tool. But there are other features I’m not using which others reading this might find useful.

You can sync files, including PDFs, images, audio, and video. I’ve done this once, I accidentally pasted an image into a blog post and synched it across my devices. There’s OCR for the PDFs and images, though I’ve never explored it.

The To-Do functionality is quite robust – a to-do item is its own Markdown file where you can elaborate, add references, or list subtasks. I have a folder called “House Projects” where I get satisfaction from checking off things like: “Clean Fridge” but otherwise don’t use them to their its full extent.

I also don’t really use the Web Clipper. I have self-hosted bookmarking setup and if I want to save a whole page, I tend to just copy-paste it when I’m on the computer. But if you found it useful in Evernote (which I haven’t used in forever), it seems to work about like that did.

You can tag things, you can draw in the web app (and on desktop with a plugin), and a ton of little things I haven’t explored. I think email forwarding may require a paid subscription, but they’re quite affordable and that might be well worth it for some.

Or you can also just enjoy a robust notetaking experience across all your devices like I do.

Anyway, it’s been ages since I’ve written a tool post, but Joplin’s made an ongoing positive difference to my workflows since I adopted it. That seemed worth shouting out. Since I don’t pay for the cloud app, I’ve also used the Paypal link to send the developer a thank you.

This post was written in Joplin.