A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.
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I know this is a rather necro-y post, but I'm surprised nobody mentioned anytype. I've been using it for the last 2 months and I'm slowly moving my notes off obsidian, as well as my journal off logseq/nextcloud.
I went in a bit weary, the webpage looks like the typical startup project ready to pull the rug off your feet at any point, but there's a self-hosted option and even a local-only mode that syncs devices across your LAN.
Thanks for the recommendation. I’ll check it out. Do you use it behind a reverse proxy?
I have nginx set up for limited stuff, most of my selfhosted services I kept behind tailscale.
The only big con I found against it, it's hard to switch between the self-hosted and "normal" vaults. I should test if I can have another copy (eg appimage) with separate settings for that.
I am heavily using the local-only mode but I've also recommended it to some normie friends, so sharing vaults in different modes becomes a hassle
Edit: tldr, I'm using the "local only" mode but since I have tailscale, everywhere is LAN ;)
I'm getting into this and have some questions (if that's okay). We still download their mobile & desktop apps, right? Then select either "local-only" or "self-hosted"? Is one free and the other costs money? If so, I'll do what you're doing except I just put a wireguard server on my opnsense box and vpn into my local network that way.
Is there a sample docker compose you could show me? I found this docker-compose and this env file but it all seems unnecessarily complicated. Is this what you're using?
The normal account (dafault) is the only monetized option, giving 100mb of free space.
I did a quick check on the self hosted option in the beginning and same, seemed too convoluted and decided to stick with the local method, since I tested it (turning phone WiFi off) and it was still syncing (via tailscale)
On the upside, I tested the import/export features and seemed rather solid, so you can always create a new local account (save the seed phrase!) And bring your stuff back into it.
I liked Trilium but I use low end android devices and it did not like low resource devices. Same for Joplin too. If you do not have that issue, I thought Trilium Notes was very nice.
I use Trilium and I like it. The first thing I would like to mention: Trilium is stale and there is Trilium Next the official successor... More or less... If you choose to try, start with the one that is still in development.
But to be fair, I does not use it as I wanted to. My plan was to use it completly with markdown but I am to dumb or ignorant to do it right. So I simply use the wysiwig style integration to style my texts.
I will watch a video that shows me how to properly use markdown in there.
On the other hand, actually I think about switching to some AsciiDoc Notes/Wiki stuff. Simply because I like the way AsciiDoc works...
And the last to mention: I have no experience with Authelia.
I was going to switch to trillium next, but in the end I decided not because it relies on a database even more than Joplin does.
I'm in the process of giving Silver Bullet a try. It seems to be pretty well designed. I don't really like that folders are just cosmetic and not useful for navigation, but I like that it is open source, that the documents are saved in the file system, and that it's self-hosted instead of synced.
There's a plug to enable folder based sidebar navigation https://github.com/joekrill/silverbullet-treeview
I was just testing it out lol.
There is also a graph plugin for an obsidian-like view, but it's kinda janky.
There is a beta AI plugin too, which (as much as I hate AI) is something I may try. The power of NotebookML is just too much, I wanna be able to ask it shit about my D&D campaign notes.
I use authelia and trillium and the oidc implementation is bad. It works but it double consent screens even with implicit etc
The app itself is ok. Pretty useful from time to time to plan a project
Oof this is faint praise. Glad to know your opinion. I’m still looking. I don’t think Trilium is my answer.
I've been a Joplin user as well for some time and decided to switch to something different too. I looked at Trilium as a possible alternative but decided it wasn't for me. Seems like their self hosted sync server doesn't have much in terms of proper authentication at all? At least from what I've seen from the setup and when I skimmed through the docs. However there does seem to be encryption available which at least seems to be something. The interface also seems very cluttered and has a wild amount of features I'll never even dream of using extensively. I needed something more simple and streamlined.
With that in mind and as I use Authentik for authentication and user management I decided to look elsewhere. I'm currently testing Jotty/Jotty.page, however they want to format it, and it has everything I need. But it lacks encryption and a proper mobile app. It does however have PWA support which is at least something. I do also enjoy that it is pretty much completely directory based. Even the users and user sessions and shared notes are just JSON files. This makes active backups a breeze and disaster recovery is going into a users directory and making a copy of their directories and .md files. It's growing on me to say the least.
Trilium Next has 2fa, note encryption and oidc support AFAIK, so the authentication should not be a concern. Every instance retains its own copy of the data and syncs with the server (if you have one) backups are made daily in the back end iirc. Exporting the data is trivial too in both HTML and markdown.
I see. I must've missed that while doing my skimming a bit too hastily. Good thing it has, I was worried it would be limited to securing it through a VPN.
I'm glad it exists and hope of develops further. It has gotten some well deserved growth and exposure in general.
I tried it in the past but had problems with the linux app (when are they releasing the flatpak to flathub?) so I put it aside for now. I want to try obsidian next but am not happy with it not being open source and that you either have to pay for sync or use the community livesync which could basically stop working with every update. Maybe I will go back to trilium but I have to stop switching and stick to one for a while lol
If you haven't tried Trilium in a while you should. It has improved significantly and has a nice clean new theme.
Do you know if Trilium saves notes in plain markdown like Obsidian or in a database?
In a database with the option to export all notes or single notes as markdown.
After trying a bunch I settled on trillium, it seemed the best of the bunch. My only complaint would be the cloning note wasn't working like I expected. I think I expected the Clone to make a copy, but it was more of a symlink duplicate
Ive had Trilium running for 2 years and it's been perfect for me but I'm not a power user of it. I've yet to upgrade to Trilim Next, simply not needing anything more. I guess all I can say is it hasn't eaten my data.
I have used both but just started using jotty (jotty.page, github link on the bottom). The SSO setup with Authentik was seamless and it seems really snappy so far and the Dev seems active and involved.
Personally I use Joplin as it's super customizable and I like sorting my notes in "notebook". I am syncing my notes with Nextcloud, but you can also use anything that's WebDAV, OneDrive (ew), or anything that uses S3 (like Backblaze)
I've been using Trilium for years and the feature set has grown significantly. It is pretty simple up front but has all the bells and whistles just an extra click or two away. It is entirely free (no up sells, pro tiers, subscriptions, etc - you get it all free, so do support the developer if you can!) There is a third party android app that works quite well if you need that and the pwa is quite good too. I'm pretty sure you won't be disappointed. it seemed like almost every time I thought trilium was missing a feature, I would find out that it actually has it (or something similar). The only thing I would say is that if you're a flat file only person, then it isn't for you - it stores the notes in a database -even though they can be easily exported in a directory format.