"Enable soft breaks" should be "on" by default!!! This default setting causes a great deal of wasted time for anybody that's learning how to use Joplin. The default setting makes anything you type look very strange, you cannot add a line without it making a paragraph. It took me days to figure this out, it is a real "deal breaker"
If you want impatient people such as myself to use the work you're so kindly developing, you really need to change this. I tried Joplin several times over a couple of weeks and every time I stopped using it because it totally screwed up everything I was trying to do. I kept trying to figure out how to do this using markdown, I tried to find software plugins... all of that was useless and a total waste of time. It turns out I was persevering but that's the only reason I'm using it now.
To be fair I find the Joplin is useful because you can learn how to do markdown language, but to learn that I think you're better off using a PC.
You need to learn how to use chatBots and ask questions. This normally beats the manuals and help and FAQ guides online. So, just as a quick check, I asked your question to three AI interfaces: How do I enable soft breaks in Joplin app? -
I asked the free You.com and the free Phind.com and the paid Perplexity.ai. All of them gave me the correct answer in under 15 seconds.
All of these are good, but by no means an exhaustive list. Welcome to 2025!
"Joplin uses hard breaks by default, which means that a line break is rendered as <br>. Enable soft breaks for traditional markdown line-break behaviour."
Yeah. "Markdown" implies soft breaks are on. But as a notes-first application (versus a document-centric application) and with the default behavior in so many other applications implementing short-form note-like use cases defaulting to hard breaks, it kind of makes sense.
I can see an argument either way though. I only use soft breaks because … I know I'm writing in markdown and it makes everything easier in the end.
I'm learning little by little. I'm having a hard time getting my texts to work in substack with more closely spaced paragraphs . I'm beginning to think I should be working on a PC but I travel a lot. Know any good tutorials?
A suggestion for porting from Markdown to some other kind of application that is not Markdown (example MS Word or Libreoffice and probably also Substack): View the rendered version of the note you are writing. Select all of that note when your mouse or whatever, and then copy, and then paste it into the Word, Libreoffice, or Substack interface.
The rendered note is essentially a rendered webpage. You do that and Word / Libreoffice / Substack will likely know what to do with the styled text. You can see the same behavior by browsing to some website, selecting … whatever … using your mouse and then splatting it into the application's interface.
Anyway. I write short stories and things. Eventually, to submit for publication, I have to port them to a .docx document (a word document). I do that using this process into Libreoffice and sometimes MS 365 or whatever it is called. Then I fix the formatting that didn't convert right and then I have my document.
Hope this helps.
Not sure that's a fair test, though. People seeing an unexpected behaviour may not know it's called "soft breaks".
P.S. I'm not arguing about the app defaults - only about if a newcomer can or cannot find a solution easily.
They don't need to. All that is needed is to describe what they want and what they are getting. Every chatbot (the three I mentioned and others) all allow follow-up questions. Most (maybe all), even suggest further follow-up questions. Sometimes, if you don't know enough to ask a good question, you just ask what you can. It answers, and just as with human communication, if you see you aren't communicating, you and the bot will attempt to bridge the gap together.
A large amount of the Bot's training is how to “understand” your question and figure out what you might actually mean. It often re-writes your question a few times showing you what you should have asked. I ask many questions about things I don't know enough to ask good questions about. The bots and I work it out. This technology is an enormous game changer. We need to use it.
When I don't know how to do something in a program, or if it can be done, my first option is to ask a bot. They aren't always right. They sometimes make up entirely wrong answers, telling you to click menu items which do not exist. But, tech support isn't always right, either. So, like Reagan said, “Trust, but verify.”
I have been using Markdown for … Since the beginning (mid-2000s) and I still have to stop and think what "soft breaks" means. I guarantee that someone new to Markdown will not know what it means.