Ideally, it could work like this: On android app, swipe left or right on a note to mark it as “archived”. On next sync the note is marked as archived on server and deleted from phone. Finally on next desktop sync the note is moved to an archive notebook on desktop and deleted from server. (That would be case with one mobile and one desktop devices. With more devices the archived note remains on server until it has been deleted from or moved to archive notebook on all devices) Different users may prefer to have the archive notebook on differnt devices or all devices. The point (for me) of archiving is that there are notes that are better not to carry around but are useful to keep archived just in case. On another note, I would like to say that I am syncing with nextcloud and everyhting is working surprisingly nicely. The only problem I see is that perhaps React Native is not as native as they advertise it. Opening notes feels sluggish and the side panel is hard to work with. Other than that it’s a dream app. Thanks!

This seems a strange request to me. :thinking: Why would you want to have archived notes on all your desktop devices except the server? What could be a use-case for this? (I myself am strongly opposed to this idea: I want to know that when I see a note in Joplin, it's also been backed up on my backend and killing my HDD won't ruin my notes.)

Why not create an “Archive” notebook and move the notes there yourself?

perhaps archive notebook is a confusing term. basically the idea is to define a notebook on one or more devices that are not synced with the rest of devices so that when notes are flagged as “archived” they are moved to these no-sync notebooks and erased from all other notebooks. it’s a security feature. you set up no-sync notebooks on secured devices and erase notes that you dont need to carry with you while keeping a secured copy but it may serve other purposes too. it’s the way i deal with email

Hi I’m a newbie of Joplin but a long period user of Google Keep. Archived notes in Keep are no longer visible in the notebooks but they are restorable if needed. It’s a very useful function because it keeps the active notes list shorter. I could mimic this function with a “Archived” notebook but when I look at “All notes” I retrieved the “Archived” ones too. A logically separate repository for archived notes should be simpler.

I agree, having it be separate conceptually would be nice. Then they’re not clogging things up but are retrievable later. Google Keep is exactly what I had in mind when searching for this feature. A lot of mailboxes and apps have an “archive” button, sometimes as the default over the trash can or deletion. This is no doubt relevant to the sale of storage space once a user hits their free account limit, but I’m the type of person who likes to store everything that isn’t completely useless like spam. It sure is possible to regret deleting something as well.

I just started using Joplin this week, and I was looking for an “Archive” action button -> Archive folder as well. As others were expressing, it can sometimes be useful to have notes/folders (such as in this “Archived” notebook concept) not included in a default search, but included in a “Search everything there is” search. Does that make sense? I had implemented manually a Archive folder, but the searching problem exists, so I have ended up exporting the notes and folders I want “Archived” and then deleting them from the app.

Perhaps, this is joplin’s own problem, not rn’s. . .but the sidebar on the phone is really hard to use

I’d like to add my support for this feature request. Our use case is an institutional knowledge base, and the systems we document change over time. To invent an example, if we replace a scheduled biannual process on an IIS server with a new one on an Apache server, we don’t want the documentation for the old process to show up in search results, as it would cause clutter and confusion if a new person takes over the system a couple of years from now. However we also don’t want to delete it as we need to keep a history of the application over its lifespan. An “Archive” flag/tag on notes and a settings option to “include archived in search results” or “search all notes” would be very useful. Thanks!

We now have a notebook filter that restricts search scope to a notebook(s). Eg., notebook:news abc (https://github.com/laurent22/joplin#searching) Currently, it can’t be negated but making that possible might give us a solution. Then you can do something like – -notebook:archive abc

My use case for this feature would be the configuration of Auto-Download. I use Joplin for Lecture notes for University. During these online school terms, I have been saving video lectures as resources for my notes.This means I have single notes with upwards of 1GB of files attached to it. Overall, my notebooks+resources for my courses add up ~30Gb for just this term. I would like to be able to "Archive" these notes, which forces notebooks to follow a seperate sync profile than standard notebooks. To me Archiving means: Dont automatically sync the notes. Download markdown when note opened. Download resource when resource opened. Dont include in search results. (Maybe add support for search indexing or something for archived markdown ¯_(ツ)_/¯ ) Implementing this goes over my head, but this is what I envision for User experience :smile:

[Feature request] archive notes

Features

PedroM 25 June 2026 12:59 18

5 years later, but I think this is still an open point. I like the idea of excluding notes from searches, but as far as I understand this is not possible yet? Or am I missing something?

Is it possible to publish plugins written in Python?

Topic		Replies	Views
Support for archiving notes? Features	6	2314	16 January 2020
Search block/archive/close notebooks Support	1	68	4 December 2025
Feature request: Don't sync every note, use search index Features	6	593	14 April 2019
Exclude notebooks from syncing Features	37	5610	17 May 2023
Option for no sync a notebook to other device Features	1	462	23 March 2020

[Feature request] archive notes

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