Joplin And Attaching Media Question

I hope this is the correct forum, and apologies if it should be posted elsewhere.

I'm hoping to use Joplin to organize notes about various research topics while also attaching relevant video files to those notes, of which there are quite a few at times. So far everything is working great, or so I thought. I have my videos organized in layers of folders named in a manner to easily find them, but upon further inspection it seems like it is copying the videos into the resources folder and renaming them.

Is there a way to avoid this and have it just reference the files I have already organized? I'm probably just being goofy and missing it but I can't seem to find a way. I prefer to not have double copies of my videos eating up space, as there are plenty, and that could be a rough hit on resources/space down the road.

Also, is it even feasible to use Joplin in this manner, or will it eventually struggle having so many attachments over time that are primarily video? I've loved this program for a long time for simple note taking, but I'm curious how well it will hold up using it now in this manner.

Thanks in advance for any help or advice! Great software and hopefully I can get on the right track with it.

Edit: After digging deeper I see I can drag and drop files over while holding ALT to link the file directly and maintain it's original location, but it doesn't embed into the note preview anymore for easy viewing. I'm guessing there is no work around to this? I keep digging through support posts and plugins but am at a loss.

For large attachments, you should use a cloud storage such as OneDrive to save, and then refer to its online link. If you don't want to upload it online, you need to reference local files through the file:/// protocol.

Another reminder, Joplin's attachment size is limited, remember it is 10M or how big, it is not recommended to directly use large files as Joplin attachments


If someone wants to, you can actually develop a plug-in to link large local attachments, but this only takes effect on the local computer, so it may still be recommended to use a network disk to manage

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Thank you so much for the response. I'd love to do the online option but I deal with rural internet, download speeds are alright but uploading anything just brings it to its knees. I was exploring the idea of a personal and locally hosted Nextcloud server since I planned to be using the program a lot, but before I went to those lengths I just wanted to try it as is for now.

Thank you too for pointing out the attachment size limit. I didn't even think to look that up. Most media I have is small clips under that but I definitely have some much larger files as well. Looks like the best bet is just working with text for now and finding some other way to reference the videos and load them up separately.

Really do appreciate the help and suggestions! Thanks so much

First the limit is 100mb, not 10. And secondly, it only applies to mobile versions, on desktop there's no limit to attachment size.

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