# Local files without hidden storage

**URL:** https://discourse.joplinapp.org/t/local-files-without-hidden-storage/9074
**Category:** Features
**Created:** [30 May 2020 21:03 UTC](https://discourse.joplinapp.org/t/local-files-without-hidden-storage/9074 "2020-05-30T21:03:42Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 2

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### Author: ![tessus](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex028/user_avatar/discourse.joplinapp.org/tessus/32/13_2.png) [@tessus](https://discourse.joplinapp.org/u/tessus)
#### Post date: [30 May 2020 23:13 UTC](https://discourse.joplinapp.org/t/local-files-without-hidden-storage/9074/2 "2020-05-30T23:13:31Z")

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I'm sorry, but I had to reply to this topic. Especially since most of it makes no sense.

> [@lewisl](#):
>
> see how many posts about people losing data? --you can say it’s their fault for misusing the app, but it’s the author’s fault for writing an app with side effects

There are no side effects. Please try to understand what 2-way sync means.

> [@lewisl](#):
>
> Other than preference (each to our own) I keep readme.md and other documentation for git projects in the repo and will edit the markdown files in the working directory, like any other source file. This seems like a very reasonable thing to do. To use Joplin for the markdown files, I would need to copy them into “notebooks” and then back to the repo directories. This is very awkward.

Joplin is not a markdown editor, but a note-taking application with markdown support. Your use case has nothing to do with Joplin.

> [@lewisl](#):
>
> I understand that you don’t want to be tied to proprietary storage/syncing, but if a user has already chosen one that you deem popular/important enough to support then Joplin could be consistent with that model.

I have no idea what you are trying to say. Joplin does not have to sync. If you want to sync, you can use WebDAV, Dropbox, Nextcloud, or a local filesystem.

> [@lewisl](#):
>
> I think you’d open up Joplin as more of a document editor and less of a note taker if you would support the local file system as an alternative to your notebooks database.

You want to use Joplin to edit your local files. Joplin wants to be a note taking application. You are not supposed to touch any of the files that Joplin creates - neither locally nor on the sync target.  
Also, as mentioned earlier, Joplin is not a markdown editor.

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