Observations from an Evernote refugee

I'm also an Evernote escapee. I basically refuse to learn Markdown, as my head is already full of all sorts of markup languages from MediaWiki and its templating language all the way back to ancient SeText (from which Markdown borrowed a few things). Just don't have the patience for it. I use the WYSIWYG editor. Did install a boatload of plug-ins though, to get additional features.

I use the Windows desktop application version of Joplin (for now; will probably soon also install it on my Mac and so on, and set up the synching).

There are some quirks to Joplin, like copy-pasting items from one part of a list to another rarely works properly, and needs manual repair, sometimes of more than one kind. (Maybe it works fine if you are in Markdown mode; I dunno.)

Something I've noticed is that when you add a new URL to a note, it is "inert". You have to leave the note and come back to it for it to get colorized and become Ctrl/Cmd-clickable.

I did work out that the annoying double-height spacing after a line break can be avoided by doing Shift-Enter/Return instead of just Enter/Return. (Though how well that works depends on whether the note is "native" to Joplin or was imported with pre-existing formatting; that's probably resolvable by getting into the source view of the note and removing some extraneous styling code.)

The web-clipper feature isn't something I use, so I have no tips regarding it.

The main frustration for me is the lack of text coloring and highlighting. This just needs to be built into the editing tools, and to be "agnostic" as to what editing interface you are using. I do have a text-coloring plug-in, but it's not very good, and doesn't closely approximate the colors I was already using. It also doesn't work in an HTML-imported note. One of my notes (a ledger) makes extensive use of color, and was not very useful to me imported as a regular plain text-and-Markdown note, so I HTML-imported that one. But it's very difficult to work with, since there's no interface for "fancy" HTML elements, and the colorizer plugin doesn't work on HTML notes. The only way I can make use of color in the document for new text is to very carefully copy-paste already colored text, including some whitespace of both sides of it, and then edit the pasted version, but even this sometimes doesn't work the first time. (Well, that or get into the HTML editor and work with raw HTML and inline CSS, but that's even more of a hassle.)

Anyway, the more I get used to Joplin, the fewer complaints I have about it. The first two weeks, I really wasn't sure I was going to keep using it. I think at this point I will stick with it, because the other options I tried so far were inferior.

PS: It's also annoying that the "Code Block" editing toolbar option won't work with a pre-existing text selection; you have to cut the desired text into the clipboard then paste it into the code block dialog. But I'm not sure that's even a root part of Joplin rather than something a plug-in provides.

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Thanks,

Though I must admit I dont get the feasible reason behind using markdown for a commercial product such as this.

But there seems to be an option to choose a WYSIWYG Window so I guess I dont have to care more about it no (?).

Commercial? Joplin Cloud is the only commercial bit, the app is a free and open source project and always has been. And the reason behind Markdown is because the creator wanted to make a Markdown based notetaking app, the richtext editor came much later.

For the most part you don't have to use Markdown if you don't want to but Joplin still fundamentally converts your notes to and from Markdown when you use the other editor.

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There are some adjustments coming from Evernote.
I don't mind right-clicking to "move to trash".
I don't do a lot of web clipping, so I can't help with that.

I only just learned of Joplin 24 hours ago, when Evernote told me my subscription would renew at a 371% price increase (over 2 years)! Their platform has become a convoluted mess. I'm a basic user who simply wants to jot simple notes down (to do lists, grocery lists, tech research, client meeting notes, schedules, etc) and copy some web links, and have them sync between my Mac Studio M2 Max (for video production) and my Android phone. Within the last 4 hours, I was able to export my 2500 notes from Evernote to a local folder, and import them into Joplin. The migration was seamless with no errors. I love the file structure. Then I was able to sync it to the Android app via Dropbox. Again, (completely encrypted) with no errors. It has everything I need and want. I'm working with the rich text editor and I'll probably play around with the Markdown to learn more in the future. I couldn't be happier with my decision to switch. The only thing I miss is color-coding notes, but I know there are several plugins for that, so that's my next step. Glad to be a part of the Joplin community!
Many thanks to all the people who put so much work into what is an amazing and useful app!

5 Likes

371% over 2 years? Crikey!

Congrats on your migration. Backup regularly if you aren't already.

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