As you may know, Joplin already incorporates several AI-based features, including OCR (Optical Character Recognition), voice recognition, and the upcoming HTR (Handwritten Text Recognition).
However, we've received feedback suggesting that Joplin might still be lacking in AI features. This raises a question: What AI features would genuinely enhance Joplin for you?
Our goal is not to overwhelm the app with unnecessary or intrusive AI capabilities but rather to explore features that could add real value to your workflow. All of them would be optional in any case and, as we did for OCR or Voice Recognition, you'll even have the possibility to self-host your AI model and link it to the app.
So if you're using Joplin and have ever thought, "It would be great if such or such AI feature was available" we'd love to hear your thoughts!
Currently, the voice-to-text feature is only available on Android. It would be great if Joplin's voice-to-text functionality was supported on iOS and web!
I would find this useful because:
On my iOS device, the built-in iOS dictation feature doesn't seem to run locally.[1] Joplin's voice-to-text model runs locally.
From the privacy policy for Siri and dictation: "When you use Dictation, your device will indicate in Keyboard Settings if your audio and transcripts are processed on your device and not sent to Apple servers. Otherwise, the things you dictate are sent to and processed on the server, but will not be stored unless you opt in to Improve Siri and Dictation." My device shows a message when enabling dictation that states that some data is sent to Apple servers. ↩︎
The mentioned features that use AI seem reasonable to me, although I don't need them personally.
I'm more on the side of opposing the inclusion of AI/LLM features and would prefer that these things be limited to plugins. There are already so many plugins that I do feel ought to be added into core that I'd want to see that there was overwhelming need before AI features are added into core. I'd also guess that the technologies are rapidly evolving and might not be suited for core because they will be changing.
I completely agree with whitewall.
AI is so pervasive at the moment — and this is just the beginning — that the only really necessary feature is the opt-in button. Any good integration ideas are welcome if they're embedded in a plugin.
We can indeed bundle some features as plugin, make them optional, etc. At this point this post is more to find out if there are AI features that may be interesting to some users, and we'll figure out later on how we deliver those features.
I don't know if it could do it well enough to be worthwhile, but auto tagging and linking (eg. type someone's name and it links to their note) is something that I do manually that's tedious.
The first feature that comes to my mind — since this is mainly a note-taking application — is anything that helps us write more clearly and efficiently.
That includes transcribing content from images, and audio (voice notes) into text, organizing notes automatically, summarizing different related notes, and enhancing searching or linking related content.
Here are a few AI-powered features as a starting point that could genuinely enhance the note-taking experience:
Writing assistant: Suggest clearer or more concise phrasing as we write, similar to Grammarly or LanguageTool without connecting with internet.
Image to structured note: Beyond OCR — extract tables, checklists, bullet points, or handwriting and convert them into Joplin elements.
Audio summarization: Not only transcribe but also summarize long voice notes or meetings.
Smart note linking: Recommend connections between notes based on content, helping us build a knowledge network.
Automatic note organization: Use tags or notebooks suggestions based on note content.
Contextual search: Improve search by understanding meaning (semantic search), not just keywords.
Note comparison tool: Highlight differences between two versions of the same note.
Task extraction: Automatically detect action items or to-dos inside a note and list them.
Query assistant: Let users ask natural language questions to find information across notes (e.g., "What did I write about project X last month?"). Close to NotebookLM does.
Thank you for asking — I really appreciate all the work made for developing this useful tools.
I'd love to have the link / integration with LanguageTool to actually work. It works in Brave and Firefox. It is open source and has both free and paid versions. I use the paid version myself, but haven't been able to get it working with Joplin. After much frustration, I finally gave up. Since I write in Joplin, I must copy my Joplin notes to LanguageTool for Windows, do my editing and review. Then delete the note contents and paste in the revised note from LanguageTool. This system works, but integration with Joplin would be my most desired feature of any kind, AI or not.
In my opinion, it is essential to improve certain features of Joplin, in particular the recurring reminders, which are not working. Artificial intelligence could even contribute to this improvement by facilitating certain tasks, for example:
Intelligent creation and management of occurrences: When a recurring task is ticked as completed, AI could automatically generate the next occurrence on the right date, without manual intervention.
Automatic detection of recurrence: AI could analyse the text of notes or tasks to identify expressions such as ‘every Monday’, ‘every month’, etc., and automatically suggest the creation of a recurring task or reminder.
Something like NotebookLM by google would be great but I assume it would be complicated overwhelming the app but also the computer and went out of the scope of joplin as a note app. So far I export my related joplin notes and upload them for my writing projects so I can see, analyse, summarise and most importantly compare my drafts.
PS. In anycase, I am very happy with the app right now. Thanks again for that!
I want something to help you look through your notes and find what can be archived, what is out of date, or irrelevant. It is easy to just gradually accumulate notes. I have found this with todo lists where things that are "really" important are in my inbox and things that I have not gotten to get filed into categories which get less visibility and go there to die. It would be cool to have something guess which notes are probably not relevant and help you quickly sort.
Another idea is to be able to chat with notes, notebooks, or your whole set of notes. Sort of like a global search but semantically understanding what is there. For example, I have a lot of technical references and workflows in my notes about sizing electrical components.Being able to just chat with everything and ask "What circuit breakers do I need for X" and have it pick out things from your notes as a reference would also help with this problem.
I use joplin a ton for notes, thoughts, meetings, etc. I've been working on an AI plugin myself.
Use cases I would find helpful:
Be able to "chat" with my notes (aka. RAG). e.g. "How wide was the window in my bedroom?"
Ability to make small changes to notes via voice. "Add milk to grocery list note" "Add to bottom of 'timeline' note, changed battery in smoke detector" (ideally that would prefix the date as well)
Customizable general note cleanup. Fix typos, make formatting consistent (with MY style). Add summary at the bottom, or group tasks together.
Automatically tag notes based on my specific prompt, needs, conventions.
I agree with @Jeanoo (although my favorite missing feature is background synchronization on Android). In fact, I'd go a step further and risk being seen as a Luddite to say that AI isn't what's important here; the features are. If AI is needed by or improves a feature, that's fine, but it's only a means to a desired end.
The thing that would excite me the most is only partially AI - to run a headless joplin client on an always on device like a raspberry pi that gets notified to newly created notes, changed notes, deleted or moved notes through a Python interface. And that can change a note. I'd bring my own AI via Pydantic-AI that could react to the changes and add to my notes.
Before I request an AI feature within Joplin, I would first like to understand what approach is being considered and in which AI database on which computer my Joplin data would be processed and stored.
However, what I would like to see ‘immediately’ is an AI function here in https://discourse.joplinapp.org that could provide me with an initial analysis and recommendations for action in the event of problems such as 2025-07-14 Error: PUT info.json: "/.../info.json" is locked, existing lock on file