I’ve been on the hunt for a Google Keep replacement and the most obvious choice is Quillpad. However it can only sync with Nextcloud and that functionality is somewhat broken. For example, if I create a To Do list in Quillpad, I can of course check the boxes as items are completed. I can do the same in the Nextcloud instance under Tasks. But if I create a To Do list in Nextcloud, you cannot interact with them in Quillpad after it syncs. They’re displayed, but you can’t do anything with them.
All that said, the other choices were Zoho Notebooks (don’t trust them) and Carnet (weirdly slow on my phone) as far as similar apps. Quillpad still seems to be the best. Is there a way to get an app that only syncs with Nextcloud to sync with something else? DavX, Webdav, Caldav, etc? The reason I ask is because I wanted to like Nextcloud, but my admittedly older server (HP Microserver G8) struggles even with the optimized builds and it just has way more features than I need. I have a feeling the answer is no, but thought I’d ask anyway before I continue my hunt.
Take a look at Joplin
So, I did. And while I think its a great app generally, the mobile app is terrible. At least on Android. Can’t speak for the iOS folks. Just awful all around. The default font is way too small. And seemingly you can only change the editor font. Meaning that once the Markdown is rendered after you save a note, it’s back to the teeny tiny font. Disclosure, I just recently had to start wearing 1.25x reading glasses for looking at my phone with a rather large screen and even still, small font. The other thing I found weird is more of a nitpick: if you create a new To Do, the title field has a Checkbox in it. Presumably to differentiate a To Do from a normal note. But when you then move to the body of the new To Do, the checkboxes are gone and have to be invoked again. This happened on the MacOS and Android app. Very strange. Again, not a deal breaker but I’m also already using Obsidian and there is some significant overlap there. Unfortunately Obsidian falls short in To Do lists and tasks and I haven’t found a plugin to fix that.
I’m using the app on android, it’s maybe a little messy when you use it for the first time but when you start to use it daily, I think there is a lot of useful features all around. I understand for the font, but it’s not something that is bothering me, I can’t say anything on that. For the issue you are facing with To Do, you actually have two ways to create a To Do list:
- You can create a new Notebook and add to-dos in it and these can have a body for description purposes.
- Or you can make a note containing the to-dos using the markdown checkbox
I do love Markdown. But it is cumbersome with a mobile keyboard. And I may be mistaken, but I seem to recall it not entering a checkbox on the next line after a return. Like I said, the Windows and MacOS apps are terrific. Before I ran into the issues with the Android app I was ready to dive in then realized the files are stored in database rather than flat .md files like Obsidian (and I think Logseq, maybe Trillium too…). Part of my use case for Obsidian is as a daily journal and having the ability for my family/kids read it after I’m gone is vital to me. And a plain text file is readable with anything and requires no export of conversion process like Joplin did. On this topic though, that wouldn’t matter since its mostly To Dos and I don’t care what format those are in.
I have been battling a similar battle but landed on Obsidian. There is a community plugin called “Tasks” that fixed most of my issues. Takes some tinkering in writing the queries but it unlocked most of the functionality I missed
I use https://tasks.org/ and Ive no issues going back and forth between the app and nextcloud tasks.
I also use tasks.org but I’m not convinced it’s a quillpad/google keep replacement?
It does do tasks nicely though.
I’ve been on this same journey for a long time - a search for something easy like Google Keep but private and preferably self-hostable. The problem I see with a lot of the options out there is they want to be a full-blown note taking / second brain app and focus on markdown as the input method. That’s way too cumbersome for when I just want to jot down something quickly and make a quick to-do/shopping list.
The next development/feature milestone listed in the Quillpad roadmap is “General cloud syncing”, but nothing has changed on that front for a long time - seems like at least a year. I’ll happily give them money if they’d focus on fulfilling their roadmap.
I also don’t want to spin up a Nextcloud server just to sync Quillpad. I have no desire to use any other feature of Nextcloud - I’ve tried it in the past and it wasn’t for me. But I finally gave in this past weekend set it up using the linuxserver.io docker image. I removed all the plug-ins it would let me to try and get it bare-bones as possible. Not an ideal solution but it works for now.
If hosting NextCloud is your problem, you can purchase a hosted instance for less than $20/year. Woelkli even has a free tier.
Not my only problem with Nextcloud. It’s just a lot more app than I need or want. Plus the quirks of using something like Quillpad with it as mentioned in my original post.
Have you tried the Notes app in Nextcloud? I moved all my keep notes to that not too long ago, and they show up as markdown files when you sync them to your desktop. There’s a Notes Android app as well.
I did actually. And unfortunately Nextcloud doesn’t run well on my hardware at all. Perhaps I’ll revisit should I upgrade down the road.
I feel like NextCloud needs some relatively capable hardware to run on, and their minimum specs are bullshit.
I’ve tried it on a relatively capable PC (with an old i7) in a docker container in WSL, and it ran like shit. I’m sure it would have run better natively, but I don’t want to devote that entire machine to NextCloud.
I’ve tried it on a Raspberry Pi 4 (2GB) and it ran like shit. People keep saying it runs on low-powered hardware, but I have yet to see it.
Personally I use memos as a Google Keep replacement. There are mobile apps for it as well called moememos.
Check out https://usememos.com
I’ve used it off and on a bunch since I started this self hosting journal. I really like the project, but I guess it just doesn’t fit in with the way I use Keep. But man, its really cool. Had I not already picked a different method for journaling I would absolutely consider it for that. But, like Joplin, it puts the markdown files in a database that isn’t easy to export if needed.
