What apps would you love to have open-source alternatives for?
What apps would you love to have open-source alternatives for?
It seems like the FOSS community is continuing to grow, and FOSS apps keep getting better (Immich reallh blew my mind recently), which is a big win 😎 but there are still many apps I use that I would kill for an open source alternative. I am curious what you guys think? Are there any apps you'd love alternatives for?
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Google Keep
My wife and I use it all the time for things like grocery lists, packing lists, etc. It's nice to be an able to collaborate in real time on a checklist, and I haven't found an app that can replicate that convenience.
Joplin? Can basically do all this.
Does Joplin actually have real-time (as in two people simultaneously editing with two cursors and changes streaming in a character at a time) collaboration? All I found was some vague language about shared notebooks and some guy's stab at a real-time collaboration plugin that hasn't been touched in 3 years.
Realtime? No. There are various Tab Solutions for that,like Etherpad,etc
But especially if you selfhost you can put in really short synch times, that will give you near real time collaboration and comes out of the bo without any plugins.
OP was asking for real-time collaboration in a package similar to Google Keep: a simple, mobile-friendly UI (my bar for this is at minimum a UI that has a dedicated button to make a checkbox, automatically adding a checkbox on the next line when hitting "enter", and the ability to check or uncheck boxes by touching them alone) with an at-a-glance view of available notes, both private and shared.
It's something that I want, too. I'm happy using tons of weird stuff, but I need something simple, easy to use, and with real-time collaboration to use with my partner, who is very much not interested in anything less convenient than Google Keep. The closest thing I can see coming is HedgeDoc 2.0, but it would still be a hard sell.
The definition of real time collaboration does vary widely from usecase to usecase and user to user. While the Joplin mobile app in theory does limit the minimum synch time to every 5 minutes there are (easy) ways to circumvent that and have a faster synch (I use every 60sec, but I selfhost).
Everything else you mentioned/require is available with Joplin. It literally has a checkbox Note-Type (but checkboxes can be easily added to every other note as well) which can easily be check off, Notes can be categorised into folders (Shared or not shared, with additional privacy locks available),etc.
Don't get me wrong, I have a myriad of ideas/things I would like to see Joplin do better. But its usability beats Google Keep - by far. And by now my extended family has adopted it - from an 8 year old to an 80 year old.
This may be my unicorn, going to test out some time in the coming weeks! Thanks for the suggestion, stranger!
Notesnook is OSS, e2ee, and cloud synced, with the ability to share notes. See if it fits your requirements.
I was interested in setting up a self hosted silverbullet.md site to potential replace keep as well.
Hedgedoc / codimd.
I like Simple Note.
I'm not sure about real time collab, but I know you can share notes.
They do have a github page. Having to make an account and store notes server side is a big minus, but it is the only one I've found to
- Not be Google
- support all major OS (Lin, Win, Mac, And, ios, and browser)
- Not serve ads
- Not require self hosting
- Not ask for money (beside a donate button)
- Not be Google
Edit.
Digging into it a bit more. Seems they started in 2008 and were aquired by Automattic, in 2013. Same people behind WordPress. Oddly enough, Simple Note is not listed in their list of products.
Simple Note client side is GPL-2.0 The server is proprietary
They say on their own site, don't store sensitive data. But that's good advice for any online service.
If you use Android and Nextcloud, check out Quillpad, it's probably the closest thing you can get.