I use Memos and love it.

https://www.usememos.com/

I connect to it from my desktop at home and from my phone via a WireGuard VPN and it’s everything I need. Worth a look, I think.

Obsidian is pretty neat. Can use it with Syncthing, although I guess you need Syncthing-Fork on Android now.

Results from me asking this 1Y ago: https://lemm.ee/post/4593760

Went with Joplin and using it since.

Welcome to the rabbit hole of selfhosted note-taking apps. https://selfh.st/apps/?tag=Note-Taking

Unfortunately, this is going to be a bit of a journey. You’ll probably end up going through a few of these options until you find one that works for you and fits your workflow.

Nextcloud is a really good all-in-one solution for self hosting data

I’d vote for anytype or obsidian

Anytype has a learning curve, But it has built-in encryption and IPFS syncing provided by the company. The templating system is really slick and the relational aspect is pretty solid.

Obsidian + syncthing fork is a really solid contender. It’s much easier to work with out of the box but the features are a little more generic.

Neither of these are really self-hosted, so much as they are contained in their own ecosystem. You get some measure of higher availability that you have to really work for if you’re really self-hosting a product.

I use Joplin, no complaints.

My solution is basically what @mojolobo mentions with Nextcloud behind it and I love the concept. Because Obsidian (via a WebDAV plugin on the phone) just syncs with the “Notes” folder in my Nextcloud root it really is just a bunch of .md (markdown) files. It gives me an added sense of security (on top of the self-hosting aspect) because I can see those files everywhere I have Nextcloud installed, I can edit them manually if I wanted to. On the PC you just point the Obsidian app to the folder, on phones you do it via a WebDAV plugin.

I use https://silverbullet.md and love it, it’s a bit more than a note taking app, but it’s definitely worth it.

I’ve been getting on well with notesnook, the self hosting is in beta right now but its just a docker container. Docs are coming for self hosting in the near future.

https://notesnook.com/

The criteria for me when I was looking for a notes app were:

• self hosted
• e2e encrypted
• supports images and other rich media as well as text
• can use markdown for text formatting
• supports mobile as well as some desktop interface
• can make lists with checkable boxes
• background sync

Notesnook hits all of these. I wish it had a dedicated desktop app but that’s something I can just use a browser window for.

Probably Joplin is the easiest to use. Looks like OneNote but it’s different in many ways.

Appflowy if Notion appels you. It is not 1.0 yet so some features you need might not be there.

https://appflowy.io/

You can browse the collection on OpenAlternative here: https://openalternative.co/categories/notetaking

Logseq + SyncThing-Fork for me. The killer feature I was looking for to switch from Evernote was voice recording support, logseq is the first thing I’ve found that does a decent job of it while having a solid Workflowy-style “bullets all the way down” interface, which I’ve come to appreciate. The mobile app still leaves a lot to be desired, it’s a little clunky with lots of buttons and very limited swipe gestures. Gets the job done anyhow, and the desktop app is amazing.

Quillpad is the closest I’ve found. It’s simple markdown files. It can sync with Nextcloud as well. I use it for any short note or lists. Long form stuff including journal, I use Obsidian (not open source)