Joplin is a free, open source note taking and to-do application, which can handle a large number of notes organised into notebooks. The notes are searchable, can be copied, tagged and modified with your own text editor.
Notes exported from Evernote via .enex files [can be imported](#importing-notes-from-evernote) into Joplin, including the formatted content (which is converted to markdown), resources (images, attachments, etc.) and complete metadata (geolocation, updated time, created time, etc.).
The notes can be [synchronised](#synchronisation) with various targets including the file system (for example with a network directory) or with Microsoft OneDrive. When synchronising the notes, notebooks, tags and other metadata are saved to plain text files which can be easily inspected, backed up and moved around.
The application is still under development but is out of Beta and should be suitable for every day use. The UI of the terminal client is built on top of the great [terminal-kit](https://github.com/cronvel/terminal-kit) library, and the Android client front end is done using [React Native](https://facebook.github.io/react-native/).
The demo application shows various Wikipedia articles converted to Markdown and organised into notebooks, as well as an example to-do list, in order to test and demonstrate the application. The demo application and its settings will be installed in a separate directory so as not to interfere with any existing Joplin application.
To start the application type `joplin`. This will open the user interface, which has three main panes: Notebooks, Notes and the text of the current note. There are also additional panels that can be toggled on and off via [shortcuts](#available-shortcuts).
Allows moving from one pane to another using the `Tab` and `Shift-Tab` keys, and to select/view notes using the arrow keys. Text area can be scrolled using the arrow keys too. Press `Enter` to edit a note. Various other [shortcuts](#available-shortcuts) are available.
Press `:` to enter command line mode. From there, the Joplin commands such as `mknote` or `search` are available. See the [full list of commands](#available-commands).
It is possible to refer to a note or notebook by title or ID. However the simplest way is to refer to the currently selected item using one of these shortcuts:
Shortcut | Description
---------|------------
`$n` | Refers to the currently selected note
`$b` | Refers to the currently selected notebook
`$c` | Refers to the currently selected item. For example, if the note list is current active, `$c` will refer to the currently selected note.
To edit a note, select it and press `ENTER`. Or, in command-line mode, type `edit $n` to edit the currently selected note, or `edit "Note title"` to edit a particular note.
Joplin was designed as a replacement for Evernote and so can import complete Evernote notebooks, as well as notes, tags, resources (attached files) and note metadata (such as author, geo-location, etc.) via ENEX files. In terms of data, the only two things that might slightly differ are:
- Recognition data - Evernote images, in particular scanned (or photographed) documents have [recognition data](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_character_recognition) associated with them. It is the text that Evernote has been able to recognise in the document. This data is not preserved when the note are imported into Joplin. However, should it become supported in the search tool or other parts of Joplin, it should be possible to regenerate this recognition data since the actual image would still be available.
- Colour, font sizes and faces - Evernote text is stored as HTML and this is converted to Markdown during the import process. For notes that are mostly plain text or with basic formatting (bold, italic, bullet points, links, etc.) this is a lossless conversion, and the note, once rendered back to HTML should be very similar. Tables are also imported and converted to Markdown tables. For very complex notes, some formatting data might be loss - in particular colours, font sizes and font faces will not be imported. The text itself however is always imported in full regardless of formatting.
* First, export your Evernote notebooks to ENEX files as described [here](https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/209005557-How-to-back-up-export-and-restore-import-notes-and-notebooks).
* In Joplin, in [command-line mode](#command-line-mode), type `import-enex /path/to/file.enex`. This will import the notes into a new notebook named after the filename.
One of the goals of Joplin was to avoid being tied to any particular company or service, whether it is Evernote, Google or Microsoft. As such the synchronisation is designed without any hard dependency to any particular service. Most of the synchronisation process is done at an abstract level and access to external services, such as OneDrive or Dropbox, is done via lightweight drivers. It is easy to support new services by creating simple drivers that provide a filesystem-like interface, i.e. the ability to read, write, delete and list items. It is also simple to switch from one service to another or to even sync to multiple services at once. Each note, notebook, tags, as well as the relation between items is transmitted as plain text files during synchronisation, which means the data can also be moved to a different application, can be easily backed up, inspected, etc.
Currently, synchronisation is possible with OneDrive (by default) or the local filesystem. A Dropbox driver will also be available once [this React Native bug](https://github.com/facebook/react-native/issues/14445) is fixed. When syncing with OneDrive, Joplin creates a sub-directory in OneDrive, in /Apps/Joplin and read/write the notes and notebooks from it. The application does not have access to anything outside this directory.
To initiate the synchronisation process, type `:sync`. You will be asked to follow a link to authorise the application (simply input your Microsoft credentials - you do not need to register with OneDrive). After that, the application will synchronise in the background whenever it is running. It is possible to also synchronise outside of the user interface by typing `joplin sync` from the terminal. This can be used to setup a cron script to synchronise at regular interval. For example, this would do it every 30 minutes:
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When Ctrl+Clicking a URL, most terminals will open that URL in the default browser. However, one issue, especially with long URLs, is that they can end up like this:
Since this is still an actual URL, the terminal will still make it clickable. And with shorter URLs, the text is more readable and the links unlikely to be cut. Both resources (files that are attached to notes) and external links are handled in this way.
In Markdown, links to resources are represented as a simple ID to the resource. In order to give access to these resources, they will be, like links, converted to local URLs. Clicking this link will then open a browser, which will handle the file - i.e. display the image, open the PDF file, etc.
Joplin is currently available in English and French. If you would like to contribute a translation, it is quite straightforward, please follow these steps:
- From then you can translate the file. Once it's done, please send the file to [this address](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/laurent22/joplin/master/Assets/Adresse.png) or open a pull request.
This translation will apply to both the terminal and the Android application.
There are two types of shortcuts: those that manipulate the user interface directly, such as `TAB` to move from one pane to another, and those that are simply shortcuts to actual commands. In a way similar to Vim, these shortcuts are generally a verb followed by an object. For example, typing `mn` ([m]ake [n]ote), is used to create a new note: it will switch the interface to command line mode and pre-fill it with `mknote ""` from where the title of the note can be entered. See below for the full list of shortcuts:
- Non-alphabetical characters such as Chinese or Arabic might create glitches in the user interface on Windows. This is a limitation of the current Windows console.
- In the React Native app, changing the notebook of a note sometimes has no effect, due to [this bug](https://github.com/facebook/react-native/issues/15556). Due to [this other bug](https://github.com/facebook/react-native/issues/13351), changing one config value sometimes also set a different one. Waiting for Facebook to fix React Native.
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