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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: September 1st, 2021

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  • Oh, I’m well aware. But the criticism I’m describing is that Joplin doesn’t write and read the notes as plain .md files on-disk as its storage backend. As I said, the lock-in component to the criticism is overblown (due to, yes, the ease of export), but people also tout the Obsidian approach to storage as allowing more flexibility to also access and edit your notes collection outside of the application, not to mention the flexibility to roll your own two-way syncing solution to other devices that don’t run Joplin, edit notes there and have changed synced back to notes in the application. I use and enjoy Joplin, and wish they would add something like that.

    I brought this up because of what OP mentioned re: “view and modify” notes in something like jq. I’m sure they’d want their external changes synced back to their notes.


  • A surprising number of people will tell you that the reason they prefer the closed-source Obsidian to Joplin is that Joplin doesn’t use Markdown files as its backend format to store its notes, but rather a database file. (They are formatted with Markdown, though.) I think the concerns they often express around lock-in are overblown, but this may mean it’s not what OP is looking for. I agree that the Joplin app is pretty nice, though more polished and featureful on desktop.


  • It sounds like you have something that works for you, and that’s great! But I don’t think it’s accurate to pigeonhole this other approach as being “for minimalists.” I’ve used KISS Launcher for a long time and I don’t think of it as especially clean or minimalist. It’s a powerful and flexible way to launch pretty much anything.

    I too have built a muscle memory, and mine is tapping a few letters to filter through apps and launch the one I want. The same approach works when finding a contact in KISS. And from the same box I can also launch a web search with my default search engine, or enter a URL to visit directly in my browser. Where things get a little nuts is that this same search filters through apps’ intents as well: hidden shortcuts to launching specific functionality within the app.

    All of these searches happen as I type, as quickly as I type, with results weighted by my launch history. And if for whatever reason I want to scroll through a complete drawer of my apps (it happens), that’s one tap away. I’d say KISS manages to be both maximalist and instant.

    This approach may require more taps, but less thinking. I never have to start by asking “Am I looking for a tier-1 tap app? Tier-2 swipe app? A drawer app?” Every app (and contact, search, URL or intent) is a few keystrokes away, always the same muscle memory, and that’s my idea of fast.