for ages now, I've been using a synchronised (over syncthing) folder containing markdown text files (with several images, a fountain screenplay, and a todo.txt file thrown in there) as my note-keeping solution of choice. along with that, i've played around with using VSCode + Foam, Obsidian, Logseq, even just using plain old GNU nano (don't you dare say vim). it works, it's local, but it feels quite cumbersome to handle sometimes. syncthing often fails, file conflicts happen, all that. and all the software i used thinks of my notes as a personal knowledge management system would, which isn't what i need, because i don't know that many things.

i decided i needed an evernote-like solution. and no, i'm not using Joplin. it looks ugly and isn't too pleasant to use with my criteria (notes are stored locally first, and even worse, it's not even plain markdown.), so i looked further. the last three options were standard notes, notesnook, and evernote itself. evernote was wiped off the list almost instantly, because, well, it's proprietary software (yes i know obsidian is proprietary software as well, but it does carry the FOSS spirit, and does use an open standard, that being markdown) and is not encrypted. on the fence between standard notes and notesnook, i chose notesnook, because standard notes really charges a whole lot of cash, with an extremely limited free plan. and as you know, i'm poor.

notesnook is encrypted, which is very good. the interface is really a step up from Joplin and Foam, which is really important for people on mobile, of course. i'm on the free plan (accidentally pressed the free trial of the pro version, now i have a free trial. interestingly, it doesn't prompt me for a credit card or anything, it just gives me the trial). the free plan is also a bit limiting, but it's bearable. markdown is unlocked with the pro plan, but i can still use markdown, thanks to notesnook just converting the markdown into rich text in real time, albeit somewhat jankily. that's right, it's all rich text. i wouldn't call it 'microsoft word'-leveled in cumbersomeness, it's pretty good, but markdown is obviously superior (and whatever ascii-doc is. org mode is fine).

notes in notesnook are organised with notebooks (only three for free tier), which have 'topics' that can be used to further organise notes inside notebooks, tags (only five for free tier, which is odd, since people are probably going to have a billion tags), and, well that's it. notes can also be classified as reminders, which do exactly what they say on the box. what is interesting to me is that you can publish notes as 'monographs' online. now this isn't new, obsidian can do that (in fact by uploading your entire PKMS online), joplin can do that. but they're all behind a paywall, and again, i'm poor. so that's really nice.

notesnook's security should be detailed on their site (notesnook.com, specifically on vericrypt), but what i can tell you is that your account should be secure, given that you secure it properly. it provides two factor authentication, a recovery key, all that. notes are synchronised, and you can set certain notes (or literally everything) to be stored locally only. they're open source, so you can go look at that. since they just recently went open source (very cool), self hosting the sync service isn't really possible yet, there's no documentation, but they're apparently working on it.

is it a good note-keeping solution? absolutely. their pro plan should be rather affordable (it's like 3 us dollars. not as competitive as bitwarden's 0.83 us dollars, but that's okay in comparison to standard notes and evernote's plans) to many. not me :/. either that or go with obsidian/logseq/foam.