Hi! I’m a software developer working on a suite of collaborative self-hostable apps to replace proprietary services I couldn’t find a good replacement for.
I am writing this post to seek opinions and ideas now that I am still in the early prototyping phase, before it’s too late to change track.
My idea is to develop a collection of simple single-purpose apps that do one and only one thing. The first app will be called Simple Notes (mirror), a replacement for Google Keep. Every operation is encrypted locally on the client, and the server never sees plaintext data. I am investigating federations models to let users connect to other instances and work collaboratively, much like Lemmy.
So, my goals in order of priority are:
- No compromises on privacy and security
- Completely FOSS
- Real-time collaboration between users
- Asynchronous collaboration (work offline, sync when back online)
- One account to operate on all apps in this suite
- Web UI / desktop UI / mobile UI
- Minimal interface which my grandma can use, no feature-bloat
- No anti-features such as advertisements, tracking, etc…
- Self-hosting
- Federation
After Simple Notes, I plan to keep developing other simple apps, some ideas on my list:
- Simple Notes - Replacement for Google Keep
- Simple Split - Replacement for SplitWise
- Simple Chat - Replacement for WhatsApp/Slack/Meet/Teams
- Simple Docs - Replacement for Google Docs
- Simple Draw - Collaborative drawing app
- Simple Calendar - Replacement for Google Calendar
- Simple Contacts - Replacement for Google Contacts (suggested by @[email protected])
Initially I started writing my own protocol (mirror), operating quite differently from Lemmy’s, but then I realized that someone else already has developed a protocol for this purpose: Matrix. It is (optionally) E2EE, it’s FOSS, and it’s federated. So yeah, it sounds like the perfect choice to me. Also, if I pick Matrix, Simple Chat will just be a reskin of Element, so development cost is almost zero.
So, a questions for the developers on the Lemmy Selfhosted community: do you think piggybacking the Matrix protocol would be a good choice? Do you know any alternative that might be more suited for this purpose?
And a question for all Lemmy Selfhosted users: is there a simple app that you would like me to add to the list?
Bonus question: do you know of any Lemmy community where I could repost?
Thank you very much for the time you spent reading my post!
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Link to source code on my server and GitHub mirror.
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EDIT: I might have been a bit unclear on my objective. My intention is not to just build a replacement for Google Keep, that’s just the first step of the idea I had. My objective is to build a template from which it should be possible to build all sorts of apps to collaboratively work on documents of various types. Simple Notes (Google Keep) would be for text documents, Simple Split (SplitWise) for expenses (because a list of expenses is a document after all), Simple Chat (WhatsApp) for chats (oh yes, I would say that a list of messages is also just a document), Simple Docs (Google Docs) for… well… text documents, Simple Draw for canvas documents, and finally Simple Calendar (Google Calendar) for a calendar (which, why not, is also document!).
So yeah, I don’t want to just find/build an alternative for Google Keep, I want to find/build a tool to build all sort of simple collaborative apps on top of.
What I am looking for is not the recommendation of an app to simply replace Google Keep, I am looking for a template or even just a protocol on top of which it’s possible to build collaborative document-editing apps.
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There is a foss alternative to split wise.
There’s also IHateMoney as a self hosted service and MoneyBuster as an Android app to interact with IHateMoney.
Thank you both for the recommendations!
I’ve started looking for a open source alternative to Keep recently as well, following are few features I’m looking for in random order, maybe you could look into implementing some of these. Once I get some free time I can try to contribute to the code as well.
- Cross platform with sync - iOS, Android, Web, Windows, Linux (Sync should not need to rely on 3rd party servers, should be able to use free syncing solutions)
- Free
- Open Source
- Easy to export all my notes / data in a open format like markdown etc.
- Hackable - can make automations that connect to other apps like Obsidian, TickTick, maybe using some API?
- Good notes search functionality, with search inside a note option
- Notes organization, via tags and folders
- Notes linking like Obsidian ?
- Google Keep like virtual pinboard of notes display, AKA masonry layout ?
- Markdown support for lists, links etc
- Runs in the background (system tray) in Windows / Linux and can be brought up and a new note added quickly using keyboard shortcuts like TickTick.
- Reminders / Alerts For Notes
- Pin Notes
- Notes Can Contain Rich Links, Images, Sound, Video
P.S I think notes collaboration might be a anti feature, it takes away from the simplicity of it and I don’t think most people take notes to share with others, I think for most people notes are personal, so I don’t know how many would want this feature.
Whoa, that’s a long list of ideas… let me see…
- That’s the plan, excluding iOS as I do not have a Mac and thus I cannot develop for it
- Certainly
- Certainly!
- That’s not part of the MVP (minimum viable product) I have in mind, but an export function must certainly be added later
- Plug-ins are not part of my goal, but I will do my best to keep the source code modular enough to let people adapt it freely
- We agree on that, global search is necessary, but I did not think about a “search inside a note” option. That seems to make sense, I’ll see what I can do
- Tags are part of my idea, although not the MVP, but folders are not; I will see if I can also add folders without complicating code and UI too much, that doesn’t sound like a bad idea
- Not part of my goal, but maybe in a future iteration
- Yup, that’s what I had in mind too
- As a developer I like Markdown, but it is not on my priority list… perhaps in a future iteration. I was thinking to (maybe) use Markdown behind the curtains, so it might not be too difficult to let users toggle the WYSIWYG
- The first UI that I am planning to develop will be for the web browser, then a lazy-man Electron UI for the desktop as well as something for Android, I just wanted to do something simple. I don’t have the time and skills to do deep desktop integration, perhaps in the future, or maybe someone might contribute this feature if this project actually manages to become something interesting
- That’s not part of the Simple Notes app I was thinking about, but that would make sense for Simple Calendar, perhaps in the future I might consider linking notes and reminders, but that’s not something I am thinking about yet
- I did not think about that, that’s a good idea, I’ll see what I can do
- The first version will not let you upload media, but images are planned. I did not think about sound/video/documents, but I guess why not?
I think notes collaboration might be a anti feature
That’s the main reason why I decided to build this suite of apps in the first place. I want to be able to work collaboratively on things with my girlfriend, and we must be able to do it in real-time. I realize that this will eat away a big chunk of the total time I will dedicate to this project, but it is also the main reason why I am not satisfied with the options currently available.
Regarding multi platform targeting, have you considered something like React Native or Flutter, one code base that can run on any platform might be useful at least for the MVP stage.
Also the reason I mentioned exporting is that I’ve had to deal with a bunch of notes apps in the past where the company behind it shuts down or gets sold and then you either have to figure out how to export all those notes or risk losing them and that’s why I mostly use Obsidian on the desktop now cause even if the company behind it disappears all my notes are in my control and are in markdown format which means they can be imported into any other notes app easily.
And the 3rd party integrations API would help in getting more value out of your notes, right now I feel all my data is siloed across several apps, the articles I read and their highlights are in Pocket, my Kindle has my book highlights, my long term notes are in Obsidian, my short term notes are in Keep, my Todos are in TickTick. I am looking into a way to consolidate all the different sources of data to get synced into one platform so I have it all centralized, I saw recently that TickTick added a integration with Notion. I’m hoping to find a quick notes app that can be made to easily sync with Obsidian. Right now I tag Keep notes that I want to copy to Obsidian and then manually copy them on weekends.
Regarding multi platform targeting, have you considered something like React Native or Flutter
I have! I use Flutter in a professional setting and I do not hate it, but I am madly in love with React (not Native) for my personal projects. I tried React Native in the past and I found it a bit finicky, but it was just a “brief encounter”, so I might change my mind about it in the future. For now I would go with Electron to save time, but I do not exclude the idea to build a desktop + mobile interface in Flutter in the future. React (not Native) can also run on any platform, that should be more than enough for the MVP.
I absolutely do not want to go with Flutter for the web though, as I feel like it’s the exact opposite of what I would dream the web to be. I feel like Google built Flutter to give Android developers a tool to make apps with the excuse “oh yeah, it works on browsers too” and call it a day. Flutter basically bypasses most of the things that browsers do and in my personal opinion it re-implements everything more poorly than how a traditional web app would. Come on, they even built their own layout engine and even a rendering engine, was that really necessary? Browser extensions don’t integrate well with Flutter apps, and the debugging experience is subpar. I really like Flutter for Android and desktop apps, and I might even say it’s easier/simpler than Android Studio (Kotlin), but personally I feel like it’s just a big dirty hack in the web context.
Okay, I just realized that my reply sounds a lot like a rant. My apologies. Please consider this as my current view on these tools, it might change in the future. It’s not a criticism.
the company behind it shuts down or gets sold
That’s an important concern. Well, the source code is AGPL 3.0, so there is no risk of it disappearing. Also, this would be my hobby project and I absolutely do not expect it to ever become anything commercial. I do not even plan to accept donations or anything like that. Basically it’s something that I need, and since it doesn’t exist I am considering building it myself.
There is a big probability that I might stop working on it either because I find it “good enough” for my needs or because I won’t be able to work on it anymore, but I would say I’ll try to keep it as simple as possible, so it should be relatively easy to maintain. Also, relying on Element (Matrix) maintain the server code would mean I just need to maintain the client, which should cut the work down by 50%. I strongly hope Matrix will never shut down or get sold.
In any case, okay! Let there be the possibility to export data in a common format! (Preferably Markdown)
I feel all my data is siloed across several apps
Matrix supports a way to integrate with third-party data sources, but I haven’t read too much into it as it was not in my goals. Perhaps a Synapse (Matrix) plug-in might allow to integrate notes with third-party sources without having to make any changes to the client code. I might investigate this possibility in a later stage.
Yeah my past experiences with React Native was finicky as well, but that was a few years ago, haven’t tried anything in Flutter yet, but I see your point. I thought Matrix was just a distributed chat protocol, I’ll look into it more regarding synapse
Honestly, shared notes is my #1 most used feature. I have many shared notes with my family (e.g. shopping list, movies to watch, etc.)
I think any app for text input should have word prediction. It’s mostly for phone users but I’ve found it so handy since getting a phone where it’s well implemented (Pixel 8) I’ve quickly come to think of it as an essential component that should be available to any app.
Ah, that’s a good suggestion, but definitely out of my scope. Since I want to make a web UI first, users could look for a word prediction plugin for their browser if that’s something they are interested in. Still, thanks for the suggestion!
I’ve specifically been looking for a self-hostable keep alternative for a while now. This sounds amazing, will be following the project!
same here
I would love a replacement for keep. I’m currently running nextcloud and the UI differences or lack of android widgets are keeping my wife from switching. Most of of your list already has great replacements that exist but for some reason a keep competitor that is current just doesn’t exist
Carnet is a nextcloud app that comes pretty close and but it needs a TON of TLC on the server side. I keep telling myself I’ll work on it but life gets in the way. If you have time and know node/php I would suggest looking there instead of making yet another note app. Nextcloud can handle sharing and has some encryption stuff as other plugins etc. Otherwise keep posting here, I would love to follow your progress.
Okay, that’s a nice suggestion. I was thinking to try to keep the UI more generic rather than integrate it with operating systems, but an Android widget might not be too hard to do, I might investigate later.
I do know Node, but I am not skilled with PHP, I haven’t used it for 10 years and I’ve noticed that things have changed a lot since the version I knew. I feel NextCloud is a bit overbloated, but I didn’t think about checking how they handled the communication part, that’s a good idea. It doesn’t overlap much with what I had in mind, but I might still be able to learn something. Thanks!
The Nextcloud Notes app for Android does have a couple of widgets (note list and an individual note), is there widget that is missing?
For that one it’s not the widgets but the notes behavior. She wants check lists that self organize as they get checked. In the app itself she wants the post-it note like layout
Edit: multi layout that shows the contents instead of just title would be nice too
Yeah, check lists in Notes could really use some improvement for sure. Honestly, just now looking through the Github for the Android Nextcloud Notes app it looks like there’s a good deal of technical debt that has been stacking up over time from trying to bring more modern features to what started as a minimal text-only notes app.
There is a way to enable “grid view” in the app settings for the more post-it view that shows the first part of the contents, but doesn’t seem to show on notes with markdown formatting, so anything with a list doesn’t show a preview.
Why not use Joplin? Open-source, very flexible, I run it on a bunch of devices and sync it via a EU cloud provider over S3 in an encrypted bucket…
Joplin is not really real-time collaborative, nor federated. Or rather, it wasn’t last time I used it a few years ago, unless things have changed now. As a developer, I like Joplin though, that would be a great suggestion.
Its not really a keep replacement. Its a good note taking app though.
Could you maybe work with someone together, or get inspiration from something like the docs project from the european union https://docs.numerique.gouv.fr/ ?
Moreover, I’m an “advanced user” and I want to write with markdown and/or typst. A wysiwyg typst editor would be amazing
Edit: did I mix google keep and docs? Probably. Sorry 😅
Edit2: are you looking into vjournals? https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/support-vjournal-in-thunderbird/idi-p/46295
Oh yeah, I looked into and tried some of the European collaborative docs softwares, in particular I like this Numerique’s clean Material UI interface and I’m definitely going to take inspiration from it (although I haven’t installed and tried it, I just checked screenshots). Although, if you are recommending it as an alternative to my idea, Numerique doesn’t seem to be federated, nor to be privacy-centric (well… it is if you self-host, but my idea is to let people collaborate through different servers, like Lemmy, I don’t want users to need to trust the owner of the servers they join). And I really need an alternative to Google Keep more than Google Docs. I’ll be honest, Google Keep is really well made in my opinion, I would say we don’t yet have a good self-hostable alternative.
did I mix google keep and docs
Yeah, Google Keep is more like for text snippets, links, checklists, scribbles, and images. Google Docs is a full-fledged RTF editor. I was planning to implement the two things separately. I considered implementing Markdown in the Google Keep replacement, but I am still undecided whether it might count as feature-bloat.
vjournals
Oooh, that’s nice. I know about VCard and VCal, but I didn’t know about VJournal. Thanks for the hint, this might be very useful!
Sounds like you should contribute to Fossify, the successor of Simple Mobile Tools.
Except for federation, you described Notesnook, although it’s a bit hard to self host because the server parts are in alpha with few documentation. I wanted to try it but it looked too complex (hard to backup and hard to maintain) with all those server components, mongodb in a replica set and S3
For self hosting, why e2ee? It makes backups much more complicated than having plain text/images on the server. Consider making it optional 😊
E2EE because I wish for a software that you don’t need to self-host. We here on the Lemmy Selfhosted community are lucky to have the skill to do it, but I want other less tech-savvy users to also be able to use this service without having to trust a third-party.
It makes backups much more complicated
You have a point, but if the server acts just as a blind relay to facilitate synchronization, you just need to run this app on a couple of your devices and you have a distributed backup you don’t even need to think about. A copy of all the synchronized documents is stored on your device(s), and it should ideally be exportable at any time, so I would say you don’t need to also have a backup on the server. If you happen to lose all of your devices, you can just add a new one and in a few minutes the server will send you a copy of your data. I would say that makes it unnecessary to keep a plain-text backup on the server, what do you think?
EDIT: I didn’t want to burden users with a choice of E2EE vs plain-text, but that would be doable I guess. If I end up adopting Matrix, E2EE is optional.
For notes, I have moved to Joplin with the option to synchronize my data using a WebDAV server. It works really well, and it has both a mobile and desktop app. If you’re interested in developing your project, maybe you can have a look at the options this provides. For example, I really like the ability to separate notes between groups, assign tags, create drawings, and the possibility to use Markdown.
Good luck with your projects! To mirror @enemenemu’s suggestion, I would also look into collaborating with the people trying to push the EU Docs alternative. Not sure if that will work, but it’s worth a shot if you’re interested :D
Oh yeah, I used Joplin in the past. Although the goals are quite different from my idea. Joplin is a great recommendation as an alternative to Google Keep, but it’s not real-time collaborative (or federated, for what it matters).
create drawings
Ah, I don’t remember this option. Maybe it wasn’t available when I tried it last time a few years ago. I guess that means Joplin is still being actively developed.
I would also look into collaborating with the people […] Not sure if that will work, but it’s worth a shot if you’re interested
Oh! I just noticed that they have quite a few things besides Docs. I mean… I probably should. My goal is for something much smaller, I just want a replacement for Google Keep, and some day in the near future, SplitWise. Joplin sounds like a better candidate than Numerique.
Thanks for pushing to collaborate, I realize that would actually make more sense than starting a new project from scratch. Not without guilt, I have to admit that I code for fun, and I have more fun working on something that works exactly as I envision it rather than just joining another project. Someday I might learn how to make some real contributions to existing software, but I don’t think this idea of making a simple replacement for Google Keep will be my trampoline to working this way. Still, thank you for trying to push me to do it!
IMO, the more self hostable options we have for services, the better. This sounds like a good idea to me.
Good luck with your project and thank you for taking the time to contribute to the free and open source community.
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Sounds nice. I would use it. Keep is one of the last Google services I still use.
Really interested on seeing this, although if I could make a suggestion, start by scouting around and see if you can adapt FOSS apps, maybe fork them and add/remove features to please your objectives and tastes.
Although I’m eager to see these through, I like projects like murena (/e/OS) that cobble together good Foss projects into a single cohesive ecosystem (without making the word ecosystem gross and vendor locked in like in most cases)
start by scouting around and see if you can adapt FOSS apps
I see lot of people are recommending me to contribute to existing projects instead of reinventing the wheel. I want this app to be as close as possible as I envision it, I couldn’t find something close enough to what I had in mind (in particular these three things do not seem to get along well: real-time collaboration, simplicity, reliability/stability). But I’ll be honest, I code for fun and I am lazy. Even if there was another project similar enough to this, I don’t think I would want to invest time to learn all the details and then more time to see if it can be adapted to my vision. Starting from scratch is easier, even though it might not be as beneficial to the FOSS community. Still, thank you for suggesting this, that sounds like it would be the smartest thing to do.
Also, I didn’t know about Murena, thanks for mentioning it!
Oh no, don’t take it as “don’t reinvent the wheel”! I meant it in the true sense that sometimes we spent so much effort and focus building something, just to post about it somewhere and getting a reply “Oh nice, it’s exactly like X project!”.
Currently I’m running NextCloud on prem, so DavX5 and JTXBoard cover most of my note taking and todo tasks, and I guess one could deploy the server-side encryption module on a NextCloud AIO on a VPS and keep everything (probably) safe and private. I’m kinda lazy too, that’s why I liked the hands-off maintenance of NC-AIO. I get notifications to update stuff, and I get regular security audits from NC itself.
BTW, never take that “doing stuff already done” is in detriment of helping FOSS projects. There are tons of examples of people randomly tinkering around and accidentally finding some huge fix for other projects. Off the top of my head, some weeb wanted to play Nier Automata at decent framerates on wine and a few years later, here we are with DXVK and all the proton stuff making most stuff playable!
Okay, I get it now :P
DXVK was born from a Nier Automata player Linux enthusiast? That’s cool! I never checked, I assumed it was build by some big company like Valve or something. Kudos to Philip Rebohle!
There’s already an international open source and federated standard for Journals, Tasks and Notes. It’s called iCalendar-standard (RFC-5545) . See the VToDo component, relevant for your Google Keep alternative.
Also check out JTX Board
Pros:
- FOSS
- Federated
- List, Grid, Kanban views
- Reminders
- Alarms
- Location
- More
Cons:
- Markdown only, no WYSIWYG.
Syncing:
- WebDav server (many FOSS and selfhostable servers available). For mobile client there’s DavX.
- WebDav Encrypted sync server Etesync which is FOSS and selfhostable.
These standards and protocols are compatible with almost every software remotely related, including Thunderbird, KDE’s Kontact, and many more. And the feature set matches or even exceeds Google Keep’s capabilities.
My humble opinion is that you don’t need to reinvent the wheel, just build on top of what is already widely used, tested, documented, FOSS, privacy respecting, standards compliant, audited.
This sounds great. I would definitely love a splitwise alternative in particular!
You may want to think about using another name for your app suite though. Since it may bring confusion with the simple mobile tools (https://simplemobiletools.com/index.html) which for example also have a “Simple Notes” app.
This… I also would love for all of this to happen but a name change is a must.
Simple Mobile Tools were forked to https://www.fossify.org/
Ah, that’s why the UI looked familiar! I have some of their apps on my Android :P
Ah, that’s a shame, I quite liked the idea of using the “Simple” prefix. Well, naming software is hard! I’ll just keep it as a temporary name for now. Thanks!
“Simply”?
Oh, I like this a lot! I will consider adopting it if I will actually get this project started. Thanks!
Simpel. Simpal. Simpol. Etc… :)
It’s fossify now. Check them out! Original was sold afaik! So steer clear
Naming software is one of the hardest problems in all of software development.
There are 2 hard problems in computer science: cache invalidation, naming things, and off-by-1 errors.
– Leon Bambrick
Just take a common word and remove a vowel or two. That’s still hip, right?
Power Operations -> Po Op -> Poop
Perfect.
“Everybody PoOps. Why not with us?”
