Joplin 3.6 brings a more polished editing experience, a much improved OneNote importer, and a clearer view of what's happening when the app syncs. Mobile also gains a number of features that previously were only available on desktop.

Improvements across desktop and mobile​

A more visual Markdown editor​

The Markdown editor now renders formatting directly in the editor by default, which means headings, bold and italic text, links, images and other elements now appear styled as you type, instead of as raw Markdown. This brings the editing experience much closer to the final rendered note, while keeping all the speed and predictability of plain Markdown.

In addition, inline HTML such as colored text, superscript, subscript and strikethrough is now rendered live, and YAML frontmatter blocks are displayed as a clean styled block rather than raw text. Code block highlighting in the editor has also been brought closer to what you see in the viewer.

Markdown formatting commands such as bold or italic now also apply correctly across multi-line selections, formatting each line individually rather than wrapping the whole block at once.

Embedded videos and media time ranges​

It is now possible to embed external content directly in notes, with YouTube videos being the most visible example - paste a link and the video plays inline.

Audio, video and PDF attachments can now also be linked to a specific section using start and end times, making it easy to point readers to a particular passage instead of the full file.

Significantly improved OneNote import​

The OneNote importer received a large amount of work this cycle. Importing .onepkg files now works on Linux and macOS, not just Windows, and large .one files with many attachments are now handled correctly. Handwriting and ink import has been substantially improved, with better positioning, scaling and support for nested ink containers.

Many smaller fidelity issues have also been fixed: bold and italic now convert properly to Markdown, fonts are handled more sensibly when Calibri is unavailable, PDF printouts are imported correctly, cross-page links are preserved, and notebooks with non-ASCII characters in their titles no longer fail to import. Overall, migrating from OneNote to Joplin should now be noticeably smoother and more faithful to the original content.

Fewer unexpected sync conflicts​

Several long-standing causes of unexpected conflicts have been addressed, including conflicts that could appear during sync, after a full sync, or due to resource duplication. Resource processing in read-only shared notebooks has also been made more reliable.

Desktop-specific improvements​

Clearer sync status​

The sidebar now includes a sync status icon and a collapsible sync report, giving you a clear view of what Joplin is doing without having to open the log. A new toggle button also lets you hide or show the sync panel at any time. Together these changes make sync activity much more transparent in day-to-day use.

Quality of life: zoom, shortcuts and viewer copy​

A number of small improvements add up to a more comfortable desktop experience:

• A full-screen shortcut (Ctrl+Cmd+F) and a global show/hide Joplin shortcut have been added.
• On Windows and Linux, a Close Window shortcut and menu item are now available.
• Toolbar button tooltips now include keyboard shortcuts.
• Copy and Select All "Edit" menu items now work in the note viewer and in read-only mode.
• The detailed note list now displays the percentage completion of checkbox lists.
• Editor settings have been moved to a dedicated section in the preferences screen, making them easier to find.

Accessible PDF export and OCR improvements​

Exported PDFs now include accessibility information, and OCR'd PDFs gain a text layer that makes them searchable and screen-reader friendly. OCR also now supports Chinese and Norwegian.

Mobile-specific improvements​

Per-notebook sorting​

It is now possible to set a separate sort order for each notebook on mobile, matching the behaviour that has long been available on desktop. This is particularly useful when different notebooks need different sorting (e.g. a journal sorted by date, a reference notebook sorted alphabetically).

A dedicated attachments management screen​

A new screen lists all attachments across your notes, making it much easier to review what's stored, find a specific file, or delete attachments you no longer need. It's available from Configuration → Tools → Note attachments.

A more capable editor toolbar​

Two improvements make the mobile editor toolbar more flexible:

• New "Go to start of note" and "Go to end of note" buttons make navigating long notes much faster.
• The toolbar buttons can now be reordered using up/down arrows, so you can put the actions you use most within easy reach.

Other mobile improvements​

A few additional changes worth mentioning:

• Joplin now remembers whether you were viewing or editing each note, instead of always reopening in view mode.
• A new "Reveal in notebook" option helps you locate a note in the sidebar from a search result or any other view.
• Plain text .txt files can now be imported directly on mobile.

Bug fixes and security fixes across platforms​

Joplin 3.6 also includes a large number of bug fixes across desktop and mobile, addressing issues in editing, syncing, importing, rendering and general stability. Several security-related improvements have also been made, including a stronger Content Security Policy on desktop.

For the full list of changes, see the desktop changelog and the mobile changelog.

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We have introduced a publicly signed warrant canary for Joplin.

A warrant canary is a regularly updated statement confirming that, as of the stated date, the project has not received secret legal orders, gag orders, or demands requiring the introduction of backdoors into the software or its infrastructure.

The canary is:

• Cryptographically signed using a dedicated OpenPGP key
• Updated every 60 days
• Published in plain text for independent verification

If the canary is not updated within its stated validity window, it should be considered expired.

You can view and verify the current canary here:

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/laurent22/joplin/refs/heads/dev/readme/canary.txt

With additional information on how it is generated and managed there:

/help/canary

This measure is intended to improve transparency and provide an additional signal to the community. It does not prevent legal orders, but it helps ensure that any material change in our legal status cannot occur silently.

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We’re happy to announce a collaboration with HMD Secure, who will preload Joplin on their upcoming device, the HMD Terra M.

This partnership brings Joplin to a new class of rugged, professional devices built for instant reliable communication, and reflects a shared focus on reliability, security, and long-term use.

About HMD Secure​

HMD Secure Oy is a subsidiary of HMD (Human Mobile Devices), the largest European smartphone manufacturer. Headquartered in Finland, HMD Secure develops rugged, sovereign, and secure solutions for governments, defence, public safety, enterprise, and critical infrastructure.

Built on a foundation of European R&D and enhanced supply chain traceability and security, HMD Secure offers organisations a trusted platform for sovereignty, resilience, and long-term control.

About the HMD Terra M​

The HMD Terra M is a compact, ultra-rugged smart feature phone delivered as a fully managed, mission-critical communications solution. Designed for professionals operating in demanding environments, it combines MIL-STD-810H and IP68/IP69K durability with instant Push-to-Talk, programmable PTT and emergency keys, loud high-output audio, and long battery life.

Built for rapid enterprise deployment, Terra M supports modern connectivity including dual SIM and eSIM, enterprise-grade MDM, and secure applications—enabling organisations to deploy, manage, and scale frontline communications reliably from day one.

Why Joplin on the Terra M​

Joplin’s offline-first design, end-to-end encryption, and focus on data ownership make it a natural fit for a device built to be trusted in the field. With Joplin preloaded, Terra M users can securely capture notes, procedures, and checklists from day one, even in challenging conditions.

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Improvements across desktop and mobile​

More stable and consistent Markdown editing​

The Markdown editor has been refined to feel more stable and closer to the final rendered view. Headings in the editor now more closely match how they appear when viewing a note, reducing the visual jump between editing and reading. Layout issues have also been addressed so elements like rendered checkboxes and images no longer cause the editor to shift unexpectedly while typing.

The ABC music notation plugin appeared to be popular but had some limitations. With this new version, ABC is now part of the app, which means it can now work from published notes, and from the Rich Text editor!

Smoother switching between notes​

Switching between notes is now less disruptive. Joplin restores cursor position and scroll location more reliably, making it easier to move back and forth between notes—especially when working with longer documents or comparing content—without losing your place.

Case insensitive tags​

Tags are now treated in a case-insensitive way, which helps prevent duplicate tags caused by differences in capitalisation, while still allowing mixed-case tag names. All this time we were hoping that @dpoulton would just get used to lowercase tags, but 5 years later it looks like it's not happening ;) So thank you @mrjo118 for implementing it!

More reliable syncing and sharing​

Syncing and sharing have been made more robust in everyday use. Joplin now handles repeated syncs more efficiently, avoids unnecessary data usage, and is better at detecting and syncing all changes, particularly when using WebDAV and S3 sync targets.

Moreover filesystem synchronisation is now more reliable, in particular when used alongside tools like SyncThing on both mobile and desktop.

Accessibility and readability improvements​

Accessibility has seen further refinements in this release. Dark mode readability has been improved, common editor elements are clearer, and animations are reduced or disabled when system “reduce motion” settings are enabled, making the app more comfortable to use for a wider range of users. Keyboard navigation has also been improved on the desktop application.

Desktop-specific improvements​

Easier profile management​

Managing multiple profiles on desktop is now simpler thanks to a new, more user-friendly profile management interface. This removes the need to manually edit configuration files and makes switching between different setups easier and safer.

Significantly improved OneNote import​

Importing content from OneNote is now more reliable and accurate. Support has been expanded to cover more OneNote file formats, and many edge cases have been addressed so imported notes more closely match their original structure and content. This makes migrating from OneNote to Joplin smoother and more trustworthy.

Better tools for organising large note collections​

Desktop users can now select multiple notebooks at once, making it easier to reorganise notebook structures, move groups of notes, or clean up larger collections without working notebook by notebook.

Polished editing experience on desktop​

Both the Markdown and Rich Text editors have been further refined. Cursor behaviour is more predictable, visual consistency between editing and viewing has improved, and several layout and rendering issues have been fixed to reduce interruptions while writing.

More reliable search and navigation​

Search and navigation on desktop have been improved with fixes that ensure search results behave consistently and remain visible when moving between windows or views.

Improved math support in WebClipper​

The WebClipper is not forgotten in this release - clipping certain math formulas, in particular from Wikipedia but also other websites, has been improved. Additionally, certain scientific articles are now also better handled by the WebClipper.

Mobile-specific improvements​

A more powerful Rich Text Editor on mobile​

The mobile Rich Text Editor continues to improve, with new and expanded support for tables, code blocks, and other structured content. These changes make it easier to create and edit more complex notes directly on mobile devices.

Easier tag management on mobile​

Managing tags on mobile is now more practical. You can rename and delete tags directly from the app, and searching through tags is easier, helping keep large tag lists organised over time.

Improved stability and usability on mobile devices​

Several fixes improve overall stability and usability on mobile, particularly on smaller screens. Issues causing UI elements to appear off-screen have been addressed, and the app behaves more consistently in situations that previously caused hangs or visual glitches.

Bug fixes and security fixes across platforms​

A large number of stability, correctness and security fixes​

Joplin 3.5 includes about 114 bug fixes across desktop and mobile, addressing issues in editing, syncing, importing, rendering, and general stability. Many fixes target edge cases that could lead to crashes, inconsistent behaviour, or rare data loss scenarios. Moreover, this version includes several vulnerability fixes to make the applications more secure.

Discuss on the forum

Joplin 3.4 includes many bug fixes and improvements, with a focus on the mobile app.

Mobile​

Rich Text Editor​

The mobile app now includes a beta Rich Text Editor! The new editor renders formatting/math/images within the editor:

To try it, 1) open a note in the default Markdown editor 2) open the note actions menu (the three vertical dots) for the note and 3) click “Edit as Rich Text”.

Be aware that this editor is still in active development and has a number of known limitations and issues. The Rich Text editor is based on ProseMirror and will behave differently from the desktop Rich Text Editor in many cases.

Support for publishing notes with Joplin Cloud and Server​

It's now possible to publish notes from the mobile app! To do so, open the “Properties” menu for a note, then click “Publish/unpublish”:

Next, in the “publish note” dialog, click “Copy shareable link”. Notes can later be unpublished by clicking "Unpublish" in the publication dialog.

Viewing note history​

It is now possible to view and restore previous note versions from the mobile app. Like the "publish note" feature, previous note versions can be accessed from the note properties menu.

As on desktop, the note history feature can be configured from the “Note History” tab in settings.

Updated tag dialog​

The tag dialog has been redesigned, with a new UI for adding, removing, and creating new tags:

Android: Improved voice typing​

The voice typing feature on Android has been updated with improved silence detection and a new “custom glossary” setting. Voice typing also now defaults to a more accurate (but somewhat slower) model.

Quickly creating a note from multiple photos​

A “scan notebook” action has been added to the “New note” menu:

This action allows quickly creating a new note with multiple pictures taken from the camera.

Desktop​

More Markdown Editor settings​

The "Note" tab in settings now includes new settings for the Markdown editor, including:

• An option to render headers, lists, and certain other formatting within the editor.
• An option to render images in the editor.

When enabled, these settings bring the Markdown editor closer to the Rich Text Editor, without some of the Rich Text Editor's limitations.

These settings are also available on mobile.

Smaller application size and faster startup​

We've made the desktop application roughly 33% smaller! In addition to faster application startup, this means that the desktop app should be faster to download take up less space.

Terminal app​

Collapsible folders​

The terminal application now supports expanding and collapsing folders by pressing z. For additional information, see the original pull request.

Managing shared notebooks and published notes​

New commands have been added to the terminal app, including publish, unpublish, and share. This allows the terminal app to manage shared folders and published notes.

Bug fixes​

For the full list of changes, see the desktop changelog and the mobile changelog.

Discuss on the forum

Desktop application​

Accessibility improvements​

The Joplin 3.3 release introduces significant accessibility enhancements designed to make the application more inclusive and user-friendly. Users can now benefit from improved keyboard navigation, thanks to newly added shortcuts and clearer labels that streamline interaction across the interface. We've also added a "go to viewer" menu item that moves focus from the note editor to the note viewer. Focus is moved to the location in the viewer corresponding to the location of the cursor in the editor.

Screen reader support has been bolstered, ensuring elements like the note list and sidebar are easier to toggle and interact with. These updates make the application more usable for individuals relying on assistive technologies.

Additionally, visual improvements, including increased contrast for UI components such as URLs, sidebars, and scrollbars, enhance readability for users with visual impairments. This focus on clarity ensures a more comfortable user experience.

The Rich Text Editor has also received accessibility-focused updates, allowing for more seamless interaction with code blocks using either a keyboard or touchscreen. These refinements highlight Joplin's dedication to creating an accessible and equitable experience for all users.

Button to collapse and expand all notebooks​

Joplin 3.3 introduces a convenient "Collapse/Expand All" button for notebooks, allowing you to quickly adjust the visibility of your notebook hierarchy. This feature simplifies navigation by letting you expand all notebooks to locate specific notes or collapse them for a tidier interface!

New dialog to select a note and link to it​

A new dialog has been added to make linking to notes easier. By pressing Shift+Option+L on macOS or Shift+Alt+L on Windows and Linux, you can quickly bring up a search box. Simply type the name of the note you want to link to, and the link will be added to your current note!

Support for multiple instances of Joplin​

Joplin Desktop now lets you run multiple instances at once! This means you can easily separate your work and personal notes, or use Joplin across different virtual desktops. Each instance runs independently with its own settings, plugins, and notes, so nothing overlaps. You can open a second instance through in menu File => Open secondary app instance..., and customise it however you like!

Improved Rich Text editor​

This version includes multiple improvements and bug fixes to the Rich Text Editor. In particular it has now been upgraded to TinyMCE v6, and it adds support for Markdown auto-replacement. For example, typing ==highlight== creates highlighted text. Auto-replacement can be disabled in settings.

Mobile application​

Accessibility improvements​

Like the desktop app, the mobile app includes several accessibility improvements designed to enhance the user experience for those relying on assistive technologies. Focus handling has been improved in the note actions menu and modal dialogs, ensuring smoother navigation for screen reader users. Additionally, the default modal close button is now accessible, and issues with invisible buttons being focusable have been resolved.

Other updates include better contrast for faded URLs in the Markdown editor, making them more readable for users with visual impairments. The encryption configuration screen has been improved for better accessibility, and screen reader support has been added for creating and editing profiles. These changes collectively improve navigation, readability, and usability for all users.

Support attaching audio recordings​

You can now easily capture and include audio recordings directly within your notes. To use this feature, open the kebab menu and select "Record audio." You can then to record your audio input. When finished, the app automatically attaches the recorded audio file to the note. This functionality is perfect for capturing ideas, reminders, or supplementary audio information in a quick and intuitive way.

Improved voice typing feature​

The voice typing feature in Android has undergone a significant improvement, making it more accurate. Previously introduced in version 2.11, the feature allowed you to transcribe speech into text but lacked punctuation and struggled with accuracy in certain scenarios. The revamped version now leverages Whisper, an advanced AI model, to deliver improved recognition, including automatic punctuation and paragraph formatting.

Despite its advancements, the feature is currently in beta due to the demanding nature of the required AI models. While it defaults to a smaller, less accurate model to accommodate older devices, you can manually download and switch to more accurate models for better performance.

As previously, the feature remains entirely offline, ensuring that private recordings are never sent to third-party servers, a distinct privacy advantage over similar solutions from Google or Apple. Additionally it means you can use the feature even when you don't have an internet connection. We plan to refine this feature further, eventually defaulting to the more accurate model as stability improves.

Improved new note menu​

The redesigned "New Note" menu takes note creation to a whole new level of flexibility and convenience. Previously, this menu only offered options to create a new note or a new to-do. With the latest update, you now have quick access to a variety of shortcuts, enabling you to attach files, record audio, capture photo notes, or even create drawings directly from the menu. This intuitive redesign makes it easier to choose the format that best suits your needs.

Security and bug fixes​

As always, we continue to reinforce the security of Joplin. This version implements a robust content security policy for the Rich Text Editor, safeguarding the application against malicious content.

In total, this version delivers 39 bug fixes on desktop and 17 on mobile, enhancing both the security and stability of the application.

Full changelogs​

This is just an overview of the main features. The full changelogs are available there:

• Desktop: https://joplinapp.org/help/about/changelog/desktop
• Android: https://joplinapp.org/help/about/changelog/android/
• iOS: https://joplinapp.org/help/about/changelog/ios/

Discuss on the forum

Import OneNote Archives​

Joplin now supports importing OneNote archives, a significant step for users transitioning from OneNote. Microsoft has long made it challenging to leave OneNote, offering limited export options and complex formats that make it difficult for app developers to support it. Despite these hurdles, @pedr tackled these issues head-on, developing an import tool that simplifies the process. This addition makes Joplin a practical choice for those looking to move away from OneNote's ecosystem.

To use this feature, select File => Import => ZIP - OneNote Notebook

Multi-window support​

We're excited to introduce Multi-Window Support, a highly requested feature that makes managing multiple notes easier than ever. With this update, you can open notes in different windows and each window operates independently, allowing you to compare notes, reference content, and organise projects with greater flexibility.

To use this feature, right-click on a note, select Open in... and select Edit in new window

Customisable toolbar on mobile​

The new customisable toolbar on mobile is now draggable, making it easier to access the buttons you need. You can also choose which buttons to display by tapping the Cog button, allowing for a more personalised and efficient note-editing experience!

Enhanced Accessibility​

In order to implement the WCAG 2.0 guidelines, accessibility has seen a substantial upgrade thanks to the efforts of @personalizedrefrigerator. The desktop and mobile apps now offer better keyboard navigation, including improved functionality in dropdown menus and settings. Focus indicators have been made more visible, while ARIA labels have been added to boost compatibility with screen readers. Specific areas like note attachments, sidebars, and dialogs have also been optimised to ensure accessibility for all users.

Refined Drawing and Markdown Editing​

Joplin's drawing and editing features have been fine-tuned for a smoother experience. Freehand Drawing on mobile and desktop has been updated to version 2.14.0, addressing several usability issues and bugs. Additionally, the Freehand Drawing plugin is now part of the desktop app by default. These changes enhance the reliability and integration of the drawing tool.

Faster and more secure encryption​

For GSoC 2024, @wh201906 worked on optimising the encryption and decryption processes, boosting speed for mobile devices in particular (but desktop too). Additionally, the encryption security was improved by transitioning to a more robust 256-bit key.

As of now this feature is optional and can be enabled by going to the Configuration Screen, then Synchronisation => Advanced options => Use beta encryption.

Expanded Plugin Support​

Developers will appreciate the updates to Joplin's plugin ecosystem. A new API has been introduced to create toast notifications, alongside updates to CodeMirror packages. A new renderMarkup command has been introduced to allow you to render Markdown content to HTML using the Joplin built-in API.

Full changelogs

This is just an overview of the main features. The full changelogs are available there:

• Desktop: https://joplinapp.org/help/about/changelog/desktop
• Android: https://joplinapp.org/help/about/changelog/android/
• iOS: https://joplinapp.org/help/about/changelog/ios/

Discuss on the forum

Joplin is partnering with a French government institution to bring you innovative new features! We will work on accessibility, voice typing, HTR and add Rocketbook integration. Today we'll present the planned HTR integration:

Currently, Joplin’s OCR (Optical Character Recognition) feature is designed to recognise printed text, which works great for scanning documents with standard fonts. However, we’re looking to expand this functionality to support handwritten text recognition (HTR), which would be beneficial to handle scanned, handwritten documents, as well as for the upcoming Rocketbook integration.

Handwritten text recognition is complex task, requiring significant processing power and large machine learning models. Because of this, we plan to implement HTR via a server, possibly integrated with Joplin Cloud or Joplin Server. The beauty of this approach is that handwritten text recognition is a rapidly evolving field, so we can continuously improve the server-side model. This means that every Joplin app can benefit from these updates without needing to redeploy or update the app itself.

For the Rocketbook integration, this integration will make a significant difference. Right now, your handwritten documents would be scanned as images, but with HTR, Joplin will be able to recognise the actual text you’ve written. Not only will your handwritten notes become searchable, but you’ll also be able to copy and paste the text into other documents.

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Joplin is partnering with a French government institution to bring you innovative new features! We will work on accessibility, voice typing, HTR and add Rocketbook integration. Today we'll present the planned Rocketbook integration:

Rocketbook is a popular brand of smart notebooks designed to make note-taking more efficient and sustainable. These notebooks feature special erasable pages that you can write on with specific pens and then wipe clean with a damp cloth. What makes Rocketbook even more appealing is its ability to scan and upload your notes to cloud services for easy storage and sharing.

We plan to create an integration between Rocketbook and Joplin, designed to make the note-taking process even smoother. While Rocketbook typically works through its own official app, we plan to integrate it directly into Joplin without relying on third-party apps or APIs. This means that you can enjoy the benefits of Rocketbook’s smart features while using Joplin as your primary note-taking platform.

The great thing about this integration is that it’s not limited to just Rocketbook. As long as the smart notebook uses QR codes to identify pages, the same functionality will work. This means you can use Joplin with a wide variety of smart notebooks, making it a versatile tool for all your note-taking needs.

With this integration, we’re making it easier than ever to combine the power of smart notebooks with the flexibility of Joplin’s open-source platform. Whether you're using Rocketbook or another smart notebook, Joplin will be ready to help you organise and access your notes in the cloud!

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We're always looking for ways to make Joplin better for everyone, and one of the key steps in improving accessibility is implementing the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2). These guidelines help ensure that our app is usable for all users, including those with disabilities, while also enhancing the overall user experience for everyone.

To get started with WCAG 2 support, we’ll run an accessibility audit with a tool such as Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools (WAVE). This will help us spot any accessibility issues in the app that we need to address.

Once the audit is complete, we'll take action on the issues we find. Here's a look at some of the things we'll focus on:

• Making content easier to perceive: We’ll make sure there are text alternatives for non-text content, provide captions for multimedia, and check that colour contrast is strong enough for easy reading.
• Improving operability: Every feature will be accessible through the keyboard, ensuring that users who can't rely on a mouse can still navigate easily.
• Enhancing comprehension: We’ll ensure that the text is readable, the layout is predictable, and input assistance is available for those who need it.

We’ll also use ARIA standards and test for compatibility with assistive technologies to make sure everything works well with tools like screen readers.

To ensure we're on the right track, we’ll invite users with disabilities to test the app and help us identify any remaining barriers. Accessibility is something we’ll keep working on, so we'll continue testing, refining, and making improvements to ensure Joplin stays accessible to everyone. It’s a journey, and we’re committed to making the experience better for all our users.

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Joplin is partnering with a French government institution to bring you innovative new features! We will work on accessibility, voice typing, HTR and add Rocketbook integration. Today we'll present the planned improvements to voice typing:

Right now, voice input works pretty well, but there’s one thing that still needs improvement: punctuation. Our current system is accurate, but it doesn’t pick up on things like commas or periods, which can make spoken text harder to understand. That’s why we’re looking into other voice recognition engines that can handle punctuation better while keeping the accuracy we need.

Improving voice input like this isn’t just about convenience – it’s about making our app more accessible to everyone. For people with visual impairments, being able to use voice input means they don’t have to rely on typing. Those with motor difficulties can control the app without needing to use their hands. And for users with dyslexia or other learning challenges, voice input can be much easier and more natural than typing out words.

We’re excited to experiment with this new feature, knowing it could make a real difference for people who rely on voice technology to get things done.

Discuss on the forum

Desktop application​

Trash folder​

Joplin now support a trash folder - any deleted notes or notebooks will be moved to that folder. You can also choose to have these notes permanently deleted after a number of days.

Support for the trash folder has a somewhat long history in Joplin since it's an obvious and important feature to add, yet it can be particularly tricky once you start realising how many parts of the app it's going to impact.

Many attempts have been made over time: my first attempt was based on the note history feature. Indeed since this feature already saves versions of notes, it seems to make sense to use it for the trash feature, and indeed the note history feature was designed for this originally. However that approach turned to be needlessly complicated and after modifying hundreds of files just for this, the idea was dropped.

The next one was based on using a special "trash" tag - deleted notes would have this tag attached to them and would appear in a special "trash" folder. This approach also had many issues probably the main one being that notebooks can't be tagged, which means we would have to add support for tagged notebooks and that in itself would also be a massive change.

Various, ideas, were also attempted using plugins, by creating a special "trash folder", but in the end no such plugin was ever created, probably due to limitations of the plugin API.

In the end, turned out that this old idea of adding a "deleted" property to each note and notebook was the easiest approach. With this it was simpler to get to a working solution relatively quickly, and then it was a matter of ensuring that deleted notes don't appear where they shouldn't, such as search results, etc.

Joplin Cloud multi-factor authentication​

Multi-factor authentication (MFA), also known as two-factor authentication (2FA) is a security process that requires you to provide two or more verification factors to gain access to a system or account. It typically includes something you know (password), something you have (security token), and something you are (biometric verification).

To better secure your account, Joplin Cloud and all Joplin applications now support MFA. To enable it, go to your Joplin Cloud profile, click on "Enable multi-factor authentication" and follow the instructions. Please note that all your applications will then be disconnected, so you will need to login again (your data of course will remain on the app so you won't have to download it again).

Note list with multiple columns​

In this release we add support for multiple columns in the note list. You can display various properties of the notes, as well as sort the notes by these properties. As usual this feature can be controlled and customised by plugins so for example it should be possible to display custom columns, and display custom information including thumbnails.

Plugin API enhancement​

The plugin API has received several updates to facilitate easy customisation of the app As mentioned above, it is now possible to customise the new note list. Besides this, we've added support for loading PDFs and creating images from them, which can for example be used to create thumbnails.

Many other small enhancements have been made to the plugin API to help you tailor the app to your needs!

View OCR data​

Now when you right-click on an image or PDF you have an option to view the OCR (Optical character recognition) data associated with it. That will allow you for example to easily copy and paste the text.

Plugin support on mobile​

As always, most of the above changes also apply to mobile (iOS and Android), for example the trash folder and MFA support.

Additionally the mobile application now adds support for plugins. To enable the feature, go to the settings then to the "Plugins" section. The feature is currently in Beta, in particular it means that some plugins do not work or only partially work. Normally the app should not offer you to install a non-working plugin but that may still happen. In general if you notice any issue with this beta feature please let me us know as we're keen to improve it.

Support for cross-platform plugins in Joplin is great news as it means a lot of new features become available on mobile. As of now, we have checked the following plugins and can confirm that they work on mobile:

• Quick Links
• Inline Tags
• CodeMirror 6 settings
• Function plot
• Space indenter
• Inline Tag Navigator

Those are just some examples - many more are working!

Full changelogs

This is just an overview of the main features. The full changelogs are available there:

• Desktop: https://joplinapp.org/help/about/changelog/desktop
• Android: https://joplinapp.org/help/about/changelog/android/
• iOS: https://joplinapp.org/help/about/changelog/ios/

Discuss on the forum

OCR​

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) in Joplin enables the transformation of text-containing images into machine-readable text formats. From this version you can enable OCR in the Configuration screen under the "General" section. Once activated, Joplin scans images and PDFs, extracting text data for searchability.

While OCR search is available on both desktop and mobile apps, document scanning is limited to the desktop due to resource demands. For more information head to the OCR official documentation!

Bundled plugins​

Joplin will now bundle high quality plugins that we feel will benefit most users. With this version we include the great Backup plugin by JackGruber. This will provide another layer of safety when using Joplin as by default it will automatically backup your notes in a "JoplinBackup" folder in your home directory.

Note that, just like any other plugin, you can change the plugin configuration or even disable it from the settings.

ENEX importer​

As usual in recent version, there are plenty of improvements to the Joplin ENEX importer. Besides the various fixes and enhancement to support this format, we've added a few useful features:

Restore note links after importing an ENEX file​

Evernote Export files do not include the necessary information to reliably restore the links between notes, so for a long time this feature was not supported by the importer.

Now however Joplin will try to guess what note is linked to what other note based on the note title, which in many cases will give the expected result. But not always - when that happens, and Joplin cannot detect the link target, the application leaves the original Evernote link. That way you can manually restore it yourself or at least find back what the note was linked to.

Import a directory of ENEX files​

It is notoriously difficult to export data from Evernote because, among other issues, you can only export one notebook at a time, which is an obvious problems when you have dozens of notebooks. Unfortunately we cannot improve this part of the process since this up to Evernote, however we now make it easier to import all these notebook files by adding support for importing a folder of ENEX files. To use this feature, go to File > Import, and select one of the "ENEX (Directory)" options.

This will process all the ENEX files in that directory and create a notebook in Joplin for each of them.

Beta Markdown editor​

This version features further improvements to the new Markdown editor based on CodeMirror 6. The goal eventually is to be able to use the same editor on both the desktop and mobile application (which already uses CodeMirror 6), which will allow a more consistent user experience across devices.

Plugin support has also been improved in this version - plugin authors can now write native CodeMirror 6 extensions using the plugin API. For more information check the documentation on how to create a Markdown plugin!

Another benefit of this new editor is that, in a future version, it will allow us to support plugins on the mobile application since a plugin written for the desktop app will work on mobile too. There are several other advantages that Henry listed in this forum post.

Rich text editor improvements​

We continue making improvements to the Rich Text Editor (RTE) in particular to improve interoperability with other applications, such as LibreOffice, Office or web browsers, as well as better handling of copy and paste.

Another notable addition is support for setting colours, which was a frequently asked feature. To use the feature, select it from the "..." button in the toolbar. Note that once applied the colours will work in the Markdown editor too!

See below for the full list of RTE changes:

• Fixed: Rich text editor: Fix context menu not shown in some cases
• Improved: Speed up pasting text and images in Rich Text Editor
• Fixed: Fix drag-and-drop of images and text in the rich text editor
• Fixed: Fix images with SVG data URLs corrupted in the rich text editor
• Fixed: Pasting rich text in the RTE sometimes result in invalid markup
• Fixed: Rich text editor: Fix newline behavior in new notes
• Improved: Add support for changing text colors in rich text editor
• Fixed: Fix HTML resource links lost when editing notes in the rich text editor
• Fixed: Fix code blocks with blank lines break tables in the rich text editor
• Fixed: Copied and pasted text from Firefox to RTE does not include images
• Fixed: Pasting rich text in the RTE sometimes result in invalid markup
• Fixed: Fixed copying and pasting an image from Chrome in RTE

Full changelog

This is just an overview of the main features. The full changelog is available there:

• Desktop: https://joplinapp.org/help/about/changelog/desktop
• Android: https://joplinapp.org/help/about/changelog/android/
• iOS: https://joplinapp.org/help/about/changelog/ios/

Discuss on the forum

The plugin manifest now supports new properties to better describe and present your plugins on Joplin Plugins website. Those are the icons, categories, screenshots and promo_tile properties.

Icon​

This is the icon that will be used in various plugin pages, including in your main plugin page. It will be shown on the main result page too. If not provided, a default icon will be displayed instead.

Category​

You can supply one or more category for your plugin - it will be used to filter the plugins on the website.

Screenshots​

Again you can provide one or more screenshots to present your plugin on the website.

An example of plugin with icon, category and screenshot

Promo tile​

The promo tile is an optional image that is used to display your plugin on the main website page. If no promo tile is supplied, the icon will be used instead.

An example of promo tile

More information​

For more information on how to set this plugin metadata, please check the Plugin Manifest documentation

Discuss on the forum

The next version of Joplin Cloud (and Joplin Server) will include a change that will make synchronisation, in particular when synchronising a new device for the first time, significantly faster. This is achieved by bundling more data with the calls that retrieve notes and other data, thus reducing the number of unnecessary requests.

This change will be applied soon to Joplin Cloud (and Server), and the Joplin mobile, desktop and CLI applications will be able to use it from version 2.14.

In my tests with about 26,000 items, synchronisation was more than twice as fast on Joplin Cloud (22.5 minutes vs 9.5 minutes):

Before​

Created local items: 21814. Fetched items: 26591/26591. Completed: 23/12/2023 10:38 (1346s)

real 22m35.810s
user 3m19.182s
sys 1m24.207s

Optimised​

Created local items: 21822. Fetched items: 26600/26600. Completed: 23/12/2023 11:48 (571s)

real 9m38.932s
user 1m10.119s
sys 0m38.013s

Discuss on the forum

Desktop​

Rich Text Editor improvements​

In this update, significant enhancements have been implemented in the Rich Text Editor to enhance user experience. One notable improvement is the ability to seamlessly embed various content within tables, including lists and other tables, which was a frequently requested feature:

The interoperability with other text editors such as Word and Excel has also been improved, in particular when copying and pasting content between these tools and Joplin.

Improved ENEX import​

The Evernote Export format, known as ENEX, has always been challenging to support. This is because Evernote frequently changes it, breaking importers, and may also occasionally introduce bugs. At times, their own application struggles to import back files that it has exported, highlighting the volatility of the ENEX format.

After undergoing continuous improvements for seven years, the importer has achieved a relatively stable state. The majority of issues encountered now stem from invalid files generated by Evernote, a result of bugs introduced in recent versions. Despite these challenges, we strive to enhance the import process by employing various heuristics to process the invalid data as effectively as possible.

The list of bug fixes is below:

• Apply correct size to images imported from ENEX files
• ENEX files that contain resources with invalid mime types are imported correctly
• Ensure that ENEX resources with invalid filenames are imported correctly
• Prevent application from being stuck when importing an invalid ENEX file

New plugins APIs​

Note list​

We are continuously improving the plugin API to make it as easy as possible to customize the application.

One of the main addition is support note list plugins - it allows any plugins to customise what the list should display each note.

See the Joplin Plugin Note List API and the Note List Demo for more information.

The demo includes three examples of note lists: a fundamental "top to bottom" version, a sophisticated "left to right" variant that additionally displays a note thumbnail, and a demonstration of an interactive note list, allowing direct modification of the note title from the list.

This API was developed based on the feedback we got and we hope it will be useful. We remain open to further input from users and plugin developers regarding any potential missing features and areas for improvement!

Imaging API​

The imaging API was created to allow plugin developers to easily load and manipulate images. For now it is possible to load PNG and JPG files, and to resize and crop them.

https://joplinapp.org/api/references/plugin_api/classes/joplinimaging.html

And more​

A few more APIs have been added such as one to open dialog to select a file or folder and a way to access the plugin settings from a renderer script.

New beta Markdown editor​

This version also features a new Markdown editor based on CodeMirror 6. This change means that we'll be able to use the same editor on both the desktop and mobile application (which already uses CodeMirror 6), which will allow a more consistent user experience across devices.

Another benefit is that, in a future version, it will allow us to support plugins on the mobile application. There are several other advantages that Henry listed in this forum post.

Mobile​

Drawing option​

In this new version, Henry integrated the js-draw editor to the mobile app. Js-draw is a powerful freehand drawing library which allows you to draw using a pen, touch screen or mouse.

The editor is integrated to the mobile application. On desktop application, you can use the same library and edit your drawings using the Freehand Drawing plugin. We will make this plugin available by default in a future desktop release.

Setting screen​

The mobile version also features a redesigned configuration screen. It is now divided into multiple sections with clear titles, and you can also search for settings using the built-in search option.

Full changelog

This is just an overview of the main features. The full changelog is available there:

• Desktop: https://joplinapp.org/help/about/changelog/desktop
• Android: https://joplinapp.org/help/about/changelog/android/
• iOS: https://joplinapp.org/help/about/changelog/ios/

Discuss on the forum

The majority of Joplin's development is carried out in the public domain. This includes the discussion of issues on GitHub, as well as the submission of pull requests and related discussions. The transparency of these processes allows for collaborative problem-solving and shared insights.

However, there is one aspect that operates behind closed doors, and for good reason: addressing cybersecurity vulnerabilities. It is imperative that these issues remain undisclosed until they have been resolved. Once a solution is implemented, it is usually accompanied by discreet commits and a message in the changelog to signify the progress made.

Typically, the process begins with an email from a security researcher. They provide valuable insights, such as a specially crafted note that triggers a bug, or an API call, along with an explanation of how the application's security can be circumvented. We examine the vulnerability, create a fix, and create automated test units to prevent any accidental reintroduction of the vulnerability in future code updates. An example of such a commit is: 9e90d9016daf79b5414646a93fd369aedb035071

We then share our fix with the researcher for validation. Additionally, we often apply the fix to previous versions of Joplin, depending on the severity of the vulnerability.

The contribution of security researchers in this regard is immeasurable. They employ their ingenuity to identify inventive methods of bypassing existing security measures and often discover subtle flaws in the code that might otherwise go unnoticed.

We would like to express our sincere gratitude to the security researchers who have assisted us throughout the years in identifying and rectifying security vulnerabilities!

• @Alise
• @hexodotsh
• @ly1g3
• @maple3142
• Ademar Nowasky Junior
• Benjamin Harris
• Javier Olmedo
• Jubair Rehman Yousafzai
• lin@UCCU Hacker
• personalizedrefrigerator
• Phil Holbrook
• RyotaK
• Yaniv Nizry

Discuss on the forum

Great news! Joplin 2.10 is here and we've made some amazing improvements and bug fixes, with a focus on the mobile app.

New design for "New note" and "New to-do" buttons​

We're excited to announce that we've made it even easier to create new notes and to-do lists with new designs for the "New note" and "New to-do" buttons.

If there is enough space, the button labels will be shown in full:

While for those who prefer a more narrow note list, only the button icons will be shown:

It's a small improvement, but we're confident it will make the app even more intuitive for new users.

Fixes and improvements​

This version includes 30 bug fixes and 16 general improvements. Let's dive into some of the highlights:

• Self Not Found and Pedro have been working tirelessly on improving the pasting of plain text in the application, and we're happy to say that there is now a brand new "Paste as text" option in the Edit menu.
• For our amazing plugin developers out there, we have added a few new APIs and fixed a bug that was preventing certain plugins from starting. You can now get even more creative with your plugins!
• Tao Klerks, has been hard at work fixing and improving the custom sort order of the note list. No more notes in the wrong position when you drop them! Plus, custom sort order is now synchronised too.
• We've also fixed a few bugs with our Web Clipper, including an issue where certain pages wouldn't import their images. A new Web Clipper has also been released, so you can clip to your heart's content!

Last but not least, we have modernised both the desktop and mobile application modules, just as we previously announced. Although these changes may not be visible to you, they required a lot of work! But the result is that our applications are now more stable and secure, and it will be easier to maintain them in the long run. We're using a tool called Renovate, which will automatically propose package updates that we will review. In total, we've updated a whopping 633 packages so far!

Android app is available in the Play Store​

Our latest version, 2.10, is now back in the Play Store and ready for download! Although we had to skip 2.9 due to some of Google's requirements, we worked hard to ensure that our app complies with their standards, and we are excited to announce that we are back and better than ever! Our iOS version is also available, so you can continue to enjoy the app regardless of the platform you use.

Biometrics support​

To make your experience even more secure, our Android and iOS apps now support biometric unlock! With just a quick scan of your fingerprint or Face ID, you can unlock your app in no time. To enable this beta feature, just head over to the settings and click on "Use biometrics to secure access to the app".

We've tested this feature thoroughly during prerelease, and have already fixed all known issues. However we still consider it as a beta feature for now, so if you run into any issues please let us know.

Support for multiple profile​

We're thrilled to announce that multiple profiles are now supported in our mobile app! To create a new profile, simply go to the Configuration screen and click on "Manage profiles" under the Tools section.

From there, you can easily add or remove profiles as needed.

Once multiple profiles are setup, you will see a new option in the sidebar to quickly toggle from one profile to another:

Once you've set up multiple profiles, you can easily toggle between them using the new option in the sidebar. This feature is perfect for separating your personal and work notes into independent collections.

Support for realtime search​

Our mobile app now has an improved search function that performs text searches in real time! No more waiting for the search results to load, they'll appear instantly as you type.

Improved filesystem sync performance​

Thanks to the hard work of jd1378, the sync no longer freezes during filesystem synchronisation. We know how frustrating that can be, and we're thrilled to have solved this issue. Getting filesystem sync to work on Android is never easy due to the restrictions put in place by Google, especially since they frequently change, but we're committed to delivering the best possible experience for our Android users.

Discuss on the forum

Desktop​

Add support for plugin user data​

Developers of plugins now have the ability to associate additional information with notes, notebooks, and tags. This data is then synchronized across multiple devices. For instance, it is possible to envision attaching OCR data to an image or incorporating plugin-specific parameters to a note, which can subsequently be synchronized across all devices.

Improved end-to-end encryption​

End-to-end encryption (E2EE) plays a vital role in safeguarding your data privacy. Our aim is to make it effortlessly user-friendly, seamlessly integrated, and possibly enabled by default.

To achieve this objective, we have implemented several enhancements in this version. These improvements encompass more streamlined management of encryption keys and simplified setup processes for both new and existing devices utilising end-to-end encryption.

Moreover, we have upgraded the encryption algorithm from AES-128 to AES-256, ensuring heightened security for your data in the long run.

Export a Mermaid graph​

There is now a context menu on Mermaid graphs which you can use to export your graph as PNG, SVG, or by copying the vector data to the clipboard.

Auto-detect language on startup​

A small but useful change - the application language is now automatically detected startup. Of course, if needed you can later change it in the configuration screen.

Android​

As always most of these changes also apply to the mobile applications, such as the improved end-to-end encryption support, language auto-detection, and various bug fixes and improvements. But besides those, we also have several mobile-specific updates:

Support for offline voice typing​

The Android mobile app now support offline voice typing - it means your voice recording does not need to be uploaded to Google or Samsung server - it all takes place on your device for added security. To make use of it, open any note, tap on the three dots menu, then "Voice typing".

The first time, the app will need to download the language files to your device:

Once they are there, simply record your message and it will appear in the note:

Create and move sub-notebooks​

@jcgurango implemented support for creating sub-notebooks, and moving notebooks around in the mobile app. To do so, long press on any notebook and press "Edit". You can now choose to move it under any other notebook using the provided dropdown list.

Full changelog​

This is just an overview of the main features. The full changelog is available there:

• Desktop: https://joplinapp.org/help/about/changelog/desktop
• Android: https://joplinapp.org/help/about/changelog/android
• iOS: https://joplinapp.org/help/about/changelog/ios

Discuss on the forum

Desktop​

Support for Apple Silicon​

A new release is now available for Apple Silicon, which provides improve performances on this architecture.

Rich Text editor​

In this release, we've undertaken numerous enhancements and addressed various bugs in the Rich Text editor. Notably, we've introduced support for plugin toolbar icons. Additionally, we've refined the editor's ability to manage text that's copied from applications like Word, Office, and LibreOffice, thereby enhancing cross-application compatibility. Among the minor yet impactful improvements, we've fine-tuned the handling of newlines and paragraphs—a highly requested feature. Another notable update is the improved automatic switching between light and dark modes.

Altogether, this release encompasses around 12 significant changes for the Rich Text editor, and rest assured, there's more to come in the future!

Share permissions​

Using Joplin Cloud Teams, you now have the ability to customize the read and write permissions for the notebooks you share. You have the option to grant other users permission to edit the notes or share them as read-only. This ensures that you can confidently share a notebook without worrying about unintentional modifications by your friends or colleagues.

Email to Note​

Joplin Cloud Pro and Teams also now include the Email to Note feature, allowing you to conveniently store your emails within Joplin Cloud. By simply forwarding your emails to your Joplin Cloud address, you can transform them into notes. The email's subject will serve as the note title, while the body of the email will be the note's content. These notes will be organized within a notebook named "Inbox."

More information in the Email to Note documentation.

Choose to resize an image or not​

By default, when you add a large image, Joplin will ask you if you would like to shrink it down or not. With this new release, you now have the option to always ask, to always resize, or to never resize the image, giving you more flexibility and reducing the number of prompts in the app.

Rotating log​

Up until now, the logs could grow to become very large, and if you wanted to shrink them down you would have to manually delete them. With this new release, we now automatically handle logs by rotating them - once the log becomes large enough it is moved to an archive. And once the archive is older than a number of days, it is deleted.

Mobile​

Like the desktop app, the mobile apps benefits from the Share Permissions update, as well as the Email to Note feature for Joplin Cloud. There are also plenty of other improvements - all in all there's 23 bug fixes, enhancements and security fixes in this release.

Full changelog​

This is just an overview of the main features. The full changelog is available there:

• Desktop: https://joplinapp.org/help/about/changelog/desktop
• Android: https://joplinapp.org/help/about/changelog/android
• iOS: https://joplinapp.org/help/about/changelog/ios

Discuss on the forum

On 1 and 2 April 2023, we will have a stand for Joplin at the Journées du Logiciel Libre in Lyon, France. The JdLL has been taking place in Lyon for 24 years and is a popular open source conference in France. We had a stand in 2020 and 2021 but that was cancelled due to Covid, so this year is a first for Joplin!

Admission is free, so don't hesitate to come and meet us, exchange ideas and learn more about Joplin!

Discuss on the forum

If you've ever used GitHub Actions, you will find that they provide by default a nice coloured output for the log. It looks good and it's even interactive! (You can click to collapse/expand blocks of text) But unfortunately it doesn't scale to large workflows, like we have for Joplin - the log can freeze and it will take forever to search for something. Indeed searching is done in "real time"... which mostly means it will freeze for a minute or two for each letter you type in the search box. Not great.

Thankfully GitHub provides an alternative access: the raw logs. This is much better because they will open as plain text, without any styling or JS magic, which means you can use the browser native search and it will be fast.

But now the problem is that raw logs look like this:

While it's not impossible to read, all colours that would display nicely in a terminal are gone and replaced by ANSI codes. You can find what you need in there but it's not particularly easy.

This is where the new GitHub Action Raw Log Viewer extension for Chrome can help. It will parse your raw log and convert the ANSI codes to proper colours. This results in a much more readable rendering:

The extension is fast even for very large logs and it's of course easy to search for text since it simply works with your browser built-in search.

The extension is open source, with the code available here: https://github.com/laurent22/github-actions-logs-extension

And to install it, follow this link:

Discuss on the forum

As was discussed last year, Joplin is switching to the GNU Affero General Public License v3 (AGPL-3.0) for the desktop, mobile and CLI applications, as well as the web clipper.

Any open source or commercial fork of Joplin will have to license any changes they make under AGPL, and share these changes back with the community. This is the main reason we switch to this license. It allows us to continue releasing the project as open source while ensuring that those who benefit commercially (or not) from it share back their changes.

What is the GPL license?​

The AGPL license is based on the GPL license. This is what tldr;Legal has to say about the GPL license:

You may copy, distribute and modify the software as long as you track changes/dates in source files. Any modifications to or software including (via compiler) GPL-licensed code must also be made available under the GPL along with build & install instructions. (source)

What is the AGPL license?​

This is the license we'll use for Joplin from now on:

You may copy, distribute and modify the software as long as you track changes/dates in source files. Any modifications to or software including (via compiler) GPL-licensed code must also be made available under the GPL along with build & install instructions. (source)

The AGPL license differs from the other GNU licenses in that it was built for network software. You can distribute modified versions if you keep track of the changes and the date you made them. As per usual with GNU licenses, you must license derivatives under AGPL. It provides the same restrictions and freedoms as the GPLv3 but with an additional clause which makes it so that source code must be distributed along with web publication. Since web sites and services are never distributed in the traditional sense, the AGPL is the GPL of the web. (source)

What does it change for users?​

There is no changes for users of Joplin - the apps remain open sources and you can still use them freely.

What does it change for developers?​

Any code you develop for Joplin will also remain open source. The only difference is that we'll ask to sign an Individual Contributor License Agreement (CLA) to ensure that the copyright of the entire codebase remains with the Joplin organisation. This is necessary so that if we ever want to change the license again we are able to do so without having to get the agreement of each individual contributor afterwards (which would be nearly impossible).

This is a bit of an extra constraint but it is hard to avoid. Contributor License Agreements are very common for GPL or AGPL projects. For example Apache, Canonical or Python all require their contributors to sign a CLA.

Questions?​

If you have any questions please let us know. Overall we believe this is a positive improvements for Joplin as it means any work derives from it will also benefit the project.

Discuss on the forum

Proxy support​

Both the desktop and mobile application now support proxies thanks to the work of Jason Williams. This will allow you to use the apps in particular when you are behind a company proxy.

New PDF viewer​

The desktop application now features a new PDF viewer thanks to the work of Asrient during GSoC.

The main advantage for now is that this viewer preserves the last PDF page that was read. In the next version, the viewer will also include a way to annotate PDF files.

Multi-language spell checking​

The desktop app include a multi-language spell checking features, which allows you, for example, to spell-check notes in your native language and in English.

New mobile text editor​

Writing formatted notes on mobile has always been cumbersome due to the need to enter special format characters like * or [, etc.

Thanks to the work of Henry Heino during GSoC, writing notes on the go is now easier thanks to an improved Markdown editor.

The most visible feature is the addition of a toolbar, which helps input those special characters, like on desktop.

Moreover Henry made a lot of subtle but useful improvements to the editor, for example to improve the note appearance, to improve list continuation, etc. Search within a note is now also supported as well as spell-checking.

At a more technical level, Henry also added many test units to ensure that the editor remains robust and reliable.

To enable the feature, go to the configuration screen and selected "Opt-in to the editor beta". It is already very stable so we will probably promote it to be the main editor from the next version.

Improved alignment of notebook icons​

Previously, when you would assign an icon to a notebook, it would shift the title to the right, but notebook without an icon would not. It means that notebooks with and without an icon would not be vertically aligned.

To tidy things up, this new version adds a default icons to notebooks without an explicitly assigned icon. This result in the notebook titles being correctly vertically aligned.

Note that this feature is only enabled if you use custom icons - otherwise it will simply display the notebook titles without any default icons, as before.

Improved handling of file attachments​

Self Not Found made a number of small but useful improvements to attachment handling, including increasing the maximum size to 200MB, adding support for attaching multiple files, and fixing issues with synchronising attachments via proxy.

Fixed filesystem sync on mobile​

This was a long and complex change due to the need to support new Android APIs but hopefully that should now be working again, thanks to the work of jd1378.

So you can now sync again your notes with Syncthing and other file-based synchronisation systems.

And more...​

In total this new desktop version includes 36 improvements, bug fixes, and security fixes.

As always, a lot of work went into the Android and iOS app too, which include 37 improvements, bug fixes, and security fixes.

See here for the changelogs:

• Desktop app changelog
• Android app changelog

About the Android version​

Unfortunately we cannot publish the Android version because it is based on a framework version that Google does not accept. To upgrade the app a lot of changes are needed and another round of pre-releases, and therefore there will not be a 2.9 version for Google Play. You may however download the official APK directly from there: Android 2.9 Official Release

This is the reality of app stores in general - small developers being imposed never ending new requirements by all-powerful companies, and by the time a version is finally ready we can't even publish it because yet more requirements are in place.

For the record the current 2.9 app works perfectly fine. It targets Android 11, which is only 2 years old and is still supported (and installed on millions of phones). Google requires us to target Android 12 which only came out last year.

Discuss on the forum

Joplin is an open source note-taking app. Capture your thoughts and securely access them from any device.

We are looking to hire two JavaScript software developers to work on the desktop, mobile, and server applications. All those are built using modern technologies, including React, React Native and Electron with a strong focus on test units.

You need to demonstrate some experience with at least some of these technologies, and willing to learn more and touch various different projects.

You will be part of a small team, so you will have an opportunity for a high-impact role, targeting hundreds of thousands of users.

If you're interested please contact us at job-AT-joplin.cloud

No agencies please.

Discuss on the forum

If you watch the Joplin source code repository, you may have noticed a lot of Renovate pull requests lately. This Renovate tool is a way to manage dependencies - it automatically finds what needs to be updated, then upgrade it to the latest version, and create a pull request. If all tests pass, we can then merge this pull request. So far we have merged 267 of these pull requests.

Updating Joplin packages was long due. It is necessary so that we don't fall behind and end up using unsupported or deprecated packages. We also benefit from bug fixes and performance improvements. It is also important in terms of security, since recent package versions usually include various security fixes.

We used to rely on a tool called "npm audit" to do this, however it no longer works on the Joplin codebase, and it was always risky to use it since it would update multiple packages in one command - so if something went wrong it was difficult to find the culprit.

Renovate on the other hand upgrades packages one at a time, and run our test units to ensure everything is still working as expected. It also upgrades multiple instances of the same package across the monorepo, which is convenient to keep our code consistent. It also has a number of options to make our life easier, such as the ability to automatically merge a pull request for patch releases since this is usually safe (when a package is, for example upgraded from 1.0.1 to 1.0.3).

Although Renovate automates the package upgrades it doesn't mean all upgrades are straightforward - our tests won't catch all issues, so the apps might end up being broken or cannot be compiled anymore. So there's manual work involved to get everything working after certain upgrades - for the most part this has been done and the apps appear to be stable so far.

This will however be an important part of pre-release 2.10 (or should it be 3.0?) - we hope that everything works but we may need your support to try this version and report any glitch you may have found. As always pre-release regressions have the highest priority so we aim to fix them as quickly as possible.

Discuss on the forum

As some of you may know Joplin Cloud so far has been operating under my own single-person limited company in the UK. This was mostly for convenience since it meant I could get things going quickly without having to setup a special structure for it.

Now that Joplin Cloud is becoming more mature however a proper company, simply called Joplin, has been created. This company will be based in France, and will be used mainly to handle the commercial part of the project, which currently is mostly Joplin Cloud. I'm still heading the company so there won't be any major change to the way the project is managed.

What does it mean for Joplin Cloud?​

There will be no significant change - the website ownership simply moves from one company in the UK to one in France. The new company is still owned by myself so I will keep following the same roadmap.

What does it mean for the open source apps?​

On the short term, the only visible change will be moving the non-open source assets, such as logo or trademark from the UK company to the French one. So expect a few changes in copyright notices here and there.

In the medium to long term, I would like to hire one or two software developers to help me with the Joplin Cloud development, because we reached a point where managing the whole project is difficult for a single person, so some help is needed. Some of their work might also touch the open source apps since both are quite related - but of course that work will remain open source too.

As a general rule, there will be a permanent commitment to keep the apps open source and to derive value from Joplin Cloud/Server.

Longer term I would like to create a non-profit organisation to handle the open source applications and to make decisions about the project, as well as to decide how to allocate any funding we receive (for example from GSoC).

Looking forward​

Those past 6 years of developing Joplin have been an exciting and rewarding experience, thank you to all of you of the friendly and vibrant Joplin community for your contribution toward making Joplin the software it is today, and looking forward to continuing the journey together!

Discuss on the forum

Website Planet has recently conducted an interview about Joplin - it may give you some insight on the current status of the project, our priorities, and future plans! More on the article page - Organise Your Thoughts with Open Source Note-Taking App, Joplin

Discuss on the forum

We are glad to announce the first Joplin Meetup that will take place on 30 August 2022 in London!

This is an opportunity to meet other Joplin users as well as some of the main contributors, to discuss the apps, or to ask questions and exchange tips and tricks on how to use the app, develop plugins or contribute to the application. Everybody, technical or not, is welcome!

We will meet at the Old Thameside Inn next to London Bridge. If the weather allows we will be on the terrace outside, if not inside.

More information on the official Meetup page:

https://www.meetup.com/joplin/events/287611873/

Discuss on the forum

As always a lot of changes and new features in this new version available on both desktop and mobile.

Multiple profile support​

Perhaps the most visible change in this version is the support for multiple profiles. You can now create as many application profile as you wish, each with their own settings, and easily switch from one to another. The main use case is to support for example a "work" profile and a "personal" profile, to allow you to keep things independent, and each profile can sync with a different sync target.

To create a new profile, open File > Switch profile and select Create new profile, enter the profile name and press OK. The app will automatically switch to this new profile, which you can now configure.

To switch back to the previous profile, again open File > Switch profile and select Default.

Note that profiles all share certain settings, such as language, font size, theme, etc. This is done so that you don't have reconfigure every details when switching profiles. Other settings such as sync configuration is per profile.

The feature is available on desktop only for now, and should be ported to mobile relatively soon.

Save Mermaid graph as PNG/SVG​

This convenient feature allows exporting a Mermaid graph as a PNG or SVG image, or allows copying the image as a DataUrl, which can then be pasted in any compatible text editor. Thanks Asrient for implementing this!

Publish a mini-website using Joplin Cloud​

Joplin Cloud now supports publishing a note "recursively", which means the notes and all the notes it is linked to. This allows easily publishing a simple website made of multiples and images.

To make use of this feature, simply select Also publish linked notes when publishing a note.

And more!​

In total there are 38 changes to improve the app reliability, security and usability. Full changelog is at https://joplinapp.org/help/about/changelog/desktop

Discuss on the forum

We are glad to announce that Google allocated us six projects this year for Google Summer of Code! So this is six contributors who will be working on various parts of the apps, both desktop and mobile, over the summer.

Over the next few weeks, till 13 June, will be the Community Bonding Period during which GSoC contributors get to know mentors, read documentation, and get up to speed to begin working on their projects.

Here's the full list of projects, contributors and mentors.

Discuss on the forum

The "Contributor Proposals" phase of GSoC 2022 is starting today! If you would like to be a contributor, now is the time to choose your project idea, write your proposal, and upload it to https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/

When it's done, please also let us know by posting an update on your forum introduction post.

If you haven't created a pull request yet, it's still time to create one. Doing so will greatly increase your chances of being selected!

Discuss on the forum

For the third year, Joplin has been selected as a Google Summer of Code mentor organisation! We look forward to start working with the contributors on some great new projects. This year's main themes are:

• Mobile and tablet development - we want to improve the mobile/tablet application on iOS and Android.
• Plugin and external apps - leverage the Joplin API to create plugins and external apps.
• And of course contributors are welcome to suggest their own ideas.

Our full idea list is available here: GSoC 2022 idea list

In the coming month (March 7 - April 3), contributors will start getting involved in the forum and start discussing project ideas with the mentors and community. It's also a good time to start looking at Joplin's source code, perhaps work on fixing bugs or implement small features to get familiar with the source code, and to show us your skills.

One difference with previous years is that anyone, not just students, are allowed to participate.

Additionally, last year Google only allowed smaller projects, while this year they allow again small and large projects, so we've indicated this in the idea list - the small ones are 175 hours, and the large ones 350 hours.

This new release is largely focused on bug fixing and optimising various parts of the apps. There's about 26 improvements and 25 bugs and security fixes included - as always many of these apply to both the mobile and desktop app (see the desktop changelog and mobile changelog).

Many thanks to all the contributors who helped create this release!

Below are some of the more noticeable changes:

Notebook custom icons​

Since version 2.6 it was possible to assign an emoji icon to a notebook, and with this new version it's now possible to assign any custom icon. The icon may be a PNG or JPG file of any size. The app will then import the file and resize it to the correct size. To use a custom icon, follow these steps:

Right-click on a notebook, and select "Edit":

In the "Edit notebook" dialog, click "Select file..." and browse to your icon image:

Click "OK" and the icon will now appear next to the notebook:

The icon can be changed only from the desktop application at the moment, but it will sync and be displayed correctly on the mobile app too.

Plugin API improvements​

This version also includes a number of improvements to the plugin API, in particular it is now easier to customise the editor context menu from a plugin and dynamically add items to it depending on the context. For example, with the Rich Markdown plugin it will be possible to right-click on an image and open it, or copy it to the clipboard.

A few additional functions have also been added to make plugin development simpler - in particular a command to open any item, whether it's a notebook, note, tag or attachment; and functions to work with attachments, in particular to reveal an attachment in the system file explorer, and to track changes to an attachment.

As of 15 Feb 2022, disabled accounts on Joplin Cloud will be automatically deleted after 90 days. A disabled account is one where the Stripe subscription has been cancelled either by the user or automatically (eg for unpaid invoices).

Although it is an automated system, I will manually verify each account that's queued for deletion over the next few days for additional safety (for now everything's working as expected).

When an account is queued for deletion, all notes, notebooks, tags, etc are removed from the system within 2 days, and permanently deleted within 7 days. User information, in particular email and full name will be removed from the system within 2 days, but archived for an additional 90 days for legal reasons, after which they will be deleted too.

Many changes in this new release, available on mobile, desktop and CLI:

Per-notebook sort order and sort buttons

This new feature adds a number of changes to the way notes are sorted. The most visible one is the addition of a sort button above the note list - it allows sorting by modification date, creation date, title or by custom order, in either ascending or descending order:

By default, this sort order is going to apply to all notebooks, however you can now also assign a per-notebook sort order. In this case, any sort order will be apply to that notebook only. To enable this behaviour, simply right-click on a notebook and select "Toggle own sort order":

Thanks to Kenichi Kobayashi for developing this feature!

Support for notebook icons

It is now possible to associate icons with notebooks no both the desktop and mobile applications. To do so, right-click on a notebook and selected "Edit".

This will open the new notebook dialog from which can change the title and assign an icon. For now the icons are emojis but perhaps custom icons could be supported later on.

Allow collaborating on encrypted notebooks using Joplin Cloud

Thanks to the encryption improvements in the previous Joplin versions it is now possible to share and collaborated on encrypted notebooks, when synchronising with Joplin Cloud (or Joplin Server).

To get this working, you and the recipient will need to have Joplin 2.6 and the person who shares will need to have encryption enabled. After that most of the process is handled automatically by the apps - in particular it will automatically generate and share the required encryption keys for each users.

Improved synchronisation startup speed

Synchronisation is also a bit faster in this release due to an optimisation on the startup process. When syncing, the app needs to acquire a lock, which may be time consuming since it requires making multiple requests. This has now been optimised so that less requests are necessary and also each request consumes less resources. This will have a positive impact on Joplin Cloud in particular, but you should also see improvements with Joplin Server and smaller improvements with the other sync targets.

Improved Markdown editor split view scrolling

Kenichi Kobayashi made some great improvements to the Markdown editor scrolling in this release. The issue before was that the editor on the left and the viewer on the right would often not be in sync, in particular if the note contains several images and other media.

With Kenichi's change the editor and viewer stay nicely in sync, regardless of the note content. In fact it looks a bit like magic when you scroll through large notes - notice in particular how each side appear to wait for the other or speed up in order to make sure both sides are aligned as well possible. Kenichi provides a nice technical documentation about the feature here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wbs5XZR0oeU

Improved and optimised S3 synchronisation

Thanks to the efforts of Lee Matos, synchronisation with S3 is now more reliable and errors are also better handled. The underlying S3 SDK has also been upgraded from v2 to v3 which results in a smaller executable size (about 3-5 MB depending on the operating system)

Export notes as self-contained HTML files

Exporting a single note as HTML is now more user friendly as all images, scripts, styles and other attachments are all packed into a single HTML file (Previously it would create multiples files and directories). This makes it easier to share the complete note with someone who doesn't have Joplin.

Other changes and bug fixes

This release includes a total of 19 new features and improvements and 16 bug fixes. See the 2.6.x changelogs for more details:

https://joplinapp.org/help/about/changelog/desktop

https://joplinapp.org/help/about/changelog/android/

https://joplinapp.org/help/about/changelog/ios/

https://joplinapp.org/help/about/changelog/cli/

Just a head up that the next Joplin Server update could potentially include a breaking change, depending on your data.

One of the database migration is going to add an "owner_id" column to the "items" table (where all notes, notebooks, etc. are stored), and automatically populate it. Normally that shouldn't take too long but you might want to make sure you won't need the server right away when you process this.

The second database migration will add a unique constraint on items.name and items.owner_id and that's where the breaking change might be. Normally this data is already unique because that's enforced by the application but in some rare cases, due a race condition, there could be duplicate data in there. If that happens the migration will fail and the server will not start.

If that happens, you'll need to decide what to do with the data, as it's not possible to automatically decide. You can find all duplicates using this query:

Once you have the list of IDs you have a few options:

• Find the corresponding item in Joplin (it can unfortunately be anything - a note, resource, folder, etc.), then delete it and sync.
• Or, just delete the data directly in the database. You'll want to delete the corresponding item_id from the user_items table too.

But really in most cases you should be fine. Especially if you don't have that many notes it's unlikely you have duplicates.

Joplin v2.5 is now available for desktop, mobile and CLI! Here's an overview of the changes:

Support for Markdown + Front Matter​

Markdown + Front Matter is a format that allows attaching metadata, such as tags, creation date, or geolocation to a Markdown file. This is done by adding a block of YAML code (a "front matter") at the top of the file.

Thanks to Caleb John's efforts the Joplin desktop and CLI applications now support importing and exporting these files. When exporting, we try to preserve as much metadata as possible, while still keeping it the formatting user friendly.

Here's an example, with the Front Matter at the top, delimited by "---", and the text below.

Markdown + Front Matter is an excellent way to share notes with someone who doesn't have Joplin, to backup notes in a durable format (since no third-party application is needed to read it), and also to export notes to other applications, or to import them.

As with the regular Markdown exporter, the images and attachments are also exported.

Add support for callback URLs​

Callback URLs is a semi-standard that defines how certain resources in an application can be accessed via URLs. Either to view the resource, or to perform certain actions, such as deletion, creation, etc.

Joplin now support callback URLs to open notes, notebooks and folders. To do so, right click on a note and select "Copy external link":

That would give you a URL such as this:

joplin://x-callback-url/openNote?id=b7a7b93281f54d928612eea550f33a7f

Then if you click it from outside the app, the app will open and select this particular note. In practice such a feature allows third-party application to interact with Joplin by creating links that can be opened from outside. For example, you may use a different application for project planning, then link to the individual notes for more details about each task.

Many thanks to Roman Musin for adding the feature!

Improved end-to-end encryption support​

The series of quiet but major changes to the end-to-end encryption support continue in this new verison. One goal is still to allow sharing notebooks while encryption is enabled.

To that end, v2.5 includes support for RSA public-private key pairs. If you have encryption enabled, they will be automatically generated when you synchronise by the mobile, desktop or CLI applications. Later on, these keys will be used to allow sharing encrypted notebooks.

The second goal of these E2EE changes is to simplify the system enough that it can be enabled by default. To that end, the master password dialog and encryption screen have been improved. An option to reset the master password is now also available.

Various other improvements and bug fixes​

In total this release includes about 11 other bug fixes and improvements. There was in particular several improvements to the share features. It is now also possible for a share recipient to leave the shared notebook.

Mobile app update​

As always the mobile apps (to be released soon) benefit from several of the above changes since they share the same codebase as the desktop app.

Specific to the mobile version 2.5 are some improvements to the beta editor - in particular the layout has been cleaned up, and the first word of sentences is now automatically capitalised, which makes typing notes easier. If you haven't tried the beta editor yet, you can enable it from the Configuration screen.

The full changelog is available there: https://joplinapp.org/help/about/changelog/desktop

Some of you might be experiencing an error "Certificate has expired" when synchronising with Joplin Cloud (and possibly other services) when using the desktop application.

This is due to Let's Encrypt root certificate that expired on 30 September, and the new method they are using is not compatible with the Joplin desktop application.

This actually affects thousands of applications, not just Joplin, so various solutions are being considered right now and hopefully a fix will be available relatively soon.

For now, as a workaround, you can simply check "Ignore TLS certificate errors" in Configuration > Synchronisation > Advanced Options

I will let you know as soon as a fix is available so that you can clear that option.

More info:

• Issue with Electron and expired root on Let's Encrypt

• Let's Encrypt root CA isn't working properly on Electron GitHub repository

Update: I have implemented a temporary fix on Joplin Cloud which should solve the issue for now. If you're still having some issues please let me know. An updated desktop app will be available later on with a more permanent fix.

Joplin 2.4 is now available on desktop, mobile and CLI. Here's what's new in this release:

Sync Wizard Dialog​

A new Sync Wizard Dialog has been added to simplify setting up sync on new clients.

The dialog shows the main sync targets, their differences, and makes it easy to choose one and start synchronising. This is mostly aimed at new users or those perhaps less technical. Those who are self hosting or using complex setups will still easily find what they need from a link on that dialog (or in Config > Synchronisation like before).

Sync setup on mobile has been slightly improved too - now on a new client, instead of asking you to sync with Dropbox directly (which may not be what you want), it jumps to the Config > Synchronisation section where you can select the sync target

Disable synchronisation​

It's a small change but something that's been asked many time - it's now possible to disable synchronisation entirely by selecting "None" as a sync target. Previously that could be done in a hacky way, by selecting a non-configured sync target. Now it's clearer and easier to do.

Add back support for deprecated plugins​

Recently some plugins stopped working because deprecated plugin APIs had been removed. It had been planned for a long time but I suspect the warnings weren't visible enough so plugin developers didn't act on them, and as a result many plugins stopped working.

This is now fixed in the latest version. A selected number of plugins will have access to these old deprecated APIs, which means they will start working again. This was mainly affecting ambrt's plugins such as "Convert Text To New Note" or the popular "Embed Search" plugin.

Add support for recommended plugins​

As mentioned in an earlier post, we now support recommended plugins. These recommended plugins appear on top when searching and are identified by a small crown.

End to End Encryption improvements​

Like most recent releases, v2.4 includes a few improvement to the End to End Encryption (E2EE) system. The goal is to make it easier to use, to make it more reliable and to support the future use case of sharing encrypted notebooks or notes.

One important change is the support for a master password. This single password will be responsible to encrypt various keys, including some that will be automatically generated. Thanks to this, it won't be necessary to ask to enter a new password every time a key needs to be encrypted, since the master password can be used. It will also be easier to manage since you'll only have one password to remember instead of a different one for each notebook you might have shared.

Finally, it's now possible to disable a master key. What it means is that it will no longer show up in the list of master keys, and will also no longer generate a warning asking you to enter the password. In some case you might have forgotten it and no longer need it key, so you can now disable it.

Custom CSS​

This version also introduces a few internal change to better support custom CSS. In particular the colours now come from a CSS file, which could potentially be overridden, and new UI elements are styled using stylesheets, which likewise could be overridden.

Those are just first steps, but eventually these changes will make it easier to style the UI and create new themes.

Bug fixes​

This release also includes about 30 various bug fixes and improvements.

A notable one is a fix for GotoAnything, which recently wasn't working on first try.

The plugin screen has also been improved so that search works even when GitHub is down or blocked, as it is in China in particular.

A common request from new users is how to know which plugin is safe to install or not. In fact probably all of them are safe but as a new user that's not necessarily easy to know. So to help with this, the next version of Joplin will support recommended plugins - those will be plugins that meet our standards of quality and performance, and they will be indicated by a small crown tag inside the plugin box. Recommended plugins will also appear on top when searching.

For now, since we don't have a review process, the recommended plugins are those developed by the Joplin team and frequent contributors, because we know those are safe to use.

Later we might have a review process and add more recommended plugins. That being said, in the meantime even if a plugin is not marked as recommended, there's a good chance it is still safe and have good performance too. Often you can search for it on the forum and if it's active with many users commenting, you're most likely good to go.

But if there's any doubt, the recommended tag is a good way to be sure.

Joplin Cloud has been out of beta for a few weeks now and since then it has been quietly running without any troubles. There is no known bugs and the service is running smoothly so it's now safe to say that it is production ready!

As a reminder, Joplin Cloud is meant to provide a more seamless Joplin experience - if you want to quickly get started, it's as easy as downloading the app and getting a Joplin Cloud account. Besides improved sync performance, that will give you the ability to collaborate on notebooks with others, as well as publishing and sharing notes.

Of course Joplin still supports other sync options such as Nextcloud, Dropbox and OneDrive or AWS S3. You can also self host using Joplin Server. The advantage of Joplin Cloud being that you don't need to maintain a server yourself - for a small fee you'll get that taken care of.

Additionally, subscribing to Joplin Cloud is a great way to support the project as a whole, including the open source applications. Such support is needed in the long term to provide bug and security fixes, add new features, and provide support.

At some level it is also an experiment, to see if such a service is financially viable and can allow me to work full time on the project. This is certainly something I would like, and perhaps Joplin Cloud combined with your donations will allow that.

For anyone with a beta account, if you would like to keep using it after the end of the trial period, there is now a button to do this from the Joplin Cloud home page:

If you click on it you will be sent to the Plans page via a special link. Then once you click on "Buy now" you will be sent to the Stripe page where you can start the subscription.

As mentioned in the message, the process takes into account your remaining beta trial days. So for example, if your beta account expires in 60 days, the subscription will have a free 60 days trial period. This is so you don't lose any of the beta trial days no matter when you start the subscription.

If you have any question about it, please let me know.

The latest Android pre-release 24 features an improved beta editor, which I hope could become a replacement for the very basic editor we have at the moment.

It's still experimental because it's based on the equally experimental CodeMirror 6, however for simple editing tasks it seems to work fine. At the moment the improvements are:

• Syntax highlighting for various tags such as bold, italic and headings.

• List continuation for ordered and unordered lists (I didn't try checklists but I assume it doesn't work)

• Improved undo/redo

• Maybe better handling of large documents? CodeMirror 6 has a demo that loads a document with millions of lines, so maybe that will solve the performance issues that some users were having

If everything works well, later on we should be able to add things like a toolbar, spellchecking and other features that are impossible with the current editor.

If you find any bug, feel free to report here. Also make sure you backup your notes regularly in case there's an issue!

The beta program helped narrow down a few issues and should make Joplin Cloud (and Joplin Server) more reliable. More precisely:

• About 7 bugs have been fixed, including two major ones regarding sharing, and one security issue.
• About a dozen improvements, new features and optimisations have been added following your feedback.

As promised if you have a beta account you can keep using it and it will remain free for the three months after the account was created. After that, you will receive a link to start the Stripe subscription if you wish to keep using the account.

If you have sent me an email before the end of the beta and I didn't reply yet, I will do so soon, and will send you the confirmation email.

Thanks everyone for participating!

The new website is finally ready at https://joplinapp.org

The previous website had been built organically over the past few years. It had a lot of useful content but finding your way was tricky and, for new users, it wasn't clear what Joplin was about. Finding out how to install the app wasn't obvious since the download buttons were lost in the clutter of information.

So the new website includes a front page with clear goals:

• Allows people to easily download the app - for that there's a large Download button at the top and bottom of the page. It redirects to a page that automatically picks the version based on your operating system.
• Showcase the application key features. The key features post on the forum helped narrow down what Joplin is about, so there are sections about the web clipper, the open source nature of the app, encryption, synchronisation, customisation and the ability to create multimedia notes.
• The top screenshots have also been updated (the previous one was showing a dev version from 2016, before the app was even released). As a nod to Scott Joplin, the screenshot shows an imaginary plan to open a vintage piano store, with various tasks, tables, documents and images attached, to showcase Joplin features.
• Finally there's a Press section, which includes extracts from some cool articles that have been written about the app.

Also many thanks to everyone who voted and contributed to the tagline discussion! It helped narrow down what the tagline should be, along with the equally important description below. If you have any question or notice any issue with the website let me know!

Thanks everyone for your tagline suggestions - there were lots of good ideas in there. I've compiled a few of them and create a poll in the forum, so please cast your vote! And if you have any other suggestions on what would make a good tagline, feel free to post over there or here.

https://discourse.joplinapp.org/t/poll-what-should-joplin-tagline-be/18487

I'm going to update the website front page to better showcase the application. I have most of the sections right, but the part I'm still not sure about is the top tagline, so I'm wondering if anyone had any suggestion about it?

From what I can see on Google Keep or Evernote for example it should be something like "Use our app to get X or Y benefit", it should be a sentence that directly speaks to the user essentially.

So far I have "Your notes, anywhere you are" but I'm not certain that's particularly inspiring. Any other idea about what tagline could be used?

Poll is on the forum:

https://discourse.joplinapp.org/t/poll-whats-the-size-of-your-note-collection/18191

Since a few versions Joplin Server includes a way to share notebooks between users and collaborate on them - i.e. any participant can view or modify notes in the shared notebook. It's been present since version 2.x and the feature is getting close to be stable.

How does it work?

When connected to Joplin Server (or the upcoming Joplin Cloud service), a new "Share notebook" menu item is available when right-clicking on a notebook.

Click on it, and it will display a new dialog where you can add any number of recipients. Those recipients also need to be on the same Joplin Server instance. From this dialog you can also remove a recipient or unshare the whole notebook, in which case it will be removed from everybody's note collection, except yours.

Once this is done, the recipient(s) will receive a notification in Joplin the next time they synchronise their data:

Then, finally, once the invitation is accepted, Joplin will download all the shared notebooks and notes. A shared notebook is denoted by the usual Share icon. Now the invited user can read or modify the shared notes, add attachments, etc. and the changes will be visible to everyone with access to the notebook.

What's the availability of the notebook sharing feature?

The notebook sharing feature is available on Joplin Server and Joplin Cloud.

On desktop, you can share notebooks and of course view or modify any notebook that has been shared with you.

On mobile and CLI, you cannot currently share notebooks, but you can view or modify any notebook that has been shared with you.

If I share a notebook with someone, what access do they have?

Currently they have full access to the data, including reading, writing and deleting notebooks or notes. In a future version, access control might be implemented. For example, to only give read-only access to the shared notebook.

What can actually be shared?

All the sub-notebooks, notes and resources within the shared notebook are shared.

Does it work with End-To-End-Encryption?

Yes and no. It is possible to use the share notebook feature even with E2EE enabled, however any shared notebook or note will not be encrypted, otherwise you would have had to give your master key password to the people you share with, which you'd probably not want to do.

In a future version, this might be supported. For example by automatically creating a new master key for the shared notebook. You would then provide the recipients with that master key password.

What can it be used for?

Some ideas:

• Plan a trip with friends or within a small organisation. For example, the notes could contain the maps, hotel and flight reservations, etc. or any document or note relevant to the trip. And all participants would have access to them.
• Work on a project with colleagues. Everybody can access various work-related documents, add to them, modify them, etc. That could serve as a knowledge base for a project.
• Another possible use, which has been requested many times, is to support multiple profiles. You could create a main profile that have access to all notes, and in there create a Work and Personal notebook. Then you would create a separate account for work. You can then share your Work notebook with that other account. That way the work account will only have access to the Work notebooks. You can use this technique in various ways to split your notebooks between multiple accounts and ensure strict separation between datasets.

Google has reviewed the project proposals we had submitted and all students have been approved. Congratulation and welcome to our six students - we're looking forward to see your work!

Below is the list of projects along with the student name and mentors. This year we will have a main mentor and a co-mentor for each project and in the list below, the main mentor is listed first:

BibTeX Plugin

Student: Abdallah Ahmed

Mentors: Laurent Cozic, Helmut K. C. Tessarek

Improving Conflict Resolution Process

Student: Ahmed Alwasifey

Mentors: Jack Gruber, Caleb John

Kanban Board Plugin

Student: Mablin

Mentors: Roman Musin, Laurent Cozic

Paste Special

Student: Siddhant Sehgal

Mentors: Helmut K. C. Tessarek, Stefan Müller

Real-Time Collaboration

Student: Akash Konda

Mentors: Stefan Müller, Roman Musin

Template Plugin

Student: Nishant Mittal

Mentors: Jack Gruber, Caleb John

The official Google of Summer Code page has also been updated with the list of projects:

https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/organizations/6579646541332480/

Joplin Server had a feature to share a note by link for a few versions now but it was mostly a beta feature. In Joplin Server 2.0, the feature will be officially released and should be stable.

To share a note, you will need the corresponding desktop application v2.0. Then you can right-click on any note and select "Share note..." from the context menu. You can also select multiple notes, and each will have its own share link.

After that a dialog opens showing you the note - from there you just need to click on "Copy shareable link" to create the share link and copy it to the clipboard.

You can then share this link with anyone and they will be able to see the note in their browser:

Note that at the moment sharing a link does not work with End-To-End Encryption. If you share a note, it will always be decrypted, even on the server. This should be addressed in a future version. The URL however is secure - only people you share the URL with will be able to see the note. In other words, it's not possible to guess or discover the URL any other way.

Google has announced the project slots for GSoC 2021 and granted us 6 this year. That's a big step up from our first GSoC last year when we got 2!

In the coming weeks we will be reviewing the student applications again and select the 6 candidates as well as mentors. By the way if you might be interested in co-mentoring a project, feel free to let me know (More info in this post).

A message from PackElend, who's been helping us organise GSoC this year (and last year)

Hi Community,

we are going to apply for the GSoC student slots next week, soon we know what can be done this season.

To put us in a comfortable position it would be appreciated if there would another handful of people who would mentor a project.

Is there anyone interested in doing so?

Here is some information about the role of a mentor:

After student selection​

• Ensure your student is ready & active. They should have a dev environment, be regularly communicating in the community, and have prepared a project plan together with you.
• Read the GSoC Mentoring Manual and ask questions if you have them.
• If the student is not active during the community bonding period, please contact the organization administrators.

During the program​

• Help your student be successful. Commit to spending a minimum of 4 hours each week answering questions, giving advice, working with your student on blockers.
• Agree with the students how many times per week they should write a progress report. Ensure that they deliver this report on time each week, and evaluate their progress.
• You might have adjust goals based on their progress.

Been checking the numbers now and then and I see there will soon be more TypeScript than JavaScript code in the repo:

Probably a good part of the JS code is in the CLI app, which hasn't been updated much. Critical parts of the app are now in TypeScript, including the synchronizer, database and encryption service. Joplin Server is also entirely in TypeScript. Even the database rows are now typed thanks to sql-ts.

So anyway TypeScript has been a big win for the project as it made it possible to refactor and modernise many parts of it in a safe way, and make the code future proof and easier to work with! I expect we should get to over 50% over the next few months.

For the second year, Joplin has been accepted as an organisation for GSoC 2021. This is great news and we look forward to start working with students and discuss project ideas. We should see some nice new features and improvements on the project again this year.

Just a quick announcement to let you know that on 3 and 4 April, we will have a stand for Joplin at the Journées du Logiciel Libre in Lyon, France. The JdLL has been taking place in Lyon for 22 years and is a popular open source conference in France. Last year we had a stand too, but of course that was cancelled due to Covid. So this year is a first for Joplin so if you're around, come and say hi!

Also I am looking for anyone who could help look after the stand, even for an hour or two, over these two days. There won't be a lot to do - pretty much just hand over fliers and answer the occasional question, which as Joplin users I'm sure you'll know the answer to. Coffee and/or beers are on me :-) So if you aren't far and would be interested, please let me know!

We are going to apply again this year for GSoC. If we are selected by Google, this year's theme will be centered around:

• Joplin plugin system - eg. development of various features that can be done as plugins, and improvement of the plugin system itself.

• Joplin external applications - anything that can be developed as an external application and that makes use of Joplin's API and other extension points.

At times we had a rough GSoC last year, mostly because we weren't familiar with the process and how to best handle various situations, but overall it was a success and we got great improvements to the search engine and keyboard shortcut systems thanks to our two students. We plan to make some adjustments to the way we welcome students to make the process go smoothly this year.

We will submit the GSoC application on 19 Feb and will let you know if we are selected. Like last year, we would appreciate any help with managing the event - if you are interested in being a tutor, or if you can help with welcoming new students and answering their questions, please let us know!

So far, we have @CalebJohn, @PackElend, @tessus and myself as potential tutors.

The first release of Joplin Server is now available as a pre-release:

https://github.com/laurent22/joplin/blob/dev/packages/server/README.md

What does it sync with?​

You will need Joplin v1.6+ clients, which are available as pre-releases for desktop and Android.

What does it do?​

At this point, this server allows you to sync any Joplin client with it, as you would do with Dropbox, OneDrive, etc. So in that way, it's not essential. Long term, the goal is to add collaboration features:

• Sharing a note with anyone, using a URL. When the note is changed, the content at the URL is changed too.
• Sharing a notebook with a user on the same Joplin Server instance. For example, if you share a notebook with another user, that user will see this notebook in their desktop or mobile app, and will be able to edit the notes, etc.

Any improvement over Nextcloud?​

For now, one benefit of using Joplin Server, compared to Nextcloud or WebDAV in general, is that it is much faster and resource efficient. I've done a basic test with Nextcloud and Joplin Server running on the same server. Both have mostly default settings (except Nextcloud which uses Redis for file locks):

Why is it so much faster? I assume it's in part because the WebDAV protocol is terribly inefficient. It sends unnecessarily large XML blobs for every request, which are time consuming to download and parse. It also doesn't support delta sync (unlike Joplin Server), which means the complete file list needs to be downloaded before syncing in order to compare the local and remote items.

Finally it's possible that Nextcloud file locking system means an overhead on each request. It shouldn't be much since it's handled by Redis but who knows. Joplin Server doesn't need locking as data consistency is handled by the clients.

So just by following common sense and transferring only the required data in a sane format (JSON), we can have something more performant. In my case, I appreciate that the mobile app no longer freezes when it starts synchronising - before it would do that due to the large XML WebDAV file that needs to be parsed.

Stability​

I've been using it with the desktop and mobile app for a few weeks now and haven't had any issue so far. The server also passes all the existing sync-related test units (sync, e2ee and lock handling) so I'm reasonably confident it can already be used. As always though, keep making backups in case there's any issue.

Suggestions are welcome​

This is still a pre-release and if you notice anything off please let me know. In particular, I believe it doesn't gzip responses, so that will need to be added. The process also doesn't restart when it crashes, which could be solved with pm2.

Also if you have any idea on how to make installation easier, your feedback is welcome.

The latest version features of Joplin features a few improvements to make it easier to preview various media files. For now it is possible to view PDF files, as well as listen and view audio and video files.

The feature is optional and you can enable/disable it in the settings, each viewer has its own settings:

For now the feature works on desktop (Markdown editor only) and on mobile (except for the PDF viewer).

From version 1.5, the macOS application will now be notarised. It means that when you install it you will no longer see a warning telling you that the app hasn't been checked for malware. You also won't need to go in the OS security settings to launch the app.

Notarisation has been around since macOS Catalina, however it took a while to implement it for Joplin as the process is complex and error prone.

First the app has to be built and uploaded to Apple's servers. They then automatically check the app for any malware, a process that can take 5 to 15 minutes (and presumably more if the app is incorrectly flagged as malware). Once it's done, Apple creates a notarisation ticket for the app.

Then whenever the app is started, Apple check on their server if the app has a notarisation ticket (a process that recently caused "apps taking minutes to launch, stuttering and non-responsiveness throughout macOS"). It's also possible to staple this notarisation ticket to the app, so that it's possible to check the ticket even when the computer is offline.

All that has now been automated in the Joplin build pipeline, and will apply to all macOS app future versions.

One feature that may have gone a bit unnoticed in recent versions is the ability to change the application layout. It is mainly aimed at plugins, so that they can create a panel anywhere, and you can then move it wherever you want, but it can also be used to re-arranged existing application components.

For example, you can put the note list below the sidebar, to have more space for the text editor, move the sidebar to the right of the application, etc.

To begin changing the application layout, click on "Change application layout" from the View menu:

This will put the app into a special mode, from which you can move the side bar, note list and text editor around. You do so by pressing on the arrow keys:

For example, pressing the left arrow on the note list would move it to the left, just below the sidebar:

Once you're done modifying the layout, press the "Escape" key to exit.

The plugin system has been part of Joplin since the previous version, however it was still a bit unstable. In the latest version we're getting a bit closer to production-ready state. The plugin API in particular has been significantly expanded, based on the developer feedback, so that more types of plugin are possible now, and indeed a few plugin concepts have started appearing on the forums. In particular all this could be done now:

• Access notes, folders, etc. via the data API
• Add a view to display custom data using HTML/CSS/JS
• Create a dialog to display information and get input from the user
• Create a new command and associate a toolbar button or menu item with it
• Get access to the note currently being edited and modify it
• Listen to various events and run code when they happen
• Hook into the application to set additional options and customise Joplin's behaviour
• Create a module to export or import data into Joplin
• Define new settings and setting sections, and get/set them from the plugin
• Create a new Markdown plugin to render custom markup.
• Create an editor plugin to modify low-level the behaviour of the Markdown editor (CodeMirror)

Plugin JPL format and configuration screen

The plugin configuration screen has also been updated so that it's possible to import the new JPL (Joplin PLugin) format and to enable/disable as well as uninstall plugins.

What's next?

It is now possible to create new plugins, package them into the JPL format, and to install them into the app.

The last piece missing is a way to discover and share plugins, and a way to update them easily, basically what we need is an online package manager. It is not clear yet how this is going to be done, but one idea would be to have a GitHub repository where anyone could submit or update a plugin, then the app would connect to that repository to make it easy to install new plugins. This is just an idea at this point though, and if you have any suggestion on other ways it could be done, feel free to let me know. A discussion about it has been started in the forum.

With 340 votes on GitHub, spell checker support was the most requested feature and is now finally available in Joplin! This was always tricky to add due to the custom editors (Rich Text and Markdown) we use, but thanks to the recent improvements in the Electron framework and to Caleb John's work on the Markdown editor it is now possible.

It should be working fine in both editors however it is currently considered Beta for the Markdown Editor because to enable the feature we had to use a special mode which in the past caused various issues. Now it seems to work well, at least we haven't noticed any bug so far, but please keep that in mind. If you notice any issue let us know in the forum.

Enabling the spell checker

To enable or disable the spell checker, simply click on the top right hand globe icon (or select Spell Checker in the Tools menu), then select the language you would like to use. Since the list of languages can be huge on certain operating system, the latest selected languages also appear just below the "Use spell checker" checkbox.

Activating the Markdown Editor Beta spell checker

By default, the spell checker is not activated in the Markdown editor even if "Use spell checker" is ticked because it is currently in Beta state. To enable it, go to the General settings, open the Advanced Settings, and select "Enable spell checking in Markdown editor". As mentioned above, we think the feature is stable and haven't found any bug with it, however if you notice anything please let us know.

I'm still trying to get a sense of what sharing and collaboration features would be useful in Joplin. By this mean any way to share a note with someone else or have multiple users collaborate on the same set of notes or notebooks.

If a feature like this might interest you, I'd be helpful if you could describe: how would you use it? How would you expect it to work?

All this might not be implemented right away, but it will inform how the development should happen for example by making sure that even if a feature can't be done now the software is done in such a way that it's possible to add it later on.

Any idea or suggestion is welcome!

In this series of posts about version 1.1, we'll introduce another feature by one of our GSoC candidates, Anjula. Anjula developed over the past few months a system to allow configuring the keymap shortcuts, and created a nice editor for it.  Here is what he has to say:

Joplin desktop application supports keyboard shortcuts to a certain  degree. However, there wasn't an option for users to configure keyboard  shortcuts according to their preferences. My project was to implement a  keyboard shortcut editor along with the necessary integration.

Custom keyboard shortcuts would be a great addition for all Joplin  users including power users and those who are migrating to Joplin from  other note-taking applications. People also do not have the same  keyboard layout; not everyone has F6 necessarily. It would solve  conflicts between different preferences of workflows, and increase  discoverability for all keyboard shortcuts.

Back-end service for handling keymapping-related functionality​

KeymapService builds an in-memory keymap based on the default keymap  configuration. The default keymap configuration may vary from platform  to platform. Essentially, the in-memory keymap binds a keyboard shortcut  for some command of Joplin. Clients of KeymapService may obtain the  keyboard shortcuts for some commands, and/or alter the keymap via the  provided methods.

KeymapService also allows altering the keymap via a keymap file,  which is located in the profile directory. Contents of this keymap file  will take higher priority than the default keymap configuration, and  will replace the default keyboard shortcuts.

It is guaranteed that the keymap always stays pristine with proper validation.

Keyboard shortcut editor with the necessary functionality to alter the keymap​

Depending on the interfaces of KeymapService, the Keyboard shortcut editor allows the user to,

• View all the available commands and their respective keyboard shortcuts
• Change, or disable a keyboard shortcut for some command
• Restore a keyboard shortcut to its default value
• Export all changes to a keymap file (in JSON format)
• Import changes from an exported keymap file
• Perform a simple search to locate some shortcut

Changes performed to the keymap will be reflected immediately in the  application user-interface as well as in the keymap file located in the  profile directory. The editor will also perform continuous validation to  ensure that the keymap will not enter a dirty-state. For example, it  won't allow the user to use the same shortcut for two or more commands.

The complete report with details of code contributions can be found here.

In this series of posts, I will introduce the changes that are coming in version 1.1 (which in fact is already available as a pre-release).

For this first feature, I will let Naveen, our GSoC candidate, present it. Naveen has made an excellent job implementing various search engine features, including advanced filters, support for Okapi BM25 scoring algorithm, and fuzzy search. Here is what he has to say:

What got done​

The project consisted of three parts:

1. Make search better by introducing additional search filters. (e.g., tags, notebook, type)
2. Make the ranking of search results better by implementing the Okapi BM25 relevance function.
3. Make fuzzy search possible.

Code contributions​

1. All: Add search filtersJoplin's search had been using the Full-Text Search(FTS) offered by  SQLite directly. So though it was fast, it was not versatile. For  example, we can't restrict the search scope to a particular notebook or  search based on tags.The current search implementation fixes most of these problems. It  provides a better abstraction over FTS, supporting many new filters. The  documentation for the new search filters can be found here.
2. All: Weigh notes using Okapi BM25 scoreJoplin used a ranking function based on the number of times the search query occurs in the note and how close they are.But there are better ways to rank notes, considering not just the  number of times a word appears, but how common it is. Words like "the"  is in most notes, while words like "zebra" are not common and should be  considered more relevant.The new search implementation uses Okapi BM25  as the ranking function. It ranks a set of documents based on the query  terms appearing in each document, regardless of their proximity.
3. Desktop: Fuzzy searchWe've added support for fuzzy search. It doesn't replace the need to put  * at the end if you want to do a prefix search. But it does let you be a  bit more relaxed about the exact spelling. Searching for "tomatos" will  also give you results for "tomatoes". (This feature isn't released yet,  but will be soon)

It has been a pleasure working with Laurent and Caleb. They did an excellent job as mentors.

I hope these new features will be useful to many people. I plan to  continue as a member of the Joplin community and help in whatever way I  can.

The latest version of Joplin includes a mechanism to upgrade the structure of a sync target. When you startup the app you will be asked to upgrade before being able to sync. Once you start the process, the app will briefly display an information screen, upgrade the sync target, and then restart the app. You’ll then be able to sync with the new sync target format. That first upgrade is quite simple as the goal for now is to put the mechanism in place and verify that it works well.

From a user perspective this feature doesn’t do anything visible, although it caused some issues, so one might wonder why it’s even there. This post is meant to clarify this.

The structure of the sync target hasn’t really changed since the day Joplin was released. It works well however it has some shortcomings that should be fixed eventually for sync to remain performant.

There are also various improvements that could be made but were not previously possible due to the lack of an upgrade mechanism. I have listed below the 5 main limitations or issues with the current sync process and how they could be fixed:

No upper limit on the number of items​

Joplin’s UI works well even with millions of notes, however the sync target will keep getting slower and slower as more files are added to it. File systems often have a limit to the number of files they can support in a directory. One user also has reached the limit of 150,000 items on OneDrive.

For now, this is not a big issue because most users don’t have millions of items, but as more web pages are being clipped (clipped pages often contain many small resources and images) and more note revisions are created (one note can have hundreds of revisions), this issue might start affecting more users.

One way to solve this issue would be to split the sync items into multiple directories. For example if we split the main directory into 100 sub-directories, it will be possible to have 15,000,000 OneDrive items instead of 150,000. Another way would be to support note archiving, as described below. How exactly we’ll handle this problem is still to be defined, but there are certainly ways.

Not possible to prioritise downloads​

Currently, when syncing, the items are downloaded in a random way. So it might download some notes, then some tags and notebooks, then back to downloading notes, etc. For small sync operations it doesn’t matter, but large ones, like when setting up a new device, it is very inefficient. For example, the app might download hundreds of note revisions or tags, but won’t display anything for a while because it won’t have downloaded notebooks or notes.

A simple improvement would be to group the items by type on the sync target. So all notebook items together, all tags together, etc. Doing so means when syncing we can first download the notebooks, then the notes, which means something will be displayed almost immediately in the app, allowing the user to start using it. Then later less important items like tags or note revisions will be downloaded.

End-to-end encryption is hard to setup​

Currently, the encryption settings is a property of the clients. What it means it that when you setup a new client, it doesn’t know whether the other clients use encryption or not. It’s going to guess more or less based on the data on the sync target. You can also force it to use encryption but this has drawbacks and often mean a new master key is going to be created, even though there might already be one on the sync target.

E2EE works well once it’s setup, but doing so can be tricky and possibly confusing - if you didn’t follow this guide to the letter, you might end up with multiple master keys, or sending decrypted notes to an encrypted target.

A way to solve this would be to make the E2EE settings a property of the sync target. Concretely there would be a file that tells if E2EE is enabled or not, and maybe some way to quickly get the master key. It would simplify setting up encryption a lot and make it more secure (because you won’t be able to send non-encrypted notes to an encrypted sync target). When you setup a new client, the client will know immediately if it’s an encrypted target or not and set the client accordingly.

Old notes that never change should be handled differently​

It would be more efficient to treat old notes differently by allowing the user to “archive” them. An archived note would be read-only. Then one idea could be to group all these archived notes into a ZIP file on the sync target. Doing so means that the initial sync would be much faster (instead of downloading hundred of small files, which is slow, it will download one large file, which is fast). It would also make the structure more scalable - you could keep several years of archived notes on the sync target while keeping sync fast and efficient.

The resource directory should be renamed​

The folder that contains file attachments is named “.resources” on the sync target. This causes troubles because certain platforms will hide directories that start with dot “.”, and perhaps they will be excluded from backup or skipped when moved somewhere else. Being able to upgrade the sync target means we can rename this folder to just “resources” instead.

Conclusion​

That’s obviously a lot of possible improvements and it won’t be done overnight, but having the sync upgrade mechanism in place means we can start considering these options. Some of these, such as renaming the “resources” dir are simpler and could be done relatively soon. Perhaps other more complex ones will be group within one sync target upgrade to minimise disruption. In any case, I hope this clarifies the reason for this recent sync upgrade and that it gives some ideas of what to expect in the future.

The design put the menu bar on the left, which I think makes sense, as it's consistent with the main screen UI. And I expect this bar will be the same colour as the main screen sidebar

For checkboxes Serj used a toggle button, which actually makes it easier to align all the labels on the left (a checkbox with a label on the left looks strange) so I might go with it.

Otherwise the screens are relatively similar but tidier. If you have any suggestion on what could be changed, feel free to let me know.

Synchronisation config

Synchronisation config (error messages)

Plugin config

Please either vote on the forum or let me know here what option you would prefer:

https://discourse.joplinapp.org/t/desktop-new-design-is-nearly-ready-please-cast-your-final-vote/9698

For those who haven't seen it, there's an ongoing poll on the forum to vote for the new colour scheme (Light Theme for now):

https://discourse.joplinapp.org/t/please-vote-for-the-new-light-theme-colour-scheme/9504

Please cast your vote if you haven't already, or add a comment here if you don't have a forum account.

I think it's nearly there as all the details have been ironed out now. If you notice any issue or have any suggestion though, feel free to let me know!

As usual your feedback is welcome, and just for info some of this is going to change. In particular what's mentioned in my own feedback:

Thanks to the mentor stipend we got from Google for GSoC, we've been able to hire a designer to improve the design of the desktop application. Serj is now at his second iteration and your feedback on it would be most welcome!

The latest pre-release is now available and includes 13 bug fixes and 9 various improvements and new features, among others:

Editable attachments

Files you attach to a note can now be edited. To do this, click on the attachment or, if it's an image, right-click on it and select open. The file will then be watched by the application and any change you make will be saved to Joplin, and synchronised.

New Markdown editor

A new Markdown editor (Code Mirror) is now included with Joplin. For now it is for beta testing only so you need to manually enable it in the options in "Note" => "Use CodeMirror as the code editor". The goal of this new editor is to address several of the issues that have affected the previous Markdown editor and that were either hard or impossible to fix, in particular:

• Support for spell checking. Note that it is not yet implemented in the new editor but it at least can be done now.
• Variable font size. The previous editor would not allow this, which would cause various issues.
• Search within the Markdown text. Previously it was only possible to searched with the note viewer but with this editor it should be possible to search within the Markdown text too.
• Improved support for emojis.
• Improved support for Asian languages and Russian.

If possible, please help test this new editor and report any issue in the forum! (or GitHub)

Manual ordering of notes

You can now manually order the notes within the notebook. For this to work, make sure you choose "Custom order" in the menu View => Sort Notes by

Support for system keychain on macOS and Windows

One of the issues mentioned in the security audit was that certain sensitive settings, like Nextcloud or encryption passwords were saved unencrypted in the Joplin profile. This new release will make use of the system keychain when it is available and move the sensitive settings to it. You don't need to do anything to make use of this feature, it is automatically enabled in this release.

Currently this is supported on macOS and Windows. It is disabled of course for the portable version, and is also not currently enabled for Linux due to a build issue and less consistent support than on macOS and Windows.

Support for system theme

The app can now auto-detect the system theme and switch to it automatically. This essentially adds support for system "dark mode", which are now common on most operating systems. You may choose a preferred "light" theme and "dark" theme in the option.

Now that the GSoC changes have been merged and the application made more stable following the rewrite of the note editor code, a new pre-release will be available soon.

It will include several important features, which I will describe into more details in following posts, but for information the main new features will be:

• Allow editing note attachments and syncing the changes

• Save sensitive settings such as passwords to the system keychain

• Allow changing the app appearance according to the system theme

• Allow manually ordering notes

• A new text editor, Code Mirror, will be available for beta-testing

The first phase of GSoC has ended and  the two students who will be working with the Joplin community in summer have been selected! So congratulation to @naviji  and @anjulalk  ! We’re glad to have you on board, and looking forward for the  improvements you’re going to make as part of your projects on,  respectively, the search engine and the keyboard shortcut editor! We’ll be in touch to give you more info on what happens next.

On our side, this is our first GSoC and we learnt quite a bit in the  process. We got feedback from the students and we’re definitely taking  it on board. One key point is that we didn’t expect Joplin to get that  much interest as this is a relatively new project, and as a result we  had trouble managing the number of proposals and pull requests we got.  We also quickly ran out of “Good first issues”, which means for students  coming a bit late it wasn’t clear what you could work on.

So next year, we’ll restrict a bit the number and the type of pull  requests each student can make. Ideally we’d prefer if you work on only  one or two medium-sized pull requests, rather than several small ones,  so that you can really focus on it and give your best work. Of course,  that makes it also more manageable for us as there will be less pull  requests to review. I wasn’t too happy with the way I was reviewing  sometimes, giving short and not very helpful comments at time, as I was  trying to get as many PRs done as possible. Instead it would be best to  do less but do it better.

Another point is that we should make it clear how many slots we’re  likely to get. We cannot know for sure, it’s up to Google, but we can at  least give an estimate. That way, you can decide whether it makes sense  to invest your time in the project, or if it would be best to pick a  different, less busy project.

In any case, this is a learning process for all, and we aim to improve over time.

Also a quick update on the number of pull requests - so far we have reviewed and processed 104 pull requests for GSoC (59 of which were merged) and there are still 32 pull requests that need to be reviewed and merged. So that's a lot of improvements and bug fixes on Joplin in the coming weeks.

Many thanks to all the students who joined us this year! We  definitely appreciate your time and contribution on this project,  whether it’s with your pull requests or via your participation on the  forum, and you’re of course welcome to give it another try next year, or  to stay around in the community.

Also many thanks to our mentors @PackElend, @bedwardly-down, @mic704b, @tessus, @CalebJohn, @rullzer for their help coordinating all this, writing the documentation and reviewing pull request and proposals!

Joplin encryption, and in particular the E2EE system used during synchronisation, was recently audited by Isaac Potoczny-Jones, CEO of Tozny and this is what he had to say:

I was looking through your encryption implementation for Joplin and I have a few comments and concerns. I don't see anything that I know is a critical issue, but there are a number of choices and weaknesses that I'd like to lend you some advice about.

OBC2​

I was looking through your encryption implementation for Joplin and I have a few comments and concerns. I don't see anything that I know is a critical issue, but there are a number of choices and weaknesses that I'd like to lend you some advice about.

OCB2, the chosen multi-block cipher mode has had some weaknesses identified in the last few years. I don't know this mode well since it's not a NIST-approved mode, but here's a paper on the topic. I get the impression it's not considered a good choice anymore. Source

We indeed had been notified about this issue by another cryptographer and had been preparing migration to the more secure CCM mode. Migration for this is now complete in all the Joplin clients and a migration tool has been added to the Encryption config screen of the desktop application. In particular you can perform two operations:

• Upgrade the master key: This will convert the master key encryption to CCM
• Re-encryption: With this tool, you can re-encrypt all your data using the new encryption method based on CCM. Please follow the instructions on this screen and note that this process can take quite a bit of time so it's better to plan for it and run it over night. It is not entirely clear how the OBC2 flaw can be exploited but it is best to upgrade your data as soon as possible.

Unnecessary key expansions​

I was looking through your encryption implementation for Joplin and I have a few comments and concerns. I don't see anything that I know is a critical issue, but there are a number of choices and weaknesses that I'd like to lend you some advice about.

OCB2, the chosen multi-block cipher mode has had some weaknesses identified in the last few years. I don't know this mode well since it's not a NIST-approved mode, but here's a paper on the topic. I get the impression it's not considered a good choice anymore. Source

Running key expansion on a random key: Your encrypt function uses either 1k or 10k rounds of key derivation. The goal of this is to reduce brute-force attacks against user-chosen passwords. This function appears to me to be used for both password-based key derivation (at 10k rounds) and bulk encryption of data from a randomly-generated "master key" (at 1k rounds). The bulk encryption does not need the password expansion since the key is randomly generated (presumably with a cryptographically strong generator). I suspect this could be a major performance issue on the bulk encryption of raw data, so if you're finding encryption slow, this is maybe why.

This is more a performance than a security issue. Indeed, the previous encryption method was using 1,000 key expansion iterations every time a note was encrypted, which is unnecessary since the master key is already secured with 10,000 iterations. As a result the encryption algorithm has been changed to perform only 100 iterations when encrypting notes, which should result in faster encryption and decryption on the desktop, mobile and CLI applications.

Unnecessary and potentially insecure master key checksum​

I was looking through your encryption implementation for Joplin and I have a few comments and concerns. I don't see anything that I know is a critical issue, but there are a number of choices and weaknesses that I'd like to lend you some advice about.

OCB2, the chosen multi-block cipher mode has had some weaknesses identified in the last few years. I don't know this mode well since it's not a NIST-approved mode, but here's a paper on the topic. I get the impression it's not considered a good choice anymore. Source

Running key expansion on a random key: Your encrypt function uses either 1k or 10k rounds of key derivation. The goal of this is to reduce brute-force attacks against user-chosen passwords. This function appears to me to be used for both password-based key derivation (at 10k rounds) and bulk encryption of data from a randomly-generated "master key" (at 1k rounds). The bulk encryption does not need the password expansion since the key is randomly generated (presumably with a cryptographically strong generator). I suspect this could be a major performance issue on the bulk encryption of raw data, so if you're finding encryption slow, this is maybe why.

You make and store a checksum of the master password with SHA256 in addition to encrypting it. I expect this is because you need a way to tell if the user's password is correct. I've never seen this done before, and it has me concerned, but I don't know for sure that it's an issue. Thought I'd mention it anyway. Source. At least with CCM mode (and I think with OCB2) it shouldn't successfully decrypt if you have the wrong password.

A checksum was previously stored with the master key to verify that it is valid. This could potentially weaken the security of the mater key since, as mentioned in Cryptography StackExchange link, "in the standard model of hash functions there isn't a requirement that hash outputs not have properties that leak information about the input". It was also unnecessary since the decryption algorithm in use would fail if the key is invalid, so the additional checksum was not needed.

This has also been addressed by the new master key upgrading tool. If you have performed the upgrade, the checksum will be gone from your master key.

Encrypting local secrets with a keychain service​

I was looking through your encryption implementation for Joplin and I have a few comments and concerns. I don't see anything that I know is a critical issue, but there are a number of choices and weaknesses that I'd like to lend you some advice about.

OCB2, the chosen multi-block cipher mode has had some weaknesses identified in the last few years. I don't know this mode well since it's not a NIST-approved mode, but here's a paper on the topic. I get the impression it's not considered a good choice anymore. Source

Running key expansion on a random key: Your encrypt function uses either 1k or 10k rounds of key derivation. The goal of this is to reduce brute-force attacks against user-chosen passwords. This function appears to me to be used for both password-based key derivation (at 10k rounds) and bulk encryption of data from a randomly-generated "master key" (at 1k rounds). The bulk encryption does not need the password expansion since the key is randomly generated (presumably with a cryptographically strong generator). I suspect this could be a major performance issue on the bulk encryption of raw data, so if you're finding encryption slow, this is maybe why.

You make and store a checksum of the master password with SHA256 in addition to encrypting it. I expect this is because you need a way to tell if the user's password is correct. I've never seen this done before, and it has me concerned, but I don't know for sure that it's an issue. Thought I'd mention it anyway. Source. At least with CCM mode (and I think with OCB2) it shouldn't successfully decrypt if you have the wrong password.

Now I did notice that you cache the plain text password in the database, which is a bit concerning, but I guess the security model of your encryption approach is that it happens during sync, not locally. The generally accepted approach [to store secrets] is to use a keychain service, which is available pretty much on all modern platforms.

Passwords are indeed cached locally, so that you don't have to input it again every time a note needs to be encrypted or decrypted for synchronisation. It is assumed that your local device is secure, which is why for now passwords were cached locally.

To improve security however, future versions of Joplin will use the system keychain whenever it is available. A pull request is in progress to add this feature.

To conclude I'd like to thank Isaac Potoczny-Jones for conducting this audit and revealing these potential security issues. Joplin is now much safer as a result.

The latest pre-release of Joplin (v1.0.194) includes a new WYSIWYG editor, a prototype for now, but a first step towards integrating this feature into Joplin.

WYSIWYG is probably the most requested feature in Joplin - it's the second most up-voted on GitHub, and one of the most viewed and commented on post in the forum.

Please note however that this feature is experimental at this stage - don't use it for important notes as you may lose the content of the note, or it might get corrupted.

If you are interested in this editor though it might make sense to use it for less important notes, so as to evaluate it and report bugs and issues you might find.

This is a technically challenging component because it needs to convert between Markdown and HTML, and vice-versa. Joplin already includes robust HTML-to-MD and MD-to-HTML conversion modules (battle tested respectively in the web clipper and the desktop/mobile client), and this new editor is based on this technology. It is possible however that there are various edge cases that I have not thought of.

Thus your support to test and validate (or invalidate) this idea would be very much appreciated! If it turns out it does not make sense technically to support this editor, for example if some bugs are critical and can't be solved, it might be removed at a later date, but hopefully all bugs will be fixable. Please report issues you might find on GitHub, on this post. In there, there's also a list of features that remains to be implemented.

At the moment, the feature is a bit hidden. To enable it, go into the menu View => Layout button sequence, and choose "Split / WYSIWYG". Then click on the Layout button to toggle between modes.

Missing features

Some features are missing, most notably the ability to insert plugin blocks such as Katex or Mermaid, so you would have to create them first in the split view. Once created, they can however be edited.

One issue to be aware of, one that cannot be easily fixed, is that some Markdown plugins are not supported by the editor. This is because once the Markdown is converted to HTML, and displayed in the WYSIWYG editor, it cannot be converted back to the original Markdown. Some plugins are supported, such as Katex, Fountain or Mermaid. But others are not, like the multi-md table. So if you open a note that contains a multi-md table in the WYSIWYG editor and save, the original multi-md Markdown will be lost, and you'll get back a plain Markdown table.

Again if you find any issue, please report it on GitHub: https://github.com/laurent22/joplin/issues/176

I haven't kept up with releases lately and thus the new one is quite big, it includes 8 new features, 3 security fixes, 19 improvements, and 29 bug fixes. Here's a summary of what to expect:

Mermaid diagram support

Mermaid was one of the most requested features, and it is finally here. The diagrams can be inserted using a fenced block, and all the diagrams supported by the library should be available, including Flow, Sequence, Gantt, Class, State and Pie diagrams.

More info in the Mermaid Markdown documentation

Word counter dialog

A dialog is now available to provide statistics about the current note. It includes line, word and character count:

To open it, click on the post-it toolbar icon.

Improved tag management

Also included are several improvement to tags, such as the possibility to add or remove tags from multiple notes, improved sorting of tags in certain contexts, and various other fixes.

Security fixes

Joplin having to deal with potentially sensitive data, it is build with privacy and security in mind. We also try to fix any reported security issue as quickly as possible.

This release in particular includes a fix to an XSS vulnerability, which could have allowed an attacker, via a targetted attack and a specially crafted note, to exfiltrate user data. As far as we are aware, this flaw had not been exploited yet.

Finally, the geolocation service on the desktop application was previously using an http service to get the user location. We now use instead an https URL, which will increase privacy.

Linux

It is often more difficult to keep up with Linux due to the wide variety of distributions, desktop environments, and the differences between them from one version to the next.

We however try to keep it stable, and regularly get fixes and updates from Linux users. This release includes support for the --no-sandbox flag, required to get the app starting on certain systems, and an optimisation to Nextcloud and WebDAV sync, which could previously be very slow, using persistent connections.

The update is already available as a pre-release on the GitHub release page, and should be available as a final release soon.

Good news, our Google Summer of Code 2020 application has been accepted!

Since we made the announcement back in November, we already had a few students submitted pull requests and getting themselves familiar with the codebase.

We hope some of them will work on the project ideas we've suggested, and develop some great features this summer!

Joplin is looking into joining Google Summer of Code next summer. The application period as organisation is expected to happen in the second half of January 2020. Until then Joplin hopes to have multiple active discussion and may even have some easy commits in regard to the application and potential projects.

For those who don’t know, GSoC is a summer internship sponsored by Google, where open source organisations get full-time students as interns (paid by Google) to help take care of tasks. It’s a huge boon to many open source projects, allowing potentially some impressive progress to take place, and therefore many organisations try to qualify.

In order to apply, we'd need:

• A list of good task suggestions for students. These tasks need to be things that can be realistically done by someone working full-time over a single summer. Students can suggest other tasks, but we are going to provide some suggestions.
• People volunteering to mentor a student. Mentoring requires continuous communication and contact with the student, as well as responding to requests and questions. I’ve mentored in the past, and it’s a fun experience.

Fell free to make a suggestion or offer support by creating topics in the Features category of the forum and tagging them by #GSoC and #2020, if it is directly related to the upcoming coding season. More details on how to contribute will be published soon.

In general, Google wants to know that its money is put to good use, so we, as the Joplin community, need to show active involvement in this, leading to a solid schedule of desired deliverables during the coding phase.

The GSoC application is managed by @PackElend. He is an open source enthusiast with a big believe in a fair economy. He has recognised that Joplin has the potential to become one of the best note taking apps, and he sees the GSoC has a great opportunity to bring certain essential features to Joplin. PackElend mentored students in the past for another project and thus is aware of the pitfalls. He would appreciate if he could get support in giving the documentation the final touch.

After much discussion and votes and new logo and icon for Joplin has finally been decided:

In the end, it is an icon relatively similar to the previous one but with a unique style for the "J", which gives it a distinctive look.

Perhaps that's the best way - evolving and cleaning up the icon rather than radically changing it. Another advantage of this icon is that it does not represent any specific object (it's not a note, or notebook), so it does not restrict the scope of the project, which as it grows, is becoming more than just a tool to take notes.

Finally, this icon scales well at different sizes, including down to 16x16 pixels which we need for tray icons. It also works well inside circles (for Android) and square shapes.

Over the next few weeks, the icon and logo will be updated in the various apps and websites. That will give an opportunity to refresh the icons used throughout the apps, as several of them have incorrect dimensions, in particular on desktop and Android.

For information, this was the final tally, with Patreon and forum votes combined, with more weight (2 points) given to the first choice:

A 30

B 45

C 115

D 135

E 61

Many thanks to everyone who's contributed to the votes and discussion!

We got lots of great contributions for Hacktoberfest 2019, including:

• 48 pull requests opened
• 39 pull requests merged

This year, one small issue is that we got 11 "spam" contributions, as in pull requests that are created only as a way to get a the Hacktoberfest T-shirt. It's not too many, thankfully, but it still makes us lose time as we need to review the code, and sometimes ask questions, to which we get no answer, etc.

On the other hand, the total number of valid pull requests is high, at 48 it's nearly twice as many as last year (we got 26 in 2018).  Many of these are great improvements to Joplin and they will be part of the coming release.

Thanks a lot to all the contributors! Also many thanks to our admins, tessus, for his valuable help reviewing and commenting on many pull requests, and foxmask for organising the event.

The quest for a new Joplin icon continue - first many thanks for the votes and feedback! It definitely helped getting a better sense of what would make a great icon.

Taking all this into account, the remaining candidates are the 5 following icons. The first three were the top voted icons, and the following two are based on the feedback here and on the forum.

Again that would be great if you could vote for your top 2 icons. I expect the winner among these will be the next Joplin icon. Also of course general feedback is welcome too!

The next version of Joplin will feature support for chemical equations using mhchem for Katex.

For example this mhchem syntax will be rendered as below in Joplin:

$\ce{CO2 + C -> 2 CO}$

///BLOCK_QUOTE_END//////BLOCK_QUOTE_START///

$C_p[\ce{H2O(l)}] = \pu{75.3 J // mol K}$

///BLOCK_QUOTE_END//////BLOCK_QUOTE_START///

$\ce{Hg^2+ ->[I-] HgI2 ->[I-][Hg^{II}I4]^2-}$

A word form @foxmask, our community manager!

Hacktoberfest is back this year again for our great pleasure ^^

here are the rules to participate:

To qualify for the official limited edition Hacktoberfest shirt, you must register and make four pull requests (PRs) between October 1-31 (in any time zone). PRs can be made to any public repo on GitHub, not only the ones with issues labeled Hacktoberfest. This year, the first 50,000 participants who successfully complete the challenge will earn a T-shirt.

To participate go to https://hacktoberfest.digitalocean.com/, log in (with you GitHub account) and you are ready to get in.

Next, go dive into the Joplin issues list labelled "Hacktoberfest".

Start hacking, submit the PR from the 1st of October, not before.

We hope you will enjoy that event this year again like the previous one  🎃 🎉

PS: the 4 Pull Request don’t have to be done only on Joplin project, those can be done on any FOSS projects. Even PR for issue not tagged as 'hacktoberfest'

The Joplin icon is going to change soon. The one we have now is something I put together quickly, not knowing if the project would interest someone, so I didn't want to spend too much time on it. Now that the project is more mature, it makes sense to start improving the visuals - first the icon, then the logo font, the website and finally the app UI (although these have already been improved little by little over the past year).

Before picking an icon, I'd be interested to hear about your feedback and whether you have a preference among those below. They all share the same idea - which is something that looks like a note, and that contains a "J" too.

Feedback is welcome! And if you have a preference please answer this post and put your top 2 or 3 icons in your post and we'll do a tally in a few days.

Icon A

Icon B

Icon C

Icon D

Icon E

Icon F

Icon G

Icon H

Fountain is markup language for screenwriting. Similar to Markdown, it is a lightweight markup format, which allows editing screenplays in plain text.

The desktop and mobile Joplin applications now support Fountain, allowing you to write and read your screenplays on your computer or on the go. To add a Fountain screenplay to a note simply wrap it into a fenced block, with the "fountain" identifier. For example:

\*\*FADE IN:\*\*

A RIVER.

We're underwater, watching a fat catfish swim along.  

For example, here is Big Fish on mobile:

and on desktop:

In Joplin desktop, it has been possible to customise the appearance of your notes using CSS for quite some time.

An issue however is that it is difficult to know what CSS to write and how to select specific elements with CSS. The development tools that were just added allow figuring this out. They are available under the menu Help > Toggle development tools.

Then, from the "Elements" tab, it is possible to select an element and view the corresponding HTML as well as styles. It is also possible to modify the style in real time and view the changes before adding them to userstyle.css.

One issue that came up frequently in the forum is that Joplin's data can be very large, especially when the note collection includes many attachments (images, PDFs, etc.). This happens in particular when using the web clipper a lot, as each web page usually has many images included.

The recent versions of Joplin (Desktop, mobile and CLI) attempt to mitigate this issue by providing an option to change how attachments are downloaded during synchronisation.

The default option is to download all the attachments, all the time, so that the data is available even when the device is offline. However, more importantly, there's now the option to download the attachments manually, by clicking on it, or automatically, in which case the attachments are downloaded only when a note is opened.

These changes should help saving disk space and network bandwidth, especially on mobile.

The latest versions of Joplin adds support for note history. The applications (desktop, mobile and CLI) now preserve previous versions of the notes, so you can inspect or restore them later on as needed.

A common complain with many sync-based note taking apps is that they work in an opaque way - sometimes notes are changed or they disappear and it's not clear why - it could be a user error, or some bug, but regardless it makes it hard to trust the app with thousands of notes. So this feature give transparency over what's happening - if some note seems to be gone or changed when it shouldn't, the redundant data allows investigating the issue and restoring content.

Another medium term goal is to allow the implementation of a recycle bin. Behind the scene, this is essentially already done since whenever a note is deleted, a final revision of that note is preserved. What's missing is a user interface (i.e. the recycle bin) to view these deleted notes.

How does it work?​

All the apps save a version of the modified notes every 10 minutes. These revisions are then synced across all the devices so if you're looking for a particular version of a note that was made on mobile, you can later find that version on the desktop app too.

How to view the history of a note?​

While all the apps save revisions, currently only the desktop one allow viewing these revisions.

To do so, click on the Information icon in the toolbar, then select "Previous version of this note".

The next screen will show the latest version of the note. You can then choose to view a different version, if any, or to restore one of them.

To restore a note, simply click on the "Restore" button. The old version of the note will be copied in a folder called "Restored Notes". The current version of the note will not be replaced or modified.

How to configure the note history feature?​

Additional options are available in the "Note History" section of the configuration screen. It is possible to enable/disable the note history feature. It is also possible to specify for how long the history of a note should be kept (by default, for 90 days).

IMPORTANT: Please note that since all the revisions are synced across all devices, it means these settings are kind of global. So for example, if on one device you set it to keep revisions for 30 days, and on another to 100 days, the revisions older than 30 days will be deleted, and then this deletion will be synced. So in practice it means revisions are kept for whatever is the minimum number of days as set on any of the devices. In that particular case, the 100 days setting will be essentially ignored, and only the 30 days one will apply.

Exactly one year ago, on 24 April 2018, the Joplin forum was created as a result of this post on GitHub. Before this, the only way to discuss the project was indeed on the GitHub bug tracker, which is not ideal for general discussion about features, development and so on.

After looking at various options, eventually we settled on Discourse, which provides a nice clean UI, works well on mobile, and is easy to manage. Even better, the Discourse team was kind enough to host the project for us for free, as part of their Free hosting program for open source projects. Not having to manage or pay for the server is great, and it means more time can be spent developing the application.

On the opening day, there was only three users - me, foxmask and zblesk, joined a few days later by tessus, merlinuwe, jhf2442, sciurius and many others. Today there are 811 users, 6700 posts, about 15 new posts created each day, and about 2000 pageviews each day.

The forum has been very useful to discuss features and development, to provide support and news, and to organise events such as Hacktoberfest. It also serves as a knowledge base (via the search function) to provide solutions regarding various Joplin issues.

Of course the forum has also been great to develop the community around the Joplin project, and hopefully will keep serving us well for the years to come!

The latest release includes two relatively important new features:

The first one, is the addition of several Markdown plugins that enable new features: for example it's now possible to add a table of contents to your notes, to enable footnotes, or to render various text decorations, such as superscript, subscript, highlighting, etc. This was all made possible thanks to the efforts of Caleb John.

The second major new feature is the addition of the Goto Anything dialog. Press Ctrl+P or Cmd+P and type the title of a note to jump directly to it. You can also type # followed by a tag or @ followed by a notebook title. The feature was largely inspired by the cool Sublime Text Goto Anything feature.

The original search engine in Joplin was pretty limited - it would search for your exact query and that is it. For example if you search for "recipe cake" it would return results that contain exactly this word in this order and nothing else - it would not return "apple cake recipe" or "recipe for birthday cake", thus forcing you to try various queries.

The last versions of Joplin include a new search engine that provides much better results, and also allow better specifying search queries.

The search engine indexes in real time the content of the notes, thus it can give back results very fast. It is also built on top of SQLite FTS and thus support all its queries. Unlike the previous search engine, the new one also sorts the results by relevance.

The first iteration of this new search engine was a bit limited when it comes to non-English text. For example, for searching text that contains accents or non-alphabetical characters. So in the last update, better support for this was also added - accentuated and non-accentuated characters are treated in the same way, and languages like Russian, Chinese, Japanese or Korean can be searched easily.

This search engine is still new so it is likely to change over time. For example, ordering the results by relevance is a bit experimental, and some edge cases might not work for non-English language queries. If you notice any issue, feel free to report it on the forum or GitHub. The new search engine is in use in both the mobile and desktop application.

Joplin is now featured on PrivacyTools.io, a site dedicated to providing knowledge and tools to protect people's privacy against global mass surveillance. The app was kindly submitted by Mats Estensen on GitHub and accepted soon after.

Since day one the Joplin project has indeed been concerned with privacy - offering End To End Encryption and supporting open standards, including WebDAV for synchronisation. Setting up Joplin synchronisation can be more complicated than other existing note applications, but the advantage is that once it is done you 100% own the data and even the infrastructure if you use Nextcloud on your own server.

The applications do not track users, and of course there is not and will never be ads. It also makes very few web requests (outside of synchronisation). In fact only two requests are made, and both can be disabled in the options:

• One for geolocation tagging, to associate a latitude and longitude with a note.

• One for the auto-update checks. It makes a request to GitHub to check if a new version has been released.

This endorsement by PrivacyTools is great news for the project. It means more users, and that our efforts to create a privacy-respecting tool are going in the right direction.

Hacktoberfest has now ended - many thanks to all those who have contributed. Some of the pull requests are not merged yet but they will be soon. For information, this is the number of pull requests per month on the project, so there was approximately a 30% increase in October:

Oct - 26

Sep - 20

Aug - 8

Jul - 3

Jun - 4

May - 18

Again many thanks to all those who have submitted a pull request, your efforts to improve the project are much appreciated!

The Hacktoberfest event has started - it allows you to contribute to Joplin and, at the end of the month, after having done 5 PR, you'll earn a limited edition T-shirt.

To participate, go on https://hacktoberfest.digitalocean.com/ log in (with you github account) and you are ready to get in.

Next, go dive into the Joplin issues list labelled "Hacktoberfest"

We hope you will enjoy that event by contributing to the project which is a nice moment of sharing good vibe 🎃 🎉

PS: the 5 Pull Request don't have to be done only on Joplin project, those can be done on any FOSS projects.

Reliability and stability is an important feature of Joplin as the application can potentially manage thousands of notes spanning many years (My oldest note, imported from another software, is from October 1999!). A stable interface without too many glitches also makes for a more pleasant user experience. For these reasons, bug fixes are always given high priority in this project, and are usually worked on before any new feature is added. The latest release for instance pretty much only contains bug fixes - eight of them, including one security fix.

Joplin is not bug free yet, there are still a few issues here and there, that sometimes depend on the user's hardware or configuration, and others that are hard to replicate or fix, but the app is getting there - more stable with each new release.

More information about this release and download link in the changelog - https://joplinapp.org/help/about/changelog/desktop

The new desktop version of Joplin for Windows, macOS and Linux features a new dialog box to view and edit the note properties, such as the updated date, created date, source URL or even location. It's a small change but it can be useful. This dialog can be accessed by clicking on the Information icon in the toolbar.

As usual this release also includes various bug fixes and improvements. More information on the changelog: https://joplinapp.org/help/about/changelog/desktop

The iOS version for iPhone, iPad and iPod sometimes lags behind the Android one due to the App Store release process being more complex. However it eventually catches up, as is the case with the latest release, which includes all the features and bug fixes from the past few months.

In particular a feature that's been needed for a while - the ability to open resources (eg. PDF files or other attachments) in external viewers. That means all that's available in desktop - notes and attachments - is now also fully available on mobile, making the app much more useful. In this release there are also quite a few optimisations to the sync process so in some cases it should be faster, as well as better support for WebDAV. Finally there are various small fixes and improvements, such as support for SVG vector graphics, improved math formula support, etc.

All these improvements are also found in the recently released macOS, Windows, Linux and Android versions.

One of the most requested feature, the Web Clipper, is now available on the Firefox and Chrome store. It is possible to save a whole web page, or a simplified version of it, or a screenshot directly from the browser to Joplin. Like the rest of Joplin, the HTML page will be converted to Markdown, which means it can be easily edited and read even without a special viewer, and, since it's plain text, it also makes it easier to search and share the content.

Have a look at the Web Clipper documentation for more information.