a joplin alternative

shizumu is a joplin alternative for people who kept the open source part and got tired of the filing part.

how the two behave

joplin is a notebook app: markdown notes in notebooks, tags, plugins, and sync you point at your own storage. it is open source and it keeps your data yours, which is why people choose it. the daily work is still the notebook's work, deciding where a note goes and keeping the tree tidy.

shizumu keeps the parts that made you pick joplin and drops the tree. the client is apache-2.0 and the relay agpl-3.0-or-later, the writing is a database on your device, sync is optional and end-to-end encrypted, and you can run the relay yourself. what it does not have is a notebook to choose before you write.

what you keep, and what you leave behind

joplin exports markdown and its own jex archive, so the words move. the notebooks and the plugin setup do not, because there is nothing here to import them into. that is the honest trade in any joplin alternative: fewer places to put things, and one less decision before the first sentence.

what a page does instead

every day starts on an empty page. you write to think, you pin what matters, and a page that belongs to a longer thread goes on a trail. the pins on that trail come back onto the page next time you open it, which is the part a notebook never does on its own. everything else stays in memory, searchable.

sync, without hosting a server first

joplin asks you to bring your own storage before sync works. shizumu syncs through a relay that holds only sealed pages, free for two devices, and you can run that relay yourself when you would rather: the deploy guide, and what the relay can and cannot see.

try before you move

the app runs in your browser with a few weeks of writing already in it: try it. also worth a look: an open source journaling app and a standard notes alternative.

try it in your browser download