Looking for a privacy-respecting collaborative notes app that my partner and I can use together. We’ve been on the lookout for a platform that allows us to share notes, ideas, and to-do lists while prioritizing privacy and security.
Doesn’t look like Standard Notes is capable of that. Any experience with Joplin in that regard? Or anything else?
My wife and I use Obsidian and share it with each other through SyncTrayzor. I’m sure there are other options, but for us, the power and ease of use of Obsidian over Joplin and Standard Notes makes it worth it.
Are we to assume android based?
If not, Apple notes works perfectly for that. And if you have ADP enabled, it’s E2EE.
Maybe you can also explain why Standard Notes doesn’t meet your needs so we have more information?
For the site recommendations, Joplin does have an in-built collaboration feature if you choose to host the notebook with them or self-host their server software (See Sharing a notebook with Joplin Cloud | Joplin). I’m not certain, but I do suspect that you would need to individually pay for two subscriptions to their service to be able to make use of this (one for you, one for your partner).
For off-site recommendations, Obsidian has shared vaults, if you’re willing to pay for two subscriptions as well to their official sync service. Obsidian is closed-source, but the sync service is end-to-end encrypted, and they claim that they don’t collect telemetry at all. For what it’s worth, I haven’t seen anything that casts doubt on them here.
It also stores your notes purely as plain markdown in a folder of your choosing, so as another commenter said, you could avoid paying for their subscription service and just set up an external syncing solution like Syncthing.
Lastly, I will say that if you’re okay with sharing all your notes with your partner, then you can just share an account with them. You’d be able to use Standard Notes or Notesnook this way (also works with Obsidian and Joplin). There is the caveat that you can’t edit notes at the same time, but I’m not sure if the official collaboration features of Obsidian and Joplin can handle that either.
If you dont mind using web based solutions, I’d recommend cryptpad.fr , the flagship instance of cryptpad. I use it for groery lists, bookkeeping and travel planning with my family and friends.
If you only need basic note taking feature then Skiff would work too.
However if you want an application that actually SYNC the note file between devices and allow collaboration in real time, I have no idea.