SiYuan - Privacy-first Notebook

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1

About

A privacy-first, self-hosted, fully open source personal knowledge management software, written in typescript and golang.

Features

block editing, flashcards and database, bidirectional link, list outline and sync e2e

Site: SiYuan - Privacy-first personal knowledge management system that supports Markdown, block-level ref, and bidirectional links

Github: GitHub - siyuan-note/siyuan: A privacy-first, self-hosted, fully open source personal knowledge management software, written in typescript and golang.

Privacy Policy: Privacy Policy - SiYuan - Privacy-first personal knowledge management system that supports Markdown, block-level ref, and bidirectional links

Forum: https://liuyun.io/

Criteria:

  • Clients must be open source. :white_check_mark:
  • Any cloud sync functionality must be E2EE. :interrobang:
  • Must support exporting documents into a standard format. :white_check_mark:

Best Case

  • Local backup/sync functionality should support encryption. :interrobang:
  • Cloud-based platforms should support document sharing. :interrobang:

I found this app, I want to use it, but first I want to know what you think, if it really respects privacy, is it safe, etc.

Its style strikes me as something between Joplin, Obsidian and Zettlr.

What’s your opinion?

Zettlr discuss: Zettlr - Local Notebooks

2

If encryption is not mentionned, then it’s not available. Plus, Nextcloud is already recommended in the Productivity Section

3

It’s for the notebook section, not the productivity section.
https://www.privacyguides.org/en/notebooks/#local-notebooks

I just copied the information from the website.

Maybe you missed a post and that’s the one you were going to comment on?

In all cases and posts, Nextcloud is recommended for self-hosting and I am unable to do this.
Furthermore, a quick search on the forum indicates the various problems that exist with Nextcloud self-hosting, apart from the broken E2EE itself reported in the recommendation.

https://www.privacyguides.org/en/productivity/#nextcloud

And so on.

English is not my native language and I’m using a translation tool. Forgive anything.

4

My point is the notebook you mention doesn’t have encryption, so it can’t be in the notebook section. And NextCloud, which is not encrypted, is already in the productivity section, so there is no need for another app there.

5

I’m not sure what website you’re looking at, as one of the first things on the page is E2EE for sync. And the impression I get from the app is that files are stored locally, so encryption isn’t strictly necessary for privacy when files aren’t kept in the cloud. This app is more like Obsidian or Logseq than Nextcloud.

I have yet to try this out, but I think it’s worth looking into.

6

The company is based in China and the privacy policy is very brief.

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