Learn How To… Edit And Sync Notes Securely

Your guide Nick Peers says… “Joplin is the perfect note-taking tool. Get started with this powerful and completely free app”

- Nick Peers

We’ve spent a long time trying to find the perfect notetaking service, and we’ve finally struck gold in the form of Joplin. It’s free and open source, plus works across all major desktop and mobile platforms – including Android and iOS – so you can access and update your notes from anywhere. When it comes to syncing notes, you’re fully in control: you choose which cloud platform to use and can optionally encrypt your notes to provide an extra layer of protection.

You can also add note-clipping capabilities to your Firefox or Chrome web browser. Last, but not least, Joplin is perfect whether you want to record quick text-based notes or emulate the rich features found in Evernote, from fully styled text to support for images and file attachments. Joplin is everything you ever wanted in a note-taking tool – read on to start using it.

1 Install Joplin

Open your browser, go to https://joplinapp.org – scroll down the page for the download link. The ‘Get it on Windows’ link is a traditional installer or you can click on the ‘Portable version’ link for a single self-contained file (JoplinPortable.exe). If installing, you can choose to install it for just yourself or other users of your PC too. Once installed, let Joplin launch.

2 Review user interface

The annotation reveals how Joplin organises your notes using a series of notebooks, with keyword tags available to help produce filtered views. Start by clicking the ‘New notebook’ button to store your first related set of notes in. Give it a suitable name and click OK. If you need another layer of organisation, you can create notebooks to nest inside other notebooks too.

3 Create your first note