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+title: Selfhosted Crossplatform Notes with Gitjournal
+date: April 23, 2021 20:07
+---
+<h3>The problem</h3>
+<p>
+The "app market" for mobile phones is a very sad place. I wish it had followed
+the direction of Linux distributions, with their repositories containing all the
+useful software tools you'd ever need, free and open source. Instead we have a
+duopoly of app stores that are both filled with "app developers" trying to make
+a buck instead of tools that people actually want.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As such, when I find a phone application that is actually built for usefulness,
+follows decent design principles, and allows for a personalized workflow, I
+think it's necessary to give it a shoutout.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a long time I've wanted a digital note taking solution that would allow me
+to synchronize notes across multiple devices. I wouldn't want to use Evernote or
+any other proprietary, centralized service. Selfhosting something like Nextcloud
+just for the purpose of notes feels like shooting a fly with a cannon. If I were
+limited to computers, it would be a no-brainer to just keep the notes in a git
+repo (like I do with my <a href='<%= path_to "blog_cheatsheets" %>'>command line
+cheatsheets</a>). How do we synchronize with a phone though?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Enter gitjournal.
+</p>
+
+<h3>Enter gitjournal</h3>
+<p>
+<a href='https://gitjournal.io/'>Gitjournal</a> essentially provides a git
+client on your phone whose design is centered around note taking. I won't go
+into all the features and design details, but it's got everything I need for
+simple note taking:
+
+<ul>
+    <li>Edit notes in markdown</li>
+    <li>Todo list mode</li>
+    <li>Organize notes in a directory structure</li>
+</ul>
+
+And the killer feature is that you also provide a link and login credentials for
+an external git repo. Every edit to the notes is committed and eventually pushed
+to that repo. Any changes that appear in the repo will be pulled to your device.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And of course the git repository can be hosted anywhere. If you trust your
+forge with your personal notes, be it GitHub, GitLab, sourcehut, or anywhere
+else, your forge is now also your note synchronization hub. Personally, I host
+my notes on my VPS.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Computer side, I've written a short script that takes care of git operations and
+some of the metadata in gitjournal notes, and lets me select a note to edit with
+<code>fzf</code>. But even manually navigating to notes and handling git
+operations wouldn't be a bad experience.
+</p>
+
+<h3>Caveats</h3>
+<p>
+The app, in the end, is made for profit. In particular, on the Apple App Store
+even the basic version costs money (it's free on Android). There are some
+additional features that are further paywalled. This includes tagging and
+multiple repositories, both of which would be nice to haves for me, but their
+lack is not a deal breaker in my case. However, the app is open source (I think
+including the "pro" features) and AGPL'd so if you know how to build it for your
+phone, it's yours.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I haven't had to deal with merge conflicts in the app. I'm not sure how they're
+handled. I'm not too worried though, if anything weird does happen, I'm sure
+I'll be able to fix it computer-side. Nothing a little force pushing to master
+can't solve.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+You might have to be careful with some symbols in note titles that are treated
+as special symbols by your OS (e.g. ~, !, [, ], etc.). The app won't complain
+about them, they might cause problems on your computer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As mentioned, the app commits every change you make to your notes. As such, I
+prefer to use it for jotting down ideas, archiving links, writing down
+interesting thoughts I have, long term todos  &mdash; in other words, more
+persistent notes. For daily todo or shopping lists I use a different app. This
+isn't a huge problem since I don't really need those things synchronized across
+devices. I think in my ideal world, gitjournal would have "scratch notes" that
+are not tracked in the git repo, so that I can keep all these things in one app
+without littering git history with "buy eggs" every week.
+</p>