I spent several years looking for the perfect selfhosted solution to this, but ultimately I realized an offline solution was just going to be better. So I started using Obsidian which is as simple or complex as you want with no paywall.

Some of the self hosted solutions I’ve tried were:

• Memos
• Blinko

You might want to list the platform you want to use it on. I'm assuming that you're wanting to access this on a smartphone of some sort?

I use Logseq with ToDoList plugin to handle task list. Logseq is similar to obsidian but open-source. And to syncronize notes among devices, I use syncthing. No need to selfhost.

I use Tasks.org with caldav (Radicale) on android and thunderbird on pc, would that work?

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.tasks

I see tasks.org supports etesync, which encrypts data. I have never used it though

Triliumnext can do everything you want. Its pretty damn powerful

I use notesnook but I don't self host, just the app locally. It has an option to insert a task list into the note, and that has drag and drop reordering. It also encrypts at rest, and has text search. Hope that helps your decision.

Hi quaff!

The app I use for this purpose is called Notally, on android. It supports reordering the checkboxes, but it doesn't do find in page or sync to web (although it can do backup /restore -- I sync the folder with nextcloud and I can access the text files)

That said if you try it, you might love how simple it is and use it for something!

https://f-droid.org/packages/com.omgodse.notally

Have you considered Kanban apps? All of them should support A+C. I've used Wekan and Kanboard. Hope this helps your searching!

Not sure of your specific needs, but I feel that self hosting (i.e. setting up a proper server) is unnecessary. Just pick a local first program and use it with syncthing.

The usual trio (which may be overkill) are Obsidian (admittedly not open source), Trillium, and logseq.

What I want is being able to hand draw something quickly in my notes, what's the app that has text and drawings?

Obsidian and good ol' paper and pen. (or epaper). The paper I use is on bullet jpurnal style.

I self-host Notesnook and found it easy to set up. Been using it as my main note-taking app for years now and I'm really happy with it.

Emacs and org-mode.

it might be worth watching this PR for memos, which adds encryption at rest. I can't vouch for it, as I didn't read the code but I do use memos and might consider this if it's merged.

https://github.com/usememos/memos/pull/5130

This is not E2EE, but I don't think E2EE is that important if you're hosting your own data. And clients can use TLS for encryption in transit.

I use Workflowy. Partner and I replaced G Keep with it. It can do A and maybe C.

Joplin and Obsidian.

code editors might have the features you want, and its easy to repurpose a code editor into a notes app.

sync a folder between your devices (syncthing is great for this) and put markdown text files in it. I like to call this folder "Memo" since its like writing letters to myself.

edit the markdown using VS Code (desktop) or Carbon (android). I haven't tested whether Carbon can do this, but I know in VS Code, you can reorder a list with keyboard shortcuts.

click anywhere on a line of text, then hold Alt and press Up arrow, and the text will swap places with the line above it.

edit: Syncthing and Carbon are open source. VS Code has some proprietary code added by Microsoft, but none of it is relevant to your use case, so you may prefer the fork called Codium.

One thing I've noticed with note apps is that "simple" and "private" seem surprisingly difficult to get together.

A lot of apps are simple but cloud-dependent, while the local-first ones often become much more complicated than what I actually want from a notes app.

I'd honestly take a boring notes app that just does the basics well over another "second brain" system with 50 features.

How about AnyType? It matches your requirements.

Anytype is awesome!

Every now and then this question comes up. It's a timeless software engineering conundrum. Kind of like how med students might start to think they have all kinds of diseases and conditions because they're learning all these symptoms.

Software engineers, especially new ones, tend to be heavily biased toward applying technical solutions to non-technical problems. Most never actually grow out of this.

I'll advise what I advise every time someone approaches me or one of my peer groups with this very question:

Get yourself a notebook and a pen.

I'm dead serious, not trolling, and not some kind of technophobe zealot.

When it comes down to it, if you let go of what you think you need in a to-do list app, you'll find that what you actually need is much simpler.

Notebooks are e2e encrypted. Self hosted. Offline. As ephemeral as you like. Indexable for search. Versatile. Take a picture of a page if you really want to. OCR it if you need to.

Pen and paper.