Get started with Joplin

What you get out of this

Notes in a company end up everywhere. Meeting decisions in a chat, the supplier's price in a text message, the idea from the coffee break on the back of a receipt. When you need to work out the quote or write the budget, half of it is gone, and the other half is on a phone that someone has replaced.

Joplin gathers it in one place. Notes in notebooks, searchable, on computer and phone, and with your own files at the bottom instead of an account with someone who can shut down the service. The program is free and open source, and it is available for Windows, Linux, macOS, Android and iOS.

The notes are written in Markdown, that is, plain text with a few simple characters for headings and lists. It sounds technical and it is not: you write as usual and see the result right next to it. The gain is that the text can be read in any program if you want to access it in ten years.

Before you start

• A computer with Windows or Linux Mint, and preferably the phones with later versions.
• A decision about where the notes will be synced. Joplin can run on a single computer without sync, but then you can only reach the notes from there. Read the section about sync before you choose.
• About half an hour for installation and setup, and ten minutes more for the phone.
• A password you can remember and that is not the same as any other, if you are going to turn on encryption.

Install on Windows

Download Joplin-Setup-VERSION.exe from joplinapp.org or from the project's releases page on GitHub, and run the file. The installation does not ask anything unusual and places the program under your own user, so you do not need to be an administrator.

If you still cannot install anything on the computer, JoplinPortable.exe is available on the same page. It starts directly from a USB stick and places its files next to itself instead of in Windows. Handy on a borrowed computer, worse as the only copy of your notes, so turn on sync if you run it that way.

Install on Linux Mint

The project has its own installation script, and that is the route they point to themselves. Open Terminal and run:

wget -O - https://raw.githubusercontent.com/laurent22/joplin/dev/Joplin_install_and_update.sh | bash

The script downloads the latest version, puts it in the .joplin folder in your home directory and creates an icon in the menu. Running the same command again updates the program instead of installing it twice.

The command fetches a file and runs it. It is worth understanding what you are doing and not doing it with just any address, but here the file comes from the project's own repository and it is the method their own documentation specifies.

If you would rather avoid the terminal, Joplin is available on Flathub, and Mint has Flathub preconfigured in the Software Manager. In Terminal you write this:

flatpak install flathub net.cozic.joplin_desktop

Joplin is not in Mint's own repositories, so sudo apt install joplin gives you nothing. Choose the script or Flatpak, not both.

Set up the notebooks first

Five minutes of structure at the start saves a whole evening later. Create notebooks with the New notebook button at the bottom left, and stick to a few:

• Meetings, one note per meeting with the date in the heading.
• Finance, prices, quotes and what things actually cost.
• Contacts, who you talked to and what was said.
• The business plan, the raw text before it moves to a document.

Use tags for anything that cuts across, for example mässan or leverantör. A note can sit in one notebook and have three tags at the same time, and the search box at the top left still finds everything no matter where it is.

Write the date in the heading of meetings, in the form 2026-02-14 möte med leverantören. Then the list sorts itself and you do not have to search.

Sync, and the choice you need to make

Sync is what makes Joplin useful for a company and not just for one person. Open Tools, then Options and Synchronization, and choose a target in the list.

The project's own documentation mentions Nextcloud, Dropbox, OneDrive and their own paid service Joplin Cloud, among others. The list in the program is longer than that, but those four cover what you can reasonably have access to. Dropbox and OneDrive are the easiest: you log in, approve, and then it takes care of itself. If you already have your own file storage, Nextcloud is the choice that keeps everything with you.

Important to understand: against Nextcloud, Dropbox or OneDrive, Joplin syncs an entire notebook collection, not individual notebooks (Joplin Cloud and Joplin Server can share individual notebooks, but those are other solutions). If everyone in the company connects to the same sync target, everyone sees everything, and everyone also needs to know and enter the same master password if you encrypt. If someone wants private notes, they should not be in the same collection.

End-to-end encryption is available under the same settings, under Encryption. If you turn it on, the notes are encrypted before they leave the computer, and then not even the service you sync against can read them. The price is that the password cannot be recovered. If you lose it, the notes are gone, for real, and no one can help you. Write it down where the company stores passwords, for example in KeePassXC.

Turn on sync on one computer, let it finish, and only then connect the next one. Two computers that sync an empty collection at the same time can create duplicates that you have to clean up by hand.

Web Clipper, the thing that makes you actually use the program

Web Clipper is an extension for Firefox and Chrome that saves a web page directly into Joplin. You find the supplier's product page, click the icon, choose a notebook, and the page stays even when the supplier changes it.

It is turned on in two steps. In Joplin: Tools, Options, Web Clipper, and enable the service. In the browser: install the extension from Firefox or Chrome and connect it. Joplin must be running on the computer for the extension to have anyone to talk to.

Rather save one page too many than too few. Prices, terms and contact details change, and a bank or a customer who asks where the figure comes from will not settle for it having been on the web sometime last year.

How you know it worked

• Joplin starts and you have at least three notebooks with real content.
• The search box finds a word you know is in a note.
• The sync button runs through without an error message, and the status bar shows a time that just passed.
• A note you created on the computer shows up on the phone after a sync.
• If encryption is on: the password is saved in a second place.
• Web Clipper saves a page from the browser into the right notebook.

If something goes wrong

The sync says it cannot connect. Nine times out of ten it is the wrong address or the wrong password for the file area. Go back to the settings and click Check synchronization configuration, the button tells you exactly what is wrong.

Everything shows up twice. Two devices synced at the same time before the first one was done. Delete the duplicates on one device and sync again. It will not happen again if you let one device finish at a time.

The notes are unreadable and look like random characters. Encryption is on and this device has not received the master password. Enter it under Encryption in the settings.

Web Clipper cannot find Joplin. The program is closed, or the service is not turned on in the settings. Both need to be running at the same time.

The icon disappeared from the menu on Mint after an update. Run the installation script again, it puts the shortcut back without touching the notes.

The program does not start on Mint and mentions libfuse2. AppImage files need that library to start. On Mint 22 the package is called libfuse2t64, on Mint 21 it is called libfuse2, and both are installed with the Software Manager or apt.

What you do next

Install the phone app today, not next week. The point of Joplin is the note you write on the bus home from the supplier, and that note only gets written if the app is already on your phone.

When the notes are going to become a real document, you move the text over to ONLYOFFICE. And if you need a shared place for the files the notes point to, choose Nextcloud.