For the third year, Joplin has been selected as a Google Summer of Code mentor organisation! We look forward to start working with the contributors on some great new projects. This year's main themes are:

• Mobile and tablet development - we want to improve the mobile/tablet application on iOS and Android.
• Plugin and external apps - leverage the Joplin API to create plugins and external apps.
• And of course contributors are welcome to suggest their own ideas.

Our full idea list is available here: GSoC 2022 idea list

In the coming month (March 7 - April 3), contributors will start getting involved in the forum and start discussing project ideas with the mentors and community. It's also a good time to start looking at Joplin's source code, perhaps work on fixing bugs or implement small features to get familiar with the source code, and to show us your skills.

One difference with previous years is that anyone, not just students, are allowed to participate.

Additionally, last year Google only allowed smaller projects, while this year they allow again small and large projects, so we've indicated this in the idea list - the small ones are 175 hours, and the large ones 350 hours.

This new release is largely focused on bug fixing and optimising various parts of the apps. There's about 26 improvements and 25 bugs and security fixes included - as always many of these apply to both the mobile and desktop app (see the desktop changelog and mobile changelog).

Many thanks to all the contributors who helped create this release!

Below are some of the more noticeable changes:

Notebook custom icons​

Since version 2.6 it was possible to assign an emoji icon to a notebook, and with this new version it's now possible to assign any custom icon. The icon may be a PNG or JPG file of any size. The app will then import the file and resize it to the correct size. To use a custom icon, follow these steps:

Right-click on a notebook, and select "Edit":

In the "Edit notebook" dialog, click "Select file..." and browse to your icon image:

Click "OK" and the icon will now appear next to the notebook:

The icon can be changed only from the desktop application at the moment, but it will sync and be displayed correctly on the mobile app too.

Plugin API improvements​

This version also includes a number of improvements to the plugin API, in particular it is now easier to customise the editor context menu from a plugin and dynamically add items to it depending on the context. For example, with the Rich Markdown plugin it will be possible to right-click on an image and open it, or copy it to the clipboard.

A few additional functions have also been added to make plugin development simpler - in particular a command to open any item, whether it's a notebook, note, tag or attachment; and functions to work with attachments, in particular to reveal an attachment in the system file explorer, and to track changes to an attachment.

As of 15 Feb 2022, disabled accounts on Joplin Cloud will be automatically deleted after 90 days. A disabled account is one where the Stripe subscription has been cancelled either by the user or automatically (eg for unpaid invoices).

Although it is an automated system, I will manually verify each account that's queued for deletion over the next few days for additional safety (for now everything's working as expected).

When an account is queued for deletion, all notes, notebooks, tags, etc are removed from the system within 2 days, and permanently deleted within 7 days. User information, in particular email and full name will be removed from the system within 2 days, but archived for an additional 90 days for legal reasons, after which they will be deleted too.

Many changes in this new release, available on mobile, desktop and CLI:

Per-notebook sort order and sort buttons

This new feature adds a number of changes to the way notes are sorted. The most visible one is the addition of a sort button above the note list - it allows sorting by modification date, creation date, title or by custom order, in either ascending or descending order:

By default, this sort order is going to apply to all notebooks, however you can now also assign a per-notebook sort order. In this case, any sort order will be apply to that notebook only. To enable this behaviour, simply right-click on a notebook and select "Toggle own sort order":

Thanks to Kenichi Kobayashi for developing this feature!

Support for notebook icons

It is now possible to associate icons with notebooks no both the desktop and mobile applications. To do so, right-click on a notebook and selected "Edit".

This will open the new notebook dialog from which can change the title and assign an icon. For now the icons are emojis but perhaps custom icons could be supported later on.

Allow collaborating on encrypted notebooks using Joplin Cloud

Thanks to the encryption improvements in the previous Joplin versions it is now possible to share and collaborated on encrypted notebooks, when synchronising with Joplin Cloud (or Joplin Server).

To get this working, you and the recipient will need to have Joplin 2.6 and the person who shares will need to have encryption enabled. After that most of the process is handled automatically by the apps - in particular it will automatically generate and share the required encryption keys for each users.

Improved synchronisation startup speed

Synchronisation is also a bit faster in this release due to an optimisation on the startup process. When syncing, the app needs to acquire a lock, which may be time consuming since it requires making multiple requests. This has now been optimised so that less requests are necessary and also each request consumes less resources. This will have a positive impact on Joplin Cloud in particular, but you should also see improvements with Joplin Server and smaller improvements with the other sync targets.

Improved Markdown editor split view scrolling

Kenichi Kobayashi made some great improvements to the Markdown editor scrolling in this release. The issue before was that the editor on the left and the viewer on the right would often not be in sync, in particular if the note contains several images and other media.

With Kenichi's change the editor and viewer stay nicely in sync, regardless of the note content. In fact it looks a bit like magic when you scroll through large notes - notice in particular how each side appear to wait for the other or speed up in order to make sure both sides are aligned as well possible. Kenichi provides a nice technical documentation about the feature here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wbs5XZR0oeU

Improved and optimised S3 synchronisation

Thanks to the efforts of Lee Matos, synchronisation with S3 is now more reliable and errors are also better handled. The underlying S3 SDK has also been upgraded from v2 to v3 which results in a smaller executable size (about 3-5 MB depending on the operating system)

Export notes as self-contained HTML files

Exporting a single note as HTML is now more user friendly as all images, scripts, styles and other attachments are all packed into a single HTML file (Previously it would create multiples files and directories). This makes it easier to share the complete note with someone who doesn't have Joplin.

Other changes and bug fixes

This release includes a total of 19 new features and improvements and 16 bug fixes. See the 2.6.x changelogs for more details:

https://joplinapp.org/help/about/changelog/desktop

https://joplinapp.org/help/about/changelog/android/

https://joplinapp.org/help/about/changelog/ios/

https://joplinapp.org/help/about/changelog/cli/

Just a head up that the next Joplin Server update could potentially include a breaking change, depending on your data.

One of the database migration is going to add an "owner_id" column to the "items" table (where all notes, notebooks, etc. are stored), and automatically populate it. Normally that shouldn't take too long but you might want to make sure you won't need the server right away when you process this.

The second database migration will add a unique constraint on items.name and items.owner_id and that's where the breaking change might be. Normally this data is already unique because that's enforced by the application but in some rare cases, due a race condition, there could be duplicate data in there. If that happens the migration will fail and the server will not start.

If that happens, you'll need to decide what to do with the data, as it's not possible to automatically decide. You can find all duplicates using this query:

Once you have the list of IDs you have a few options:

• Find the corresponding item in Joplin (it can unfortunately be anything - a note, resource, folder, etc.), then delete it and sync.
• Or, just delete the data directly in the database. You'll want to delete the corresponding item_id from the user_items table too.

But really in most cases you should be fine. Especially if you don't have that many notes it's unlikely you have duplicates.

Joplin v2.5 is now available for desktop, mobile and CLI! Here's an overview of the changes:

Support for Markdown + Front Matter​

Markdown + Front Matter is a format that allows attaching metadata, such as tags, creation date, or geolocation to a Markdown file. This is done by adding a block of YAML code (a "front matter") at the top of the file.

Thanks to Caleb John's efforts the Joplin desktop and CLI applications now support importing and exporting these files. When exporting, we try to preserve as much metadata as possible, while still keeping it the formatting user friendly.

Here's an example, with the Front Matter at the top, delimited by "---", and the text below.

Markdown + Front Matter is an excellent way to share notes with someone who doesn't have Joplin, to backup notes in a durable format (since no third-party application is needed to read it), and also to export notes to other applications, or to import them.

As with the regular Markdown exporter, the images and attachments are also exported.

Add support for callback URLs​

Callback URLs is a semi-standard that defines how certain resources in an application can be accessed via URLs. Either to view the resource, or to perform certain actions, such as deletion, creation, etc.

Joplin now support callback URLs to open notes, notebooks and folders. To do so, right click on a note and select "Copy external link":

That would give you a URL such as this:

joplin://x-callback-url/openNote?id=b7a7b93281f54d928612eea550f33a7f

Then if you click it from outside the app, the app will open and select this particular note. In practice such a feature allows third-party application to interact with Joplin by creating links that can be opened from outside. For example, you may use a different application for project planning, then link to the individual notes for more details about each task.

Many thanks to Roman Musin for adding the feature!

Improved end-to-end encryption support​

The series of quiet but major changes to the end-to-end encryption support continue in this new verison. One goal is still to allow sharing notebooks while encryption is enabled.

To that end, v2.5 includes support for RSA public-private key pairs. If you have encryption enabled, they will be automatically generated when you synchronise by the mobile, desktop or CLI applications. Later on, these keys will be used to allow sharing encrypted notebooks.

The second goal of these E2EE changes is to simplify the system enough that it can be enabled by default. To that end, the master password dialog and encryption screen have been improved. An option to reset the master password is now also available.

Various other improvements and bug fixes​

In total this release includes about 11 other bug fixes and improvements. There was in particular several improvements to the share features. It is now also possible for a share recipient to leave the shared notebook.

Mobile app update​

As always the mobile apps (to be released soon) benefit from several of the above changes since they share the same codebase as the desktop app.

Specific to the mobile version 2.5 are some improvements to the beta editor - in particular the layout has been cleaned up, and the first word of sentences is now automatically capitalised, which makes typing notes easier. If you haven't tried the beta editor yet, you can enable it from the Configuration screen.

The full changelog is available there: https://joplinapp.org/help/about/changelog/desktop

Some of you might be experiencing an error "Certificate has expired" when synchronising with Joplin Cloud (and possibly other services) when using the desktop application.

This is due to Let's Encrypt root certificate that expired on 30 September, and the new method they are using is not compatible with the Joplin desktop application.

This actually affects thousands of applications, not just Joplin, so various solutions are being considered right now and hopefully a fix will be available relatively soon.

For now, as a workaround, you can simply check "Ignore TLS certificate errors" in Configuration > Synchronisation > Advanced Options

I will let you know as soon as a fix is available so that you can clear that option.

More info:

• Issue with Electron and expired root on Let's Encrypt

• Let's Encrypt root CA isn't working properly on Electron GitHub repository

Update: I have implemented a temporary fix on Joplin Cloud which should solve the issue for now. If you're still having some issues please let me know. An updated desktop app will be available later on with a more permanent fix.

Joplin 2.4 is now available on desktop, mobile and CLI. Here's what's new in this release:

Sync Wizard Dialog​

A new Sync Wizard Dialog has been added to simplify setting up sync on new clients.

The dialog shows the main sync targets, their differences, and makes it easy to choose one and start synchronising. This is mostly aimed at new users or those perhaps less technical. Those who are self hosting or using complex setups will still easily find what they need from a link on that dialog (or in Config > Synchronisation like before).

Sync setup on mobile has been slightly improved too - now on a new client, instead of asking you to sync with Dropbox directly (which may not be what you want), it jumps to the Config > Synchronisation section where you can select the sync target

Disable synchronisation​

It's a small change but something that's been asked many time - it's now possible to disable synchronisation entirely by selecting "None" as a sync target. Previously that could be done in a hacky way, by selecting a non-configured sync target. Now it's clearer and easier to do.

Add back support for deprecated plugins​

Recently some plugins stopped working because deprecated plugin APIs had been removed. It had been planned for a long time but I suspect the warnings weren't visible enough so plugin developers didn't act on them, and as a result many plugins stopped working.

This is now fixed in the latest version. A selected number of plugins will have access to these old deprecated APIs, which means they will start working again. This was mainly affecting ambrt's plugins such as "Convert Text To New Note" or the popular "Embed Search" plugin.

Add support for recommended plugins​

As mentioned in an earlier post, we now support recommended plugins. These recommended plugins appear on top when searching and are identified by a small crown.

End to End Encryption improvements​

Like most recent releases, v2.4 includes a few improvement to the End to End Encryption (E2EE) system. The goal is to make it easier to use, to make it more reliable and to support the future use case of sharing encrypted notebooks or notes.

One important change is the support for a master password. This single password will be responsible to encrypt various keys, including some that will be automatically generated. Thanks to this, it won't be necessary to ask to enter a new password every time a key needs to be encrypted, since the master password can be used. It will also be easier to manage since you'll only have one password to remember instead of a different one for each notebook you might have shared.

Finally, it's now possible to disable a master key. What it means is that it will no longer show up in the list of master keys, and will also no longer generate a warning asking you to enter the password. In some case you might have forgotten it and no longer need it key, so you can now disable it.

Custom CSS​

This version also introduces a few internal change to better support custom CSS. In particular the colours now come from a CSS file, which could potentially be overridden, and new UI elements are styled using stylesheets, which likewise could be overridden.

Those are just first steps, but eventually these changes will make it easier to style the UI and create new themes.

Bug fixes​

This release also includes about 30 various bug fixes and improvements.

A notable one is a fix for GotoAnything, which recently wasn't working on first try.

The plugin screen has also been improved so that search works even when GitHub is down or blocked, as it is in China in particular.

A common request from new users is how to know which plugin is safe to install or not. In fact probably all of them are safe but as a new user that's not necessarily easy to know. So to help with this, the next version of Joplin will support recommended plugins - those will be plugins that meet our standards of quality and performance, and they will be indicated by a small crown tag inside the plugin box. Recommended plugins will also appear on top when searching.

For now, since we don't have a review process, the recommended plugins are those developed by the Joplin team and frequent contributors, because we know those are safe to use.

Later we might have a review process and add more recommended plugins. That being said, in the meantime even if a plugin is not marked as recommended, there's a good chance it is still safe and have good performance too. Often you can search for it on the forum and if it's active with many users commenting, you're most likely good to go.

But if there's any doubt, the recommended tag is a good way to be sure.

Joplin Cloud has been out of beta for a few weeks now and since then it has been quietly running without any troubles. There is no known bugs and the service is running smoothly so it's now safe to say that it is production ready!

As a reminder, Joplin Cloud is meant to provide a more seamless Joplin experience - if you want to quickly get started, it's as easy as downloading the app and getting a Joplin Cloud account. Besides improved sync performance, that will give you the ability to collaborate on notebooks with others, as well as publishing and sharing notes.

Of course Joplin still supports other sync options such as Nextcloud, Dropbox and OneDrive or AWS S3. You can also self host using Joplin Server. The advantage of Joplin Cloud being that you don't need to maintain a server yourself - for a small fee you'll get that taken care of.

Additionally, subscribing to Joplin Cloud is a great way to support the project as a whole, including the open source applications. Such support is needed in the long term to provide bug and security fixes, add new features, and provide support.

At some level it is also an experiment, to see if such a service is financially viable and can allow me to work full time on the project. This is certainly something I would like, and perhaps Joplin Cloud combined with your donations will allow that.